Juan Cole

Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded Friday that the US military cease its aerial bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, in the wake of a mistaken bombing alleged to have killed 120 civilians in Farah province south of Herat. This demand would be provocative if it really were a demand or likely to be paid any attention to. […]

President Obama will fulfill his pledge to make a major address to the Muslim world from a Muslim capital from Cairo on June 4. Although Egypt has a soft dictatorship and so might not be the best venue from the point of view of human rights, it has other advantages. Its population is over 80 […]

On Thursday in Pakistan, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani announced that the Pakistani government would seek no further peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban but was rather dedicated to defeating them and reasserting national sovereignty in the northwest of the country. The speech marked a major change in policy for the Pakistani government, which has […]

My appearance on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. at an event of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in connection with the book launch of my newest, Engaging the Muslim World is now online. Many thanks to MPAC Executive Director Salam Marayati, with whom it was an honor to share the podium. […]

Reuters suggests that one of the outcomes of Wednesday’s summit between Obama, Zardari and Karzai might be a US push for a national unity government in Pakistan, uniting the Pakistan People’s Party with the Muslim League-N of Nawaz Sharif. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn does not rule out the possibility, though the obstacles are severe. It […]

Guerrillas detonated a parked truck bomb at a market in mostly Sunni Arab Dora on Wednesday morning, killing 15 and wounding 50. A big truck appears to have pulled up beside the one rigged with the bomb, shielding many in the crowd at the farmer’s market (most of the stalls were occupied by Shiite farmers), […]

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington, DC was overshadowed by a controversy over another US airstrike gone astray in Farah Province south of Herat, which left at least 30 civilians dead, (and some say over 100). Angry villagers from Bala Baluk brought truckloads of bodies, most of them women and children, to Farah’s provincial […]

As Pakistani president Asaf Ali Zardari arrived in Washington for talks with President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, fighting intensified in Pakistan’s northwest. On Tuesday morning, Pakistani Taliban deployed a suicide bomber to attack Pakistani security forces near Peshawar killing 5 and wounding 9 persons, among them school children bystanders. WaPo says that fighting […]

As President Obama prepares for Wednesday’s tripartite summit between himself, the president of Pakistan (Asaf Ali Zardari) and the president of Afghanistan (Hamid Karzai), he has just gotten some bad news on the Afghan political front. The Obama administration had clearly hoped to see Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai unseated in the August presidential elections. They […]