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 …
Terrorism
The Endgame in Afghanistan: How Do We End the Proxy Wars?
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 …
Were Egyptians the Perpetrators of Last Month’s Terror Attack in Southern Israel?
Comes now a report in the Israeli press that purports to solve the mystery stubbornly trailing the unusual Aug. 18 terror attack on a desert highway in the far south of Israel — but the answer suggests even deeper problems for Israel: Though Israel bombed the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the attack that left eight Israelis dead, an …
With Forceful Messaging, Can the U.S. Alienate the Taliban?
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 …
As Terror Attacks Continue, U.S. and India Step Up Cooperation
The U.S. State Department announced yesterday that it had “designated the Indian Mujahideen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” a decision that makes it illegal under U.S. law to provide material support or resources to the group, and freezes all its assets in the U.S. The new designation may not, by itself, make much difference in …
For the U.S. to Leave Afghanistan, It Has to Be Ready to Stay
When former Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud suggested last week at a terrorism conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the U.S. should have used the death of Osama bin Laden in May as an excuse to immediately pull troops out of Afghanistan, he was met with …
Ahmed Shah Massoud: A Decade After His Murder, Would Afghanistan Be Different Were He Alive?
Ten years ago today, the assassination of a militia leader holed up in the north-east corner of Afghanistan garnered little international attention, except perhaps for the Hollywood-worthy way in which he was killed: two suicide terrorists, posing as Belgian documentary journalists, detonated their explosives-packed video camera just …
Ten Years After 9/11, Is It Now Time to be Afraid of China?
As the commentaries, retrospectives and meditations pile up ten years after 9/11, expect quite a few in their closing paragraphs to look toward the next grand geo-political challenge facing the U.S. A decade of costly adventurism in the Middle East and Afghanistan, many will argue, distracted U.S. policy making from the new realities …
How 9/11 Provoked the U.S. to Hasten its Own Decline
During his first year in office, President George W. Bush was confronted by the key strategic challenge facing the United States in the new century, in an incident that began with the diversion of a U.S. aircraft — by Chinese fighter planes, which forced a U.S. Navy spy plane to land on the island of Hainan after a collision that …
Another Deadly Bomb Blast in New Delhi
Ten people were killed and 61 injured by a bomb blast inside the Delhi High Court Complex in the capital on Wednesday morning. The militant group Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) took responsibility for the blasts in an email sent to several Indian news organizations. The attack seemed to have been calculated to maximize the loss of …
In Israel, a U.S. candidate for president keeps it simple
By his own account, one of the knocks on Herman Cain as a candidate for president is his lack of foreign policy experience. He has succeeded in the business world, running Godfather’s Pizza, and hosts an Atlanta radio talk show. But his current trip to Israel is his first, and at a breakfast with reporters on Sunday, the Republican …
De-escalation Easier Said than Done in Gaza, As Each Side Picks Its Spots
It’s a peculiar cease-fire that sees 20 missiles and mortars launched in a single night, but that’s the kind of cease-fire in effect in the Gaza Strip, despite the professed efforts of the two major players, Israel and Hamas, to draw down hostilities. Neither side may want to see the conflict spiral into full-on battle, with Israeli …
With Gaddafi (Nearly) Gone Terrorism Victims Seek Justice, Or Compensation
Maria del Carmen Diaz was just 15 years old when terrorists in Tel Aviv’s Lod airport lobbed grenades at her Puerto Rican tour group on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, killing her aunt and severely wounding her. Six surgeries and 39 years of intense therapy later, she still gets nervous talking about the attack. “I couldn’t …