New York- I’m pleased to share that my fieldwork in Iraq from the war against IS circa 2016-17 is cited in a new book called Death, Dominance, and State-Building by MIT professor Roger D. Petersen published this month by Oxford…
Al-Khobar- I’ve written this essay about my recent journey to Iraq which was a very personal milestone as it marked twenty years since I first visited the country. This was perhaps my twelfth visit to Iraq over the span of…
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…
New York- I had a couple of long term projects published at the end of this past week. The first was an examination of the little known history conjoining Mali in West Africa with North Korea in Northeast Asia over at…
New York- In the wake of the French military intervention in Mali late last week, I felt like it was time for TWD to kick into high gear. On Monday, I appeared on BBC Arabic’s News Hour programme from the beeb’s…
New York- I have an article out this week in Asia Times Online based on my very different experiences in Syria from 2002-2012. Throughout the decade after 9/11, Syria–though absolutely central to the history and culture of the Arab realm–was viewed as…
New York-One of the myriad topics was what constitutes or defines intervention in Syria. A high-ranking NATO official explained to me at 2 2012 security conference that the Alliance was emphatically not going to get involved militarily in Syria even…
New York-Going through a storage locker the other day, I dug up a lot of stuff from my personal archives in the early post-9/11 period. I collected lots of odds and ends back then thinking they’d be of historical import…
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…
New York- I first embarked on a trip to Syria in the summer of 2002. I had been in touch with the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP-a.k.a. the Barzani family) in D.C. about entering Iraqi Kurdistan clandestinely from…
Ain al-Baida- Made an incredibly arduous trek into Syria’s war-torn Idlib Governorate yesterday. Working on my first article on the hardscrabble conditions of the Free Syrian Army. I was missing driving in the relative comfort of a late model Toyota…
Antakya- I have an article out in today’s edition of Asia Times Online on my view from a rain soaked Hatay Province of events just over the border in a besieged Syria. It’s been raining here nonstop since my arrival,…
In celebration of “National Freelancers Day,” I present to thee an article that never saw the light of day or the Internet. New York- On the cold damp morning of November 17, hundreds of protestors marked the two-month anniversary of…
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…
Thira- Sitting here in the very tranquil village of Karterados on the island of Thira in the Santorini archipelago is an uneasy contrast the strikes and protests rocking mainland Greece. The country is on the verge of bankruptcy which is…
Paris & Athens- Firstly I want to thank Jean-Luc Marret and the staff of his Fondation de la Recherche Stratégique for hosting me and allowing me to speak at their global terrorsim conference yesterday. The title of my talk was…
Paris- I will be speaking at Maison de la Chimie tomorrow for the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique’s conference entitled “Dix ans après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001: bilan et perspectives de la lutte contre le terrorisme.” I will…
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,…
New York- In advance of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I scanned a number of never before seen images that I shot on that ashen evening a decade ago. I knew this day would eventually come but it is all…
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…
Barcelona- TWD made onto CNN.com today after new developments in Tripoli stoked even more interest in the now solidifying concept of a post-Qaddafi Libya. In other news, TWD made it onto wikipedia.org in entries for Jalal al-Digheily who had a…
Barcelona- I appeared on CNN today discussing some of my observations about my recent trip to Jebel Nafusa. Produced by Tim Lister in Atlanta. (CNN) — Six months and more than 17,000 air sorties after it began, NATO’s Operation Unified…
Djerba- I have a photo essay in today’s edition of Asia Times Online on my week spent covering the war in western Libya, arguably the least covered of Libya’s three primary fronts. I was a fascinating time spent amongst a…
Nalut- Spent a very quiet day working in the rebel media center after a long day yesterday. Nalut is a hot, dusty, empty town but in some odd way I feel rather comfortable here. My Amazigh (Berber) hosts are incredibly…
Barcelona- I’ve got a new feature length piece in this week’s edition of Terrorism Monitor on this vague, ill formed concept of reconciliation with the Quetta shura Omar-led Taliban and what it could mean for the future of inter-ethnic and…
New York- I have the feature piece in today’s edition of Asia Times Online about China’s most visible entry into the African sphere so far–the construction of the new African Union by Beijing–at no up front cost to the Africans.…
Washington D.C.- For anyone in the DC area tomorrow, I will be presenting “The Mitsubishi War” about my recent Libya sojourn at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at 11am near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 17th Street.
Addis Ababa- I’ve got a new article out on ATol today about political and sectarian repression in little Bahrain. Going to try and do a major road trip here to look into a Horn of Africa trans-border story and I…
Addis Ababa- Finally made it down to sub-Saharan Africa after a completely sketchy 24 hour excursion to Bahrain to get a first-hand glimpse into the repression there-story forthcoming. The internet connectivity situation here in Addis does not seem so great…