The Financial Times reports that Pakistan’s cabinet has decided to hold elections in January after all, backing off statements made over the weekend that they might be postponed for a year. The FT suggests that the vehemence of the response from demonstrating lawyers and other elements of civil society has been stronger than Gen. Musharraf […]
Erdogan Unswayed by Bush calls for Patience Wave of Bombings, Assassinations in Iraq
Bush attempted to mollify Turkish Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan at a White House meeting on Monday, but given Erdogan’s belligerent comments afterwards, I’d say he did not succeed. As I’ve noted before, Washington would never have asked Israel to stand by and wring its hands after Hamas blew up dozens of civilians and soldiers […]
Fundamentalist Leader Qazi Hussain brands Musharraf a Traitor
Qadi Hussain Ahmad, the leader of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami called Sunday for massive protests against the coup of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He was speaking to a crowd of 20,000 near the major Punjabi city of Lahore. I just saw Qazi Hussain on Aljazeera condemning Musharraf as a traitor, saying in English, “This is clear […]
Urdu Press Blames US for Crisis
While Gen. Musharraf maintains that he was forced to make his most recent coup by the threat of Muslim extremism, many of Pakistan’s Urdu newspapers have a different interpretation. They suggest in their editorials that the Bush administration’s pressure on Musharraf to move in an uncompromising way against Muslim fundamentalists sharpened the contradictions in Pakistani […]
State of Emergency in Pakistan
Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf has made a second coup. Over his eight years of military dictatorship, he had dressed his government up in the outward trappings of ‘democracy.’ He allowed (stage-managed) parliamentary elections in 2002. The same year, he ran for president in a referendum with no opponent, such that he could not lose. The […]
Female US Soldier Killed Bush Envoy Resigns over Unfair Policies toward Turks
Barnett Rubin at our Global Affairs site is live-blogging the state of emergency in Pakistan, declared by Gen Pervez Musharraf. My essay, “Combating Muslim Extremism,” is now online at The Nation. It is a critique of the approach of most of the Republican presidential candidates and contains advice for the Democrats on how to escape […]
Oaths, the Constitution, and the US Embassy in Iraq
The Bush administration is taking a hard line on dragooning civilian Foreign Service Officers into serving in the war zone of Iraq. The article contains a quote by Ambassador Ryan Crocker which says that the FSO’s swear an oath to serve anywhere in the world. This is not true. They swear an oath to uphold […]
Curveball is Alive
It isn’t surprising that Iraqi expatriates like Curveball should be trying to peddle a load of horse manure about Iraqi ‘weapons programs’ in the early zeroes. It is not remarkable that Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and its US enablers such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Michael […]
More on the Need to Close down the US Embassy in Baghdad
More on the need to pressure Congress to close the US embassy in Baghdad (see below). First, here is some correspondence: ‘As a retired foreign service officer . . . at the State Department in Washington, I would like to add to your rationale for closing the US Embassy in Bagdad to save lives. In […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved