Can the truth heal? That’s what the people of Bahrain are about to find out as they embark on an ambitious, and unprecedented, attempt to move beyond the ravages of an aborted revolution that has sundered the social fabric of this cosmopolitan island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. Five months ago Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa …
Combative to the end, embattled Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement in Riyadh today that will see him transfer power to his vice president, launching a new chapter in a 10-month saga that has seen some 1,300 killed in near daily street clashes and tens of thousands wounded. With hands stiffened and deformed by …
The worldwide spread of protests this year may have started with the Arab spring, but when Kuwaiti demonstrators stormed their parliament on Wednesday, they appeared to be taking a page from the more theatric elements of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The protestors’ raid was brief. They called for the fall of the Prime …
‘Tis the season. The season of talks on Afghanistan, that is. Two weeks ago it was Istanbul, where Afghanistan’s neighbors met to discuss their roles in the country’s stability going forward. Early next month it will be Bonn, Germany, where the rest of the world will convene to ask, again, “whither Afghanistan?” And today, …
When something seems too good to be true, according to an old adage, it usually is. The announcement, Tuesday, by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani that legislative council elections would be held in 2013 , without a push from protestors on the street, raises the question of what kind of dark skeletons lurk behind the …
The death of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Sultan on Saturday came as no surprise. For years the 86-year-old Saudi defense minister and brother to the king had been ailing, and in fact had been undergoing treatment for cancer in the United States when he died. The appointment of another brother, Prince Nayef, 78, as King Abdullah’s …
The future of Afghanistan can be seen in a lump of lustrous black rock showcased on Wahidullah Shahrani’s bookshelf. Or so he would have me believe. The energetic minister of mines has spent the past half hour elucidating the potentials of the rich iron deposit in the mountainous province of Bamiyan from which that rock comes. He …
U.S. Officials confirmed that Yemeni government news agency reports that Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric has been killed, along with his bodyguards, in a military strike. He was 40-years-old. The English-speaking al Awlaki who is the best known face of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is a particularly potent …
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh doesn’t act like a man with his back to the wall. Despite an eight-month-long popular uprising, major military defections, international pressure to step down and an assassination attempt that nearly took his life in June, he has made it clear that he will relinquish power only on his own terms. His …
When top U.S. military officer Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani Network as a “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency,” to the U.S. Senate on Thursday you could almost hear the ‘I told you so’ chorus echoing all the way from Afghanistan. Mullen accused the ISI of fighting a proxy war in …
For the past several months, reconciliation with the Taliban has emerged as a key pillar of the American exit strategy. A political end to the insurgency, combined with a strengthened Afghan security force, better governance and enhanced economic structures were supposed to pave the way towards the dignified withdrawal that is …
In Afghanistan, the turban transcends tribe. It is worn by all ethnic groups, from the Tajiks and Uzbeks that dominate the north, to the Pashtuns who reside in the south. The Taliban wear turbans, but so do the tribal militias fighting them. Though out of fashion among the young and urban, it is still the symbol of a man’s honor …
When militants serving the Haqqani Network attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008, killing 54, it took several months for suspicions to leak out that the group may have been behind the attack. Not so with last week’s commando-style assault on the U.S. Embassy and other sites in the capital. Within hours Afghan officials were …
