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A JOURNEY AMONG SUICIDE BOMBERS, FEMINIST GOVERNORS, AND ACRES AND ACRES OF POPPIES. Afghan Spring by Peter Bergen Post date: 06.06.07 Issue date: 06.18.07 This January, somewhere in Logar Province, 40 miles south of Kabul, a 20-year-old goat herder named Imdadullah strapped on a bulky black waistcoat lined with packages of TNT. The packages were […]

WASHINGTON – Experts studying the use of IEDs that have wreaked havoc among U.S. troops in Iraq warn that the deadly bombs will likely be exploding here sometime in the near future.

“There are going to be a bunch of p——off Iraqis and foreign fighters, and I think it’s just inevitable they’re going to try it here,” terrorism expert Peter Bergen told the Daily News. “It could be five years from now or 10 years from now, but that’s the potential threat.”

For a frightening assessment of the Iraq war, and of the chances that terrorist
violence could erupt in the United States, it’s hard to beat “Mission Ops:
Assignment IEDs” on the Discovery Times Channel.

At the foot of cliffs in central Afghanistan, about 5,000 fragments of what were once among the world’s great artistic and religious treasures, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, sit in rudimentary shelters. Their destruction by the Taliban in March 2001 was an act of cultural vandalism on a spectacular scale. The two tallest standing Buddhas in the world — which had stood as silent sentinels over the snow-capped valley of Bamiyan for more than 1,500 years — were reduced to mere rubble.

Five British citizens, four of Pakistani descent, were convicted Monday of planning to attack targets in the United Kingdom under orders from al Qaeda using fertilizer-based bombs. Their convictions underline the fact that from its Pakistani hub al Qaeda now has the capability not only to plan once-off attacks in the U.K., but is also able to plan a sustained campaign of terrorist operations against the United States’ closest ally. And the ease with which al Qaeda has recruited operatives from the U.K. suggests that a future attack on the United States by British militants trained in al Qaeda’s training camps in Pakistan is a real possibilit

MADRID.- Osama bin Laden cumple hoy 50 anos. Cuando nos representamos su aspecto en la actualidad, los occidentales imaginamos a un hombre que, carcomido fisicamente por las enfermedades y psicologicamente por los reiterados golpes que Estados Unidos ha propinado a su causa, tiene un aire mucho mayor del que corresponde a su edad: una figura delgada y adusta, arrastrandose de cueva en cueva a lo largo de la frontera entre Afganistan y Pakistan mientras las fuerzas de Estados Unidos le pisan los talones, rodeado quizas de un pequeno grupo de leales pero marginado del resto del mundo, con lo que ahora se habria convertido en practicamente inexistente su capacidad, en otros tiempos formidable, para planear espectaculares actos de violencia.

The Iraq Effect The War in Iraq and its Impact on the War on Terrorism By Peter Bergen, New America Foundation with Paul Cruickshank, research fellow, Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law Mother Jones | March/April 2007   The globalization of jihad and martyrdom, accelerated to a significant degree by the Iraq […]

As the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated, President Bush has depicted the war in Iraq as crucial to the wider war on terrorism. He claims that terrorists who otherwise “would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders” are being drawn to Iraq and defeated there, like moths to a flame.

2007 will likely be a make or break year for Afghanistan, for the international efforts there, and, conversely, for the efforts of the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies to turn the country back into a failed state. Our efforts in Afghanistan are important because what happens there can have a large impact on our national security interests as we found to our cost on 9/11, and failure to create a viable state in Afghanistan will help empower jihadist terrorists who are planning to attack the United States and its allies.

President Bush delivered a speech in Washington on Thursday that focused on the once-forgotten war in Afghanistan. The president enumerated a range of measures to fix the detiorating situation in Afghanistan for which he is to be applauded—including, increasing the size and professionalism of the Afghan police and army; adding more than 3,000 US troops; investing in the rural economy to give farmers growing poppy for opium incentives to substitute other crops; helping the Pakistani government set up additional border posts to prevent militants crossing the Afghan border, and creating “reconstruction opportunity zones” in the tribal regions on the Afghan-Pakistan border that can export duty-free goods to the United States. The administration is asking Congress for more than ten billion dollars over the next two years to pay for these measures– 80% of the money is to go to beefing up Afghan national security forces, and the rest will pay for civilian aid.