Word: talibans
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...just for show. After all, Iran isn't the most frightening nuclear challenge we're facing. That would be the next country over, Pakistan. In the latest National Interest, Bruce Riedel - who led the Obama Administration's Afghanistan and Pakistan policy review - suggests that a coup led by Islamist, Taliban-sympathetic elements of the Pakistani army remains a real possibility. Pakistan has at least 60 nuclear weapons. The chance that al-Qaeda sympathizers might gain access to those weapons is the real issue in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the moment, it is far more important than anything happening in Iran...
...there is more to the allure of Sufism than its saints and sheiks. In 2001, one of the first things to happen after the Taliban was chased out of Kabul was that the doors of the Afghan capital's Bollywood cinemas were flung open to the public. The language of cosmic love that animates Bollywood music and enchants millions of Muslims around the world, even if sung and acted out by non-Muslims, is a direct legacy of centuries of Sufi devotional poetry. At Sufism's core, suggests Oxford University's Devji, is an embrace of the world. "It allows...
...really bend terrorist swords into plowshares? The question is most urgent in South Asia, home to more than a third of the world's Muslims and the cradle of Sufi Islam. Shrines of Sufi saints are ubiquitous in India and Pakistan and still attract thousands of devotees. Yet the Taliban in Pakistan have set about destroying such sites, which are anathema to their literalist interpretation of the Koran. "Despite our ancient religious tradition," says Ayeda Naqvi, a writer and Sufi scholar from Lahore, "we are being bullied and intimidated by a new form of religion that is barely one generation...
...Grim Statistics Seven U.S. troops were killed in three separate attacks across Afghanistan on July 6, making it the deadliest day for American forces there in nearly a year. The casualties came as more than 4,000 Marines launched an offensive to drive insurgents from southern Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold. The tactic is the latest effort to shift U.S. military might from Iraq--where American soldiers withdrew from urban areas on June 30--to the nation now considered the key front in the war on terrorism...
...pictures of the battle against the Taliban...