No-fault assurance Last February, responding to charges that U.S. raids had targeted Afghan civilians among the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers was “unwilling to say” that the military had “misidentified” targets. Instead he said, “I don’t think it was any sense on our part that we’ve done something wrong.” (AP 2.6.02) […]
Behind the northern front On the day of the vernal equinox, the Kurdish New Year, Kurds were up in arms, fearing invasion by Turkish troops. They blamed the United States. KurdishMedia.com charged, “It is thus evident that America and Britain have betrayed the Kurds again. Turkish objective is very clear–genocide of the Kurdish people. Just […]
Kurdish Life past Carleton S. Coon By far the largest area of high-valley and mountaintop pastoralism in the Middle East is that of the Zagros chain in Iran, Turkey and Iraq, and especially in Iran. Four different groups of hardy mountaineers are concerned: the Kurds, the Lurs, the Bakhtiari, and the Qashqai. Like the Berbers, […]
Planting the gardens of Babylon “We are absolutely not a puppet … the reality is that government makes the decisions, and we stand or fall by them.” Barham Salih, Guardian 8.25.04 Salih said this two months after the U.S. “handover” of sovereignty to a U.S.-installed interim Iraqi government. He knows better. As does Independent correspondent […]