The Petraeus counter-insurgency
General David Petraeus will support the current trajectory of the "troop surge" in Iraq in his report to the US Congress this week, urging against any reduction in troop levels till April 2008.
As Petraeus prepares to present his assessment of progress in Iraq to the US Congress, Iraqi officials have revealed that up to 14,000 former al-Qaida-allied fighters have switched over to the side of the Iraqi army as part of Iraqi and US policy of winning the support of Sunni militants against al-Qaida.
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Sign up for toD's daily security briefings by clicking hereWhile praising the current successes of the Petraeus policy, Foreign Policy magazine warns that US and Iraqi officials must be careful in strengthening the hand of anti-Qaida militants lest the co-opted fighters prove to be another thorn in the side of central government.
The Nation sees eerie parallels between the Petraeus' counter-insurgency and the repression of the Navajo native Americans by Kit Carson scout units.
According to a global poll conducted by the BBC World Service, 67 percent of the world wants to see US troops out of Iraq within one year.
On the right side of history?
Ian Buruma reviews Norman Podhoretz's World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism and sees little "liberal" in the author's attempt to "redeem" liberalism. Podhoretz is now amongst Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy advisors.
75 percent of the battle
In an interview with Eurasianet, General Abdul Manan Farahi, Afghanistan's counter-terrorism chief, argues that social and political reforms make up a full of three quarters of fighting terrorism. "We cannot just focus on bombing and killing and law enforcement," Manan said.
Local officials in Kandahar have blamed the Canadian military for failing to handle the deteriorating security situation in the city and its environs, thus impeding the work of development and aid workers.
Women bear the brunt of Somali conflict
Ongoing fighting in Somalia has displaced thousands of people, but disproportionately affects women. In refugee camps across the border in Kenya, aid workers found teenaged women who had already been widowed several times by the conflict.
A mortar attack killed a mother and her three children in Mogadishu in an attack today by suspected Islamists.
Taking offense with the "war on terror"
Law professor David Cole takes the "offensive paradigm" of state coercion demonstrated by the Bush administration's "war on terror" to task in the Nation, concluding that "the preventive paradigm has compromised our spirit, strengthened our enemies and left us less free and less safe. If we are ready to learn from our mistakes, however, there is a better way to defend ourselves--through, rather than despite, a recommitment to the rule of law."
Sharif arrested and deported
Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf looks destined to lock horns once again with the country's judiciary after the arrest and deportation to Saudi Arabia of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who had just returned to Pakistan in order to jostle for power in the country. The newly independent judiciary had passed a law allowing for Sharif's return.
