Archives for July 2002

A Bluff on Iraq? The article by Mary Dejevsky in the Independent on the talk about an Iraq campaign being a “bluff” is foolish. There is not any doubt that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz intend to go to war against Baghdad, and the signs I’ve seen are that they have convinced President George W. Bush to […]

A car bomb that the driver intended to use to blow up government ministers in Kabul was intercepted when it had a collision. It is not clear if President Karzai was among the intended victims. Political parties in Pakistan are continuing to buck President Musharraf. There may well be a substantial confrontation between them and […]

Ethnic conflict is on the rise in Afghanistan, as evidenced by a number of incidents that do not appear to have been reported in the major U.S. media, though the brave and diligent wire service reporters on the ground have been filing them. These conflicts may well draw the United States military into one side […]

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister (Igor Ivanov) is in Iraq, and reiterated his government’s opposition to a US strike on that country. He implied that the US has been lobbying the other members of the UN Security Council to go along. (France is also opposed, so far). Ivanov did, however, urge Iraq to bring back […]

McNeill meets Ismail Khan; and Development Aid The fighting between ethnic Tajiks (Sunni Persian speakers) around the northwestern city of Herat with ethnic Pushtuns brought a visit from the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill. He met with Herat’s governor/ warlord Ismail Khan, offering US good offices in ending the […]

A Bush Appointee Brings up Concentration Camps for American Muslims The comments of Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee to the US Civil Rights commission, in Detroit over the past weekend are beyond belief. He openly brought up the possibility that if there were another big al-Qaida strike on the US, Muslim Americans could be put […]

Al-Qaida Continues to Recruit The Sunday Times reported on 7/21 that British intelligence now estimates that some 4,000 Muslims with British citizenship passed through al-Qaida training camps, many of them having fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya or the Balkans before returning to the UK. Previous estimates had been 80 or so. If true, this report indicates […]

Turkey and Iraq Although Turkey is rumored to have acquiesced in a US attack on Iraq, assuming it is paid billions of dollars up front for its economic losses on the Iraq front, it is clear that substantial questions remain in the minds of Turkish politicians about this course. Given the instability of the current […]

The Chronicle of Higher Education July 24, 2002 [Online Edn. July 16] Why We Should Not Boycott Israeli Academics By JUAN COLE OPINION: THE CALL for an academic boycott of Israel is misguided, writes Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Many Israeli academics support the struggling peace […]