The Iraqi government has informed the US embassy today that it will decline to renew Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in the nation. This will require the security contractors, still being used by the State Department, to leave the nation once the joint US-Iraq committee finishes drawing up its formal guidelines for contractors.
According to Iraqi [...]
ts been nearly three months now since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered a congratulatory letter to then-President-elect Barack Obama. The move was seen as one of the most significant overtures toward better relations between the two countries in years, though hope for a change was somewhat silenced by Obama publicly lashing out at the Iranian [...]
The Israeli military attacked what it described as a “weapons manufacturing facility” in Rafah today, and continued to strike tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, in what it said was retaliation for an apparent Qassam launch by militants in the Gaza Strip.
The Qassam launch was likewise claimed to be in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Hamas [...]
In a significant effort to repair the strained relationship between them and the United States, the Russian government has announced that it will abandon its threatened deployment of Iskander missiles to the exclave of Kaliningrad.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called on President Obama to “co-operate constructively” in international affairs, saying his government was opposed to [...]
The German magazine Der Spiegel has obtained classified documents in which NATO top commander and US General John Craddock, a long time advocate of steering the international forces in Afghanistan toward fighting the drug export industry, issues a “guidance” advising NATO troops to use deadly force against those involved in the drug industry, even if [...]
The Pakistani military continued to shell the Swat Valley today, and reported that only seven militants were among the at least 18 people killed. 11 militants and an unknown number of civilians were also wounded the attacks.
The military has been escalating its attacks in the region in recent days, as the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) [...]
NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters today that the international forces were responsible for killing 97 Afghan civilians in 2008 based on what he referred to as their “new tracking system.”
The number is just the latest in an ongoing trend of dramatic underreporting of civilian killings by international forces during the war on terror, yet [...]
The French Foreign Ministry summoned Israeli ambassador Daniel Shek today over an incident in which a convoy of French diplomats, including the nation’s consul general were blocked from crossing the Gaza border for over six hours and shot at by Israeli troops.
The foreign ministry said of the meeting that “it was clearly stated that we [...]
US drones loomed large in the skies over North Waziristan today, flying over villages and sewing panic in a region which has seen scores of residents killed in attacks by those drones over the past few months. On Friday similar drones killed 22 people, including several children.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the Senate today [...]
“If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money, to be honest.”
While speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared Afghanistan “our greatest military challenge right now,” [...]
