August 5, 2022 It is unsettling to see a democratic government like the United States beating its chest over the high-tech murder of a retired jihadist, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The 71-year-old al-Zawahiri succeeded the assassinated Osama bin Laden as chief of the anti-US underground group, al-Qaeda. The mild-mannered, Egyptian had […]
(Originally published in the L.A. Times on June 27, 2006) Intensifying combat and mounting casualties in Afghanistan are growing evidence that what was a sporadic, low-intensity conflict is fast turning into a national uprising against foreign occupation. After the US invasion in 2001, Taliban’s leaders ordered their outgunned fighters to […]
September 27, 2021 Afghanistan’s US-run government was the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium, morphine, and the end-product, heroin. As it did after first seizing power in the mid-1990’s, Taliban, the Islamic anti-drug and anti-communist movement, is shutting down the Afghan drug trade. Billions worth of heroin, opium and […]
