Blog Posts

"Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — more than a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign."

"Years after the death of his father at the hands of a U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan, Hamza bin Laden now finds himself in the crosshairs of world powers."

"The Taliban carried out the biggest known capture of Afghan soldiers of the war, taking 150 prisoners after they chased units into neighboring Turkmenistan and that country forced them back, Afghan officials said on Sunday."

"Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan, has a long and often regrettable history in Afghanistan affairs. Prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, for example, Khalilzad worked as a consultant for a group in Boston which was in turned hired by UNOCAL which at the time was trying to build a pipeline across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. At the time, Khalilzad worked to normalize U.S. relations with the Taliban and arranged for a senior Taliban official to come to the United States to meet with Clinton administration officials and business leader."

"The debate on privatizing the war in Afghanistan is heating up yet again, with Democratic lawmakers pledging to end so-called 'forever wars.' The public is slowly recognizing the war’s hidden costs and global scale."

"The death toll in a mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques on Friday has risen to 50 after emergency workers found another body at one of the crime scenes."

"The United States and its closest allies have spent nearly two decades building an elaborate system to share intelligence about international terrorist groups, and it has become a key pillar of a global effort to thwart attacks."

"The report by the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice found that five out of six of the world’s most violent municipalities were in Mexico, where homicides have risen to historic levels in recent years amid a military-led war against criminal groups."

"Speculation about a military assault on Venezuela was also fueled by Trump’s recent appointment of a former George W. Bush administration official who was an architect of the Iraq War, Elliot Abrams, to be the new “'pecial Representative for Venezuela.'"

"Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. is imposing visa restrictions against International Criminal Court officials, citing investigations by the ICC into the activities of Americans and their allies in Afghanistan."

"Most of the roughly 400,000 Yazidi people in Iraq are still displaced, living in crowded camps and scattered around the world. Authorities hope to identify the bodies of people in dozens of mass graves in Iraq, so their remains can be buried by their families."

"The crisscrossing agendas facing Iraq — pressured by the U.S. and Iran while trying to set up a functioning government in Baghdad and preventing a revival of the Islamist terrorism that nearly broke the country apart — were on stark display during a nighttime skirmish this month."

"CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand—This tiny island nation was left reeling after a gunman wearing military fatigues and wielding five weapons stormed into two mosques and killed 49 people on Friday, in the worst massacre in New Zealand’s history."

"President Trump issued the first veto of his presidency Friday to secure federal money for a border wall that he promised as a candidate and considers a crucial priority for his reelection, capping a week of confrontation with both political parties."

"This scene from “Combat Obscura,” a 70-minute moral roller coaster featuring footage from a 2011 deployment to Afghanistan’s violent Helmand province, is one of dozens that depict the blurred lines and utter confusion of a war that is now 18 years old."

"The American military has escalated a battle against the Shabab, an extremist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, in Somalia even as President Trump seeks to scale back operations against similar Islamist insurgencies elsewhere in the world, from Syria and Afghanistan to West Africa."

"When the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) finally closed shop in Afghanistan in 2014, many participating nations professed a weariness with complex, civil-military, out-of-area operations. These operations demanded close, often awkward, relationships of cooperation, co-existence, and confrontation between different civil and military actors, including local civilians. Amid the withdrawal, many militaries and their defense departments seemed to express a collective sigh of relief, talking about a ‘return’ to strictly military priorities and operations. The focus shifted to ‘near area’ operations and security concerns at home."

"Friday’s slaughter in two New Zealand mosques, like mass shootings before it, had its seeds on one of the darkest corners of the Internet, a chat room where anonymous people appeared to talk openly about the attack before, during and after it happened. But technology played a more visible -- and arguably more troubling -- role in publicizing the violence itself and, by extension, the hate-filled ideology behind it."

"Afghanistan’s national security adviser on Thursday blasted the U.S. talks with the Taliban, saying the Trump administration has alienated the Afghan government, legitimized the militant network and is crafting a deal that will never lead to peace."

"In a sign that the Taliban see a peace deal with the United States as imminent, one of their top leaders released a rare audio message on Thursday seeking to ease the concerns of the insurgency’s own fighters — and those of Afghans who fear that an agreement could let the Taliban return to power and roll back human rights."

"New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said 40 people were killed and more than 20 seriously wounded in mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques full of people attending Friday prayers."

"The Senate voted 59-41 on Thursday to overturn President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, citing in part concerns with plans to divert billions of dollars from the Pentagon budget to build a southern border wall — a plan critics say would harm military readiness."

"Syrian government and Russian airstrikes on the last rebel stronghold in Syria have intensified in recent days, raising fears of a military offensive that the United Nations has long warned would cause a humanitarian disaster."

"Federal prosecutors on Thursday brought terrorism and other serious charges against five people arrested last year on a New Mexico compound, alleging in a new indictment that the group was gathering weapons and training in their squalid quarters to kill FBI and military personnel."

"The colectivos have their roots in the Cuban-inspired guerrilla forces that battled Venezuela’s staunchly anti-communist governments in the 1960s. After that conflict, some former rebels returned to poor neighborhoods determined to spread socialism through community activities — offering classes, showing movies, giving out free bread — and to protect residents from corrupt police."