Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

A round-up of news stories that readers may have missed today...

As I wrote earlier this year, a great deal of the problems facing the Arab world as it stumbles towards democracy stem from a conservative culture that is inhibiting female participation in society. Some very illuminative data on this issue is provided by Sara Hamdan in today's International Herald

Pakistan is a foreign policy conundrum for the West. While Pakistan has publicly been an ‘ally' to the West in fighting al-Qaeda and supporting the war in Afghanistan, privately its intelligence agencies work with the Taliban and support terrorist organisations. In addition, Pakistan's nuclear

The Obama Administration has released explosive details of how Iran has become a safe haven for al-Qaeda. It comes as the Administration is reportedly interested in refocusing world attention on, in the words of US Treasury Department's Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David

What do Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Egypt have in common? In the past week, all four countries have been abuzz with conspiratorial news stories suggesting that Israel has been maliciously meddling in their internal affairs.

Three bombs rocked crowded districts of Mumbai during rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people and injuring at least 141 people in the biggest attack on India since the November 2008 terrorist attacks also in Mumbai which were perpetrated by the militant Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taibe.

Relations between the USA and Pakistan have been cool for some time, especially when it was revealed that the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden had been hiding for at least five years in Abbottabad - a town at the centre of Pakistan's military infrastructure. This revelation prompted a new round of a

Just a few days after US President Barack Obama controversially announced a major withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban have struck the Intercontinental Hotel in the heart of Kabul.The ABC has reported that at least 6 gunmen and one suicide bomber attacked the hotel and hol

Just a few hours after President Obama's recent speech on Afghanistan, there was a wide array of responses, positing a number of theories as to the ramifications of the new US policy. In general, the focus was on Obama's decision to end the troop surge that he implemented only 18 months ago. Michae

As reported recently on this site, US President Barack Obama has just given a landmark speech on the US policy in Afghanistan, including a timetable for the withdrawal of combat troops. The President gave a brief history of the war, concentrating primarily on his December 2009 "troop surge" dec

After much speculation that the US was gearing-up to pull out of Afghanistan, President Barack Obama has just given an address confirming that the US combat mission in Afghanistan will end by 2014, with the withdrawal beginning this year. He explained that 33,000 troops will be withdrawn by next yea

The death of Osama bin Laden will raise the inevitable question: What are we still doing in Afghanistan? The answer, of course, is that the mission in Afghanistan is about something bigger and more ambitious than eliminating al-Qaeda's leaders - most of whom, in any event, are probably living in Pak

There is so much material being published on the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on Sunday by US forces that this Update will not attempt to duplicate the widely reported news. Instead, it will focus on pieces providing an unusual perspective or analysing some under-reported elements and impl

One of the most pervasive myths about the Middle East is "linkage", the belief that the Arab-Israel conflict is the key to solving all other Middle Eastern problems, from the Iranian nuclear program, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to international terrorism, ethnic strife...

Much is being written about the exposure of 92,000 documents related to the Afghanistan conflict, released by the dissident activist organisation Wikileaks. This Update looks at the details and implications of these released documents.

In the wake of the failed May 1 Times Square bombing in New York and the subsequent arrest of Faisal Shahzad as the alleged bomber, much is being written about the lessons of the attempted attack, especially after the US government blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the attack, and an alleged collabor

The capture of the Taliban's second in command in Karachi in early February has been treated in the media as a major US coup and a watershed event in US-Pakistani cooperation in the war against the Taliban. It is, regrettably, nothing of the kind.

We begin today's Update with some analysis of US President Barack Obama's announcement he will send an extra 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The decision comes after the US commander in Afghanistan, and architect of the successful surge in Iraq, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, called for 40,000 more tro

When General Stanley McChrystal was selected on May 11 of this year as the American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, it was by no means certain which approach he would employ. His background is almost entirely in counterterrorism.

I picked an interesting moment to visit Pakistan: four terrorist attacks in less than a week. The first was at the World Food Program office in the capital: five killed. The second was in the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar: more than 50 killed.