Juan Cole

Fighting broke out again near Shindand in Afghanistan between the forces of Ismail Khan of Herat and those of his Pushtun foe Amanu’llah Khan. Five were killed and nine wounded in the battle. This struggle has flared into violence intermittently, as have similar conflicts among warlords near Mazar-i Sharif in the north and in Paktia […]

Bahrain Elections: Islamists Win Now that the second round in the Bahrain elections has been completed, it appears that the Sunni Islamists have a bare majority in the lower house of parliament. They have 22 of the 40 seats. Of the victors in the second round, only three are liberals (one Sunni and a Shiite). […]

Safwat al-Sharif, the Minister of Culture in Egypt, insists that a television serial that depends on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for plot elements will be shown during the fasting month of Ramadan despite Israeli protests. The “Protocols” are a forgery cooked up by the tsarist police in the early 20th century and […]

Iranian President Khatami attacked the idea of a US war against Iraq forcefully while in Spain this week. Officially, Iran has all along loudly denounced the idea of a US invasion of Iraq. . The ruling ayatollahs are afraid, I think of having the US in place on both major borders–in Afghanistan and in Iraq. […]

The Jordanian officials are conducting interrogations of Muslim fundamentalists in Jordan concering the assassination of Laurence Foley, the head of US AID in Amman. An al-Qaeda link is suspected, but it is also admitted that in the current atmosphere it could have been the act of a local group. A group called Honest People of […]

Feuding in Northern Afghanistan US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Finn met with warlords in Mazar-i Sharif Monday. The factional fighting between soldiers loyal to Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum and Tajik commander Muhammad Atta has roiled the hinterlands of Mazar in the past few months. The fighting is local, […]

Iraq War would bring increase in Terrorism: Oxford Report Jane Merrick of the Press Association reported that the Oxford Research Group believes and Iraq war will increase terrorism by al-Qaeda against the United States. It believes that 10,000 civilians will die in an American attack on Iraq. Paul Rogers, a professor of Peace Studies at […]

Fate of Iraqi Political Prisoners Unknown Iraqi organizations and notables in London have called on the Iraqi government to account for what they claim are tens of thousands of political prisoners. These were supposed to have been released in the general amnesty bestowed during the past week, but they were not. (Reported by Asharq al-Awsat). […]

Abu Qatadah Arrested– Key Figure in al-Qaeda The Palestinian cleric Umar Muhammad Abu Umar (“Abu Qatada”), 40, was arrested in a Wednesday raid on a council house in Bermondsey, south London. Suspected by many European authorities of being a key figure in al-Qaeda, he and his family had been missing since last December. British authorities […]