This article originally appeared at Al Jazeera English. Joseph Biden, the US vice president, left on Sunday for a head-scratching trip to the Middle East and many are wondering what he is up to. After all, the vice president has a lot on his plate already.
I’m traveling this week, but still paying close attention to Iraq’s parliamentary elections, where it seems things are holding fairly steady despite the fears of instability before the election and heinous terrorism up to and on election day itself.
This is a guest “note” from Gail Reed, an American journalist based in Havana. Her comments are from an email, published at The Washington Note with her permission, commenting on the recent U.S.
It’s been a big week for American-Syrian relations, with President Obama taking incremental but necessary steps towards renewing ties between the two countries: naming Robert S.
NOTE; THE START OF THE EVENT HAS BEEN PUSHED TO 10:15 AM EST The New America Foundation/American Strategy Program is hosting an event today featuring the Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Stephen Musyoka, as well as the Speaker of Kenya’s National Assembly Kenneth Otiato Marende and Kenya’s Minister of Cooperative Development and Marketing Joseph W.N. Nyagah….
Today’s altogether unsurprising (and not necessarily consequential) announcement from the al-Shabaab group in Somalia that they have joined al Qaeda will undoubtedly focus attention on the extremist group and their ongoing battle with Somalia’s embattled provisional government.
Signs in Arabic, Tamazight and French outside of Tizi Ouzou, Algeria. This post originally appeared at The Majlis Blog. A recent Fox News blog post advertising the possibility of a “new ally in the war against al-Qaeda” stopped me dead in my tracks. The article suggests that the U.S.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Anand Gopal, who has reported from Afghanistan for the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor, has just written a disturbing and important piece for Tom Dispatch on night raids and “black” prison sites in Afghanistan. The piece also appears on The Nation‘s site.
Graeme Wood has a fascinating piece in the current edition of Foreign Policy about his travels in the “limbo world” of unofficial or unrecognized states.
Jon Weinberg is a research intern with the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force. The Iraqi constitution stipulates that there be “a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens, in a period not to exceed (the thirty first of December two thousand and seven).
