In The News

Expanding Civil War: After Syria, Iraq?

Mohammed Ayoob May 7, 2013
Intervention and war are a way of life in the Middle East. With intervention fueling conflict, sectarian tensions reemerge and leaders restrict basic rights and freedoms and even resort to using force to restrain their own citizens. A recent example is the Iraqi government kicking out Arab television networks. Old behavior patterns are igniting unrest, civil war and new types of intervention,...

Lone Wolf Terrorists – No Easy Catch

Bruce Riedel April 30, 2013
Vigilance and a global crackdown on terrorism have so far deterred those trying to plot attacks on a grand scale in the US. A bigger challenge may be impromptu attacks by disgruntled young men, like the bombing at the Boston Marathon by two brothers, young adults whose Chechen immigrant parents had largely deserted them in the US. So far, the surviving suspect claims the attack was not part of a...

Crossing a Red Line

April 26, 2013
President Barack Obama has said that use of chemical weapons in Syria would be crossing a red line triggering intervention. Satellite images, eyewitness accounts and soil analysis suggest that sarin has been used in Syria. British officials concur with the US that evidence is limited and requires further investigation; British and French officials are requesting a UN investigation. Despite...

Turn to Religion Split Suspects' Home

Alan Cullison, Paul Sonne, Anton Troianovski, David George-Cosh April 25, 2013
Investigators are scrutinizing every routine for the family of two brothers, 26 and 19 years old, who set off two homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon. The hope is to prevent a tragic repeat. The Wall Street Journal presents one of the more comprehensive reports, with attention focused on the family’s divide over religion. The mother and farther met in Elista, provincial capital of the Kalmykia...

From Boston to Chechnya to Moscow: Chain of Terror Unites US and Russia

April 19, 2013
As the police continue to hunt for a suspect in the Boston marathon bombing, the long-running battle of Muslim Chechens in Russia has reemerged into focus. The US and Russia are in complete agreement on at least one foreign-policy issue, a desire to prevent and combat Islamic extremism, and reports that two suspects in the Boston marathon bombing are brothers of Chechen background will prompt...

To Lift Afghan Women, Educate All

Susan Froetschel April 8, 2013
As NATO plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, stability is in doubt for a country with inept governance and stubborn opposition from an obscurantist group. Crime reports from Afghanistan suggest the Taliban are waging attacks on police and schools, including the recent attack on a convoy delivering school textbooks, which killed a young US State Department staffer. NGOs and diplomats, often...

WMD Proliferation Threatens the World

Carol E. B. Choksy, Jamsheed K. Choksy April 5, 2013
Forces battling in Syria accuse each other of discharging chemical weapons; the United States and North Korea shift equipment about, raising the threat of nuclear exchange. The globe has many accords to curtail weapons of mass destruction. Yet most are “are trumped by influence-peddling, profit-seeking and ideology-spreading considerations,” explain Carol E.B. Choksy and Jamsheed K. Choksy, who...