In The News

Mark Huband April 16, 2004
Yesterday over Arab television, Osama bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda, offered European countries a three month respite from terrorist attacks in exchange for withdrawing their forces from Iraq. Mark Huband, security correspondent for the Financial Times, says that this move hints at Al-Qaeda's long term strategic goals: to expel non-Muslims from the Islamic world, undermine incumbent Islamic...
Susan Moeller April 14, 2004
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made the decision to present terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and Iraq as a linked triple threat. Susan Moeller, professor of media and international affairs at the University of Maryland, argues that in the “stultifying patriotic climate” that followed the attacks, most mainstream...
Mark Huband April 11, 2004
Small groups of chemical weapons experts uncovered in Europe appear to have a wide network of links. Two separate groups, one arrested in a Paris suburb by French counter terrorism officials and the other uncovered by British intelligence, are both reported to have received chemical weapons training in Chechnya, Russia's breakaway republic. The group arrested in France is said to have links...
Ewen MacAskill April 10, 2004
As Shiite and Sunni Iraqis banded together to fight American and allied country troops this week, United States military forces found themselves in an increasingly uncertain environment. The political will of US allies is being tested by the deepening hostilities. When South Korean and Japanese military forces came under fire, they retreated to their compounds. But although popular sentiment...
Hugh Eakin April 10, 2004
Arguing against popular belief, Mahmood Mamdani, a prominent Uganda-born political scientist at Columbia University, asserts that terrorism has little to do with Islamic culture; rather, it is an outgrowth of American Cold War strategies. In this article on the New York Times, the author attempts to probe into Mamdani's thesis through other scholars' positions as well as Mamdani's...
Jean-Pierre Lehmann April 9, 2004
Although Kenya has attracted some foreign dollars through tourism and export-based flower and tea industries, a majority of Kenyans remain mired in poverty. Jean-Pierre Lehmann, founding director of the Evian group, argues here that although its future could be bright, Kenya has not yet exploited its substantial political and economic assets in a way that will allow it to fully tap into...
Seth Mydans April 8, 2004
The recent terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan highlight the country's overall decay and discontent. Ruled since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 by President Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan appears mired in economic depression, and political terror: 80% of the people live in poverty and most talk as if still living under Soviet era oppression. Furthermore, lack of civil society groups, a free press...