The battle for Libya spilled across the border on Friday as forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi clashed with Tunisian troops after chasing rebel fighters through the mountainous border areas. They also fired shells into the Tunisian town of Dahiba, wounding one resident. The fighting erupted nearly a week after the rebel forces had …
Rival empires vie for supremacy in a central Asian nation peopled by warring tribes. Sound familiar? If the Great Game was about England and Russia duking it out in the mountain passes of Afghanistan, the second iteration could be said to have taken place in the 80’s, when the United States took on the Soviet Union through its proxies, …
When asked about the lessons of Vietnam, military historians often quipped that ‘we didn’t fight one war for ten years, we fought ten wars for one year each.’ The same could be said of Afghanistan. Troops come in, learn the lay of the land, and leave, oftentimes within the span of six to fifteen months, depending on which country …
I will be the first to admit that I was an early adopter of Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. When it first came out I reviewed it for TIME, and named it one of the 10 best books of 2006. I gave it out as Christmas presents, and encouraged my mother to read it in her book club. By no stretch of the imagination was it a work of great …
As I was preparing to leave Tripoli, I had a conversation with an Algerian British journalist who had just been released from detention by Libyan forces for reporting in the east of the country. He was angry that he had been picked up for doing his job, but didn’t let it color his reporting on the situation. As I had been gleaning …
The town of Zawiyah has been cleansed of dissent. A rebel stronghold in the early days of the revolt against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, this oil town on the western coast of Libya was the site of a pitched street battle that culminated in a rout that saw scores of antiregime protesters killed and hundreds more injured. Fresh green …
Such is the hothouse atmosphere of the Rixos Hotel, where the Tripoli press corps remains imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime, that any new source of information, be it a shopkeeper in a bazaar who manages to slip out a disparaging word about Libya’s leader or a rumor of the man himself out in the streets, sends reporters into a frenzied …
Last Saturday, March 26th, a woman burst into the dining room of the Rixos hotel, one of the two Tripoli luxury hotels where foreign journalists are forced to stay. Libyan security guards had taken her, she said, and gang raped for two days. Within minutes of her appearance, hotel staff and the ubiquitous government minders that frequent …
At nine pm the announcement went out over the hotel PA system: “All Journalists, there will be a trip planned to Baab al-Aziziya after dinner. Please gather in the lobby.” We duly trudged to the waiting busses, newcomers such as my self curious to see Gaddaffi’s compound, and veterans hoping against expectations that the man …
Had I been dropped into my Tripoli hotel by airplane, there would be little to indicate that this was the capital of a country at war. Well-dressed women in headscarves and heels click along the marble halls. Waiters in waistcoats take my latte orders with a slight bow. The streets outside are quiet, and for the moment at least, no air …
Given the rapid pace of change in the Middle East these days, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get a bead on what, exactly, the people behind the revolutions are thinking. We can look at new reports and interviews by journalists on the ground, but such endeavors are by default individualistic. Even if I interview 100 Egyptians …
“The counsel general decided not to come to work today,” the man at the Libyan consulate in Sfax, Tunisia, told me. Like many other journalists in this sun-bleached industrial city a few hours from the Libyan border, yesterday I had been promised a visa “soon,” and to “come back later.” Which I duly did, making the tired …
The Pentagon often cites Afghanistan’s vast untapped mineral wealth when asked how, exactly, the country’s government will fund its security forces when the coalition leaves. The reality, of course, is that it will be several decades before any of those underground resources ever see the light. But there is another wealth to be found …
