The significance of the Afghan defense forces ability to defeat the insurgent attack without Western help is disputed, while NATO’s failure to anticipate the ability of the Taliban to penetrate so deep into the heart of Kabul provokes speculation over the role the Haqqanni Network and the connection to an attack on a Pakistani prison that freed hundreds of militants:
- Afghan Security Forces Kill 36 Insurgents to Quell Spate of Deadly Attacks (Washington Post with Foreign Policy)
- Assault on Kabul: Taliban Claim Attacks as Show of Strength (Christian Science Monitor)
- Karzai Says NATO Failed as 18-hr KabulAttack Ends (Reuters)
- Afghan Official Says Arrested Insurgent Claims Haqqanis Behind Kabul Attacks; 47 Dead in All (Washington Post with Foreign Policy)
Having “proudly admitted bombing the government’s headquarters in Oslo last July, killing eight people, before gunning down 69, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp,” the mass murderer’s only regret, according to his defense attorney, is “that he didn’t go further”: …
… but the defiant killer who gave “a closed-fist salute” on his arrival in court, later displayed his sensitive side, “wiping away tears as he watched a trailer for a propaganda film he had made to justify the one-man war which reached its awful conclusion on 22 July”:
The international human rights activists came to demonstrate that Israel’s control of the borders is a tool of oppressing Palestinians under the false mantle of security, and the Israelis obligingly proved their point by pressuring airlines to refuse boarding and detaining the ones who managed to arrive:
“The two main demands of the liberals and leftists are specific guidelines for how members of the assembly are chosen and a requirement that everything must be approved by a 75Â percent majority rather than more than 50Â percent”:
- Egypt’s Top General Calls for Constitution Before Shift to Civilian Rule (Washington Post with Foreign Policy)
Islamic law allows those who engage in pre-marital sex to redeem their honor by marriage, but abuse of this provision to pressure the victims of rape into marriage to the rapist is a scandal with devastating consequences. Will Morocco’s king and Islamist government take action to end this perversion of the law?
- New Arab Order: In Morocco, Uproar over Marriage Law Tests Islamist Government (Washington Post with Foreign Policy)
“The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) this month imposed new measures to curb demand for the dollar after a spike at its daily auctions as local traders bought greenbacks to sell them on to Iran and Syria”:
“How do you get a group described by the US government as a cult and an officially designated foreign terrorist organisation to be viewed by many congressmen and parliamentarians as champions of human rights and secular democracy”
“It smelled … like a setup. ‘I had a feeling that I had just played out a part in some Hollywood movie where I had just been introduced to the leader of a ‘terrorist’ sleeper cell,’ Akili wrote” of tactics that Muslim and civil rights activists have called “entrapment”;
- Documents Provide Rare Insight into FBI’s Terrorism Stings (Washington Post)
“A Khartoum information ministry official told the BBC the move was linked to South Sudan’s seizure last week of the Heglig oil field. The South had accused Sudan of launching attacks on its territory from the frontier oil field”:
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