IC Publications | The Middle East

Hunting Bin Laden

Time may be running out for the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, as the Americans step up their decade-long manhunt with killer drones and big bucks. The death of Hakimullah Mahsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, fatally wounded by a Hellfire missile fired from a US drone in the badlands of South Waziristan in northwest Pakistan on 14 January, must have shaken Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted fugitive. More...

Turkey’s Middle Eastern pendulum

It was the alliance that dare not speak its name. Despite historical antagonisms, popular sentiments and public protestations, predominantly Muslim Turkey and predominantly Jewish Israel spent much of the 1990s as the closest of friends. There were joint military exercises, trade in weapons, and joint pressure against neighbours perceived to be hostile. Nowadays though, things are different, as scarcely a week goes by without an exchange of diplomatic fire between the two countries. More...

Can Operation Moshtarak deliver?

Previously criticised for obediently following George Bush, now the British are leading the strategy of fighting terror in Afghanistan and Yemen. As British-led NATO and newly trained Afghan forces prepared to launch Operation Moshtarak (Together), one of the largest counter-insurgency offensives in the eight-year-long war, the British death toll in the country was on a par with that of the 1982 Falkland war, but with little chance of any victory parades for returning heroes on the streets of the UK anytime soon. More...

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