Posts tagged : "War on Terror"

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Iran sharply divided on recognizing the Taliban

Iran sharply divided on recognizing the Taliban

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the Taliban moves to establish its new Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, neighboring Iran is divided on whether to grant the Islamist regime its stamp of diplomatic approval. While Iranian authorities no doubt welcome America’s military departure from neighboring Afghanistan, Tehran and the Taliban have their own troubled and turbulent history – one that will be hard to bridge and sell to the Iranian public that the militant group has changed its stripes. Officially, Iran has lent its voice to wider international calls for the formation of an “inclusive” Afghan government representative of the nation’s diverse ethnic and cultural makeup to avoid future conflicts. The Taliban’s announced...

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Iran-Taliban whitewash the past to restore relations

Iran-Taliban whitewash the past to restore relations

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: On the surface, a crisis should be emerging on Iran’s eastern border as the Taliban seizes power and establishes a new Sunni-led Islamic emirate. Yet despite a history of hostility rooted in Sunni-Shiite antagonism, Tehran doesn’t appear troubled by the militant group’s return to power. Iran shares a rugged 921-kilometer border with Afghanistan, one that has seen dire spillover effects over the course of its long war. More than three million Afghan refugees and undocumented migrants now live in Iran, a point of tension over the years. But Iran is now seeking to turn a cross-border crisis into an opportunity as an incubator of post-war reconstruction, with multiple trade, security, energy and...

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Iran seeks upper hand in the new Afghanistan

Iran seeks upper hand in the new Afghanistan

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As US troops quickly withdraw after 20 years of war in Afghanistan, regional powers are moving to fill the emerging power vacuum in a country long bedeviled by lethal internal rivalries. Iran, the top trading partner of Afghanistan and an influential neighbor with high stakes in its stability, has engaged both the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents in recent months. This comes even though many Iranians have decried their government’s overtures to the Taliban as treacherous considering the group’s track record of sponsoring violence and terrorism including in Iran. The US troop withdrawal has already created massive reverberations across Afghanistan. The Taliban have recently claimed to...

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Two decades after 9/11, Iranians still ask ‘what if’

Two decades after 9/11, Iranians still ask ‘what if’

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: September 11, 2001, was one of the darkest days in US history and a watershed moment in the global consciousness around the West’s relations with the Muslim world. The terror attack on that day, which The New York Times once called “one of the most audacious attacks ever against the United States,” sabotaged the notion of the impregnability of America and violated the honor of a nation envied by friends and foes for its economic strength, political stability, military might and technological supremacy. The images of the 9/11 attacks, seared into the national collective memory of Americans, immortalized by detailed chronicles of investigative journalists and documentary photographers, might...

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Key Reasons for the Unchecked Growth of Terrorism in the Middle East: Interview with Prof. Jeffrey Haynes

Key Reasons for the Unchecked Growth of Terrorism in the Middle East: Interview with Prof. Jeffrey Haynes

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: It’s said that ISIS has recently conceded significant parts of the territories it used to dominate since 2014. Rebels and Daesh militants have been driven out of the northern parts of Syria through the combined effect of separate operations by pro-government forces and the U.S. and Russian airstrikes. Foreign Policy reports that at the end of 2014, ISIS ruled over around one-third of Iraq and one-third of Syria, but now, according to IHS Jane’s 360, they’ve lost 22% of that territory. With the major losses in territory it has suffered and the diminution of its fighters, ISIS still poses a valid threat to peace and security not only in the Middle East but across the world, and it’s imperative to...

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The Tribulations of Being a Muslim While ISIS Is There

The Tribulations of Being a Muslim While ISIS Is There

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: When the reports of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris began to break out in the evening of November 13, a mixed feeling of fright and misery immediately inundated me. I was frightened at the depth of cruelty that had transpired and affected the French people once again. I felt sympathy with the people of France who were undeservedly victimized and terrorized. And at the same time, I felt miserable. As a Muslim, it was my initial impression that the terrorist attacks in Paris would be eventually blamed on Muslims, and it didn't take so long before the media held "Islamic terrorists" accountable for the cataclysm of that horrific night, so my expectation had been realized. I didn't make such a...

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Interview with Deutsche Welle’s Pashtu/Dari Journalist Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi

Interview with Deutsche Welle’s Pashtu/Dari Journalist Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The largest media gathering in Europe wrapped up in the German city of Bonn on June 24. The Global Media Forum 2015, organized by the Deutsche Welle and sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office, hosted around 2,000 politicians, media professionals, journalists, academicians and activists from across the world and provided the attendees with an opportunity to get familiar with the latest trends in online, print and multimedia journalism and explore the theme of foreign policy in the age of digital media. On the sidelines of the “Social media vs. digital jihad” workshop, which the Digital Mass Atrocity Prevention Lab had arranged, Iran Review interviewed the moderator Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi....

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Bush Administration Responsible for Islamophobic Trends Becoming Acceptable

Bush Administration Responsible for Islamophobic Trends Becoming Acceptable

Kourosh Ziabari: Islamophobia is on the rise in the West, and certain governments have built their foreign policy towards the Islamic nations upon propagating an imaginary fear of Muslims as the perceived culprits behind several problems our world is facing today. A prominent US-based scholar who has investigated and studied Islamophobia in an extensive book believes that it’s the racist nature of the American society that permits Islamophobia to grow and turn into a point of confrontation between the Muslim community and the government. “Islamophobia in the US is very different from Islamophobia in Europe, for example. This is because the United States is built on a racial and class hierarchy. It is fundamentally a racist country...

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Bill Ayers, a thinker who considers the United States a threat to world peace

Bill Ayers, a thinker who considers the United States a threat to world peace

Kourosh Ziabari: A leading American intellectual an anti-war activist believes that the United States is the most serious threat to the world peace and that the US government is a major terrorist entity. Bill Ayers says, according to the most standard and reliable definitions of terrorism, "US is indeed a terrorist nation." He adds, "It’s also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and the foremost threat to world peace today." Bill Ayers, a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, believes that despite its destructive and dreadful impacts on the livings of American people and other nations across the world, the US imperialism is "in a decisive...

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My interview with Najibullah Lafraie, the former Afghan Foreign Minister

My interview with Najibullah Lafraie, the former Afghan Foreign Minister

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Afghanistan has not been a safe and stable country for several decades, and its security conditions have deteriorated gravely after the first American and NATO troops set foot into its cities. The U.S. war on Afghanistan, which was launched by former President George W. Bush with the purported aim of eradicating terrorism from the country, has so far failed to realize the dream of ultimately defeating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents. Despite all the failures and setbacks that Afghanistan has experienced over the recent years, especially following the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country, and notwithstanding the widespread economic insufficiency and corruption that have taken over Afghanistan, it can...

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It Is not Anti-Semitic to Point Out that Israel Is an Apartheid State

It Is not Anti-Semitic to Point Out that Israel Is an Apartheid State

Kourosh Ziabari: An American singer and songwriter who has composed several songs in solidarity with the people of Palestine says that Israel is conducting a campaign of slow genocide in the Gaza Strip. David Rovics believes that the Israeli regime kills the Palestinian people with impunity and no country in the world dares to take military action to prevent it from carrying out its project of mass killing in the Occupied Territories. The Oregon-based singer, who has been called an anti-Semite by the Israeli-allied media in the United States for his outspoken criticism of Israel says the truth should be stated regarding the nature of this regime: "I have been branded as anti-Semitic for stating the obvious many times. But it is most...

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There’s Little Doubt That the US Was Involved in the 9/11 Attacks

There’s Little Doubt That the US Was Involved in the 9/11 Attacks

Kourosh Ziabari: Professor Diana Ralph, a retired Canadian university professor and prominent social worker says, there's little doubt that the United States was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Prof. Diana Ralph believes that the 9/11 attacks played into the hands of the US government and Israel to launch a long-awaited global war on the Middle East and Central Asia, dominate the regional countries' extensive energy resources and create a foothold for a permanent presence in the region. "The 9/11 pretext served the interests of all those who benefit from military sales and oppressing people. It effectively derailed the rising anti-globalization movement worldwide, including the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, by turning Western...

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