Paros- Sitting in here in a quiet village on a quiet island in the heart of the Cyclades, the drama seems to churn all around. The Dodecanese islands just off the coast of western Turkey and mainland Greece have been…
Category: Pakistan
A Home in Defence
New York- An image I shot back in 2008 in Karachi was employed to tell the tragic story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s disappearance and murder in the early days of the War on Terror. The programme, titled Witness: Remembering…
A Death in South Waziristan
New York- Upon reading the headlines today about the killing of Adnan el-Shukrijumah in South Waziristan, I thought I’d quickly post a short profile I wrote of him back in 2010. He was reportedly killed southwest of Wana in a joint raid…
Enter the Fabled City
New York- The other day I picked up The History of Armenia by Simon Payaslian somewhat at random off the bookshelf mainly to get some regional context for Georgian history during the Menshevik period and subsequent Bolshevik takeover shortly thereafter. Reading about Transcaucasia as a buffer…
Twenty Years of al-Salafiyya-al-Jihadiyya
New York- It’s been twenty long years since Eyad Ismail, Ramzi Yousef and co drove that Ford Econoline Ryder rental van through the Holland Tunnel from Jersey City and parked a massive urea urea nitrate bomb in the parking garage…
Beyond 2014: Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West and the Rest
New York- On February 5th, I participated in a Huffington Post Live discussion entitled “Engaging The Taliban” (featured below) after the trilateral meeting between David Cameron, Asif Ali Zardari, and Hamid Karzai at the British Prime Minister’s country residence outside…
Politics in Pakistan
New York- I saw on twitter that the former Amir (leader) of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, died in Islamabad today (technically tomorrow in Pakistan). I photographed him campaigning against the vote in the February 2008 parliamentary elections. Hussain was reciting his…
From the Highlands to the Islands-China’s Passport Roils Many of Its Neighbors
New York- I had a piece out in Friday’s edition of Asia Times Online about the massive diplomatic row belatedly caused the Chinese government’s new biometric passport. In one fell swoop, Beijing managed to ruffle feathers from the remotest corners…
An Historical Tour of Jihadi New York
New York- Yesterday for the 11th anniversary of 9/11 I decided to do something a bit off the beaten path. Though New York City was the site of the attacks, no other part of the ‘planes operation’ timeline is known…
A Decade of War and Peace
Barcelona- Partly out of boredom and partly out of the itch to simply create something new out of old, I threw together this photo montage over the weekend. In this era of digital photography where one shoots thousands of frames…
The Fabled City
New York- In sorting through some old belongings today I found a couple of now ancient-seeming portfolios which I went to a lot of trouble to make at the tail end of the portfolio era. In what turned out to…
Violence in Libya and Pakistan
Thira- I have no two new articles out today. I felt compelled to write something on the ignominious death of Qaddafi in Sirte yesterday. Funnily I was actually going to do a piece on the unrest here in Greece if…
My Ten Year Photography Retrospective of Ground Zero New York
New York- What began as one horrific day turned into a decade long quest. 9/11 did not change the course of my life, it merely accelerated it at hyper speed. In the weeks before the suicide attacks on New York,…
Said Bahaji Ten Years After 9/11
Barcelona- I have written an extensive profile of Said Bahaji, one of the last members of the Hamburg cell still on the run (the other being Zakariya Essabar) in the new issue of Militant Leadership Monitor. Bahaji was a core…
Syed Saleem Shahzad’s Last Interview
New York- The brief spotlight that the assassination of Asia Times Online’s Saleem Shahzad brought to the danger journalists face on a daily basis has faded here in the United States for now until the next tragedy. Here in New…
“The Ink of the Scholar Is More Sacred Than the Blood of the Martyr”
New York- Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times Online’s flagship journalist, was brutalized and murdered. Though it may be some time until the details seep up from the seamy underworld that did him in, many both inside and outside Pakistan are…
From #2 to #1: Ayman al-Zawahiri and the question of al-Qaeda’s Leadership Succession
New York- So bin Laden is dead, sunk to the bottom of the Arabian Sea in a weighted body bag. What comes next for al-Qaeda? A lot of assumptions come into play, the foremost of which is that the angry…
Pakistani TV Coverage of Abbottabad
New York- There is some interesting coverage on a few of the global Pakistani satellite channels (if you comprehend Urdu to a degree) of the Abbottabad raid. Highlights include what appears to be the tail of the downed Navy SEAL…
Buh Bye
New York- A-B-C-ya!
My Media Round Up This Week
New York- I had kind of a busy week with (background) appearances on PBS Frontline on Tuesday with Canadian journalist Martin Smith’s interview with Amrullah Saleh where they wove in shots from the fourth annual Jamestown terrorism conference at the…
The Truth Left Behind-The Debut of the Pearl Project
Washington D.C.- This morning the Pearl Project- an investigation into the murder of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago-debuts today and I’m proud to say it received top billing on today’s Washington Post homepage. I worked on…
No Dayton For AfPak
New York- With the death of Richard Holbrooke, will the idea of a Dayton-style negotiated settlement die with him? Last Wednesday when I arrived on the Acela in D.C. from New York I was talking with a colleague (the day…
“What Is The Plan B For Afghanistan?”
Washington D.C.- This past Thursday was our annual Jamestown Foundation terrorism conference at the National Press Club and amazingly it all worked out considering the incredible amount of logistics involved (wholly unbeknownst to our audience) of getting a wide range…
September issue of Militant Leadership Monitor
New York- The new issue of MLM is out on the Jamestown site for subscribers (and those wanting to join). I have an article about the civil war in Colombia and the death of Mono Jojoy and the search for…
Afghanistan Then and not Now…
Los Angeles- The AfPak Channel has an incredible photo essay that Messr. Mohammed Qayoumi, president of Cal State East Bay, gave them after he scanned a 1950’s era image book published by the Afghan Ministry of Planning in the now…
End of a Peshawari Mystery?
New York- In October of 2004, I received a strange call from an FBI agent at their Manhattan headquarters named Teresa Meehan. Agent Meehan has apparently been tailing me and clipped her business card to a piece of my mail…
New Issue of Militant Leadership Monitor
New York- The new issue of Militant Leadership Monitor is online. In this issue we have two pieces from two of Yemen’s three fronts. A profile of Adel al-Abbab of AQAP by Murad Batal al-Shishani and a bio of Abdulmalik…
New Report: Terrorism Trends in South and Southeast Asia
New York- I have a new report out with the Jamestown Foundation from our December 9th, 2009 conference. “While the Arab Middle East is political Islam’s ideological and historical core, South Asia and Southeast Asia, concentrated in the Indonesian archipelago,…
New Issue of Militant Leadership Monitor
New York- The new issue of Militant Leadership Monitor is online over at the Jamestown site. In our 2nd issue, I have another article on a recently killed Abu Sayyaf leader named Albader Parad who was recently taken down in…
From the Mountain Tops
New York- I attended an event at Asia Society in New York last Thursday called India and Pakistan: Back from the Brink? that dealt largely with the never ending fight over Kashmir. From India was C. Raja Mohan, author of…