After attending two back-to-back "international dialogues of civilizations," one in Doha, Qatar (Jan. 9-12) organized by Brookings Institution and the Emir of Qatar, and another at UNESCO in Paris (Jan. 17-19) hosted by UNESCO, Euro Mediterranean, and President Jacques Chirac, I cannot help but reflect on the promise and the politics of dialogues.
If the "war on terror" is beginning to look increasingly like the cold war, then President George W. Bush’s fiscal year (FY) 2005 foreign-aid request will not change that impression.
A letter purportedly written to senior al Qaeda leaders by a key associate, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, appears to undermine a major thesis of hard-core neoconservatives who led the U.S. drive to war in Iraq.
Pakistan’s government on March 30 began pulling troops out of South Waziristan following a 12-day security sweep of the area to root out Taliban and al Qaeda militants. The withdrawal was accompanied by an official admission that no Islamic radical leaders had been killed during the operation, as was earlier claimed.
The U.S. veto of a proposed UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel’s March 22 assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin has once again placed the United States both on the fringe of international public opinion and in opposition to international legal norms. Despite the proposed resolution condemning “all attacks against civilians,” the United States once again was the lone dissenting vote, marking the 28 th time since 1970 that the U.S. has blocked a Security Council resolution criticizing the actions of its most important Middle Eastern ally.
The press had lots of fun with the recent robot debacle in the Mojave Desert. Competing for $1 million in prize money, 15 vehicles headed off on a 142-mile course through some of the most forbidding terrain in the country. None managed to navigate even eight miles. The robots hit fences, caught fire, rolled over, or sat and did nothing.
As donors met in Berlin last week to review Afghanistan’s progress and reaffirm their commitment to its reconstruction, the Afghan National army was swiftly moving into the northern province of Herat. Its mission was to quell an upsurge in factional fighting, following the murder of Mirwais Sadeq, the Afghan aviation minister and son of the powerful warlord and governor Ismail Khan. Although the army may have prevented the escalation of violence, the episode highlights the weakness of the central government and the fragility of security in the country. Almost two years after the fall of the Taliban, peace and security in Afghanistan still remains elusive.
Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to the 9/11 commission supports Richard Clarke’s charges to the commission that the Bush administration reduced the urgency of the problem of counter-terrorism–and that the invasion of Iraq marked a major diversion from the “war against terrorism.” Rice has opened a new line of questioning for the commissioners with her false claim that the Bush administration is responsible for the “greatest reorganization of government” since President Harry Truman’s National Security Act of 1947.
The recent release on April 22 of Mordechai Vanunu from an Israeli prison provides an opportunity to challenge the U.S. policy of supporting Israel ’s development of nuclear weapons while threatening war against other Middle Eastern states for simply having the potential for developing such weaponry.
A major battle in the “War on Terror” was lost last month and not a shot was fired.