This Blog is intended for use by students in the Islamic Middle East course at Northfield Mount Hermon School and guest students and teachers from other participating schools.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has met with Libya’s ruler Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. She is the first U.S. Secretary of state to visit Libya since 1953.
Story at BBC
See also: Helene Cooper, “Isolation Over, Libyan Leader Meets With Rice,” New York Times, Sept. 6, 2008
More on Libya
Three experts writing an Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times offer a plan for us to get out of Iraq.
See: John Nagl, Colin Kahl, Shawn Brimley, “How To Exit Iraq,” New York Times, Sept. 5, 2008
In the Sunday, August 24, 2008 issue of the New York Times Book Review Michael Goldfarb reviews a new book by Quil Lawrence on the Kurds: Invisible Nation: How the Kurds’ Quest for Statehood is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East (Walker and Company). The U.S. may become much less friendly to Iraq’s Kurds than [...]
There are fears in the United States of a new cold war with Russia in which the latter may try to disrupt American interests in the Middle East among other areas.
Go to story at the New York Times
Link to ResetDOC.org
The New York Times, in its lead editorial today, comments on the seriously deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
Go to editorial
In a review that captures well the current conflicts, political patterns, moods, and failures throughout much of the Middle East, Raymond Bonner looks at a new book by esteemed Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid.
Raymond Bonner, “War in Progress,” New York Times Book Review, August 10, 2008
The book: Ahmed Rashid. Descent Into Chaos: The United States and [...]
Rival interests in the Middle East have discovered fresh will and energy to talk about their problems with one another. Michael Slackman (”Talks Signal Mideast Shift,” New York Times, July 18, 2008, A1) writes that the new mood is forcing the United States, its European allies, and Israel to reassess their policies especially their reluctance to deal with their [...]
In an about-face, President Bush recently agreed in principle to search for a timetable (he called it “a general time horizon”) for pulling American troops out of Iraq.
See: Steven Lee Myers, “Bush, In a Shift, Accepts Concept of Iraq Timeline,” New York Times, July 19, 2008, A1
Israeli historian Benny Morris in an Op-Ed piece in the July 18, 2008 New York Times predicts that Israel will launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months. He wrote: “Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and [...]
BBC Middle East