Since shortly before the inception of the Turkish Republic, in 1923, a journalist has been murdered on average every 1.5 years in Turkey, columnist Oktay Eksi recently lamented in the Hurriyet newspaper. In the last 15 years alone, according to a recent report of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, “18 Turkish journalists have been killed for their work, making it the deadliest country in the world for journalists.” Like a blow from an axe, the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink two weeks ago has cut yet another deep gash into Turkey’s already embattled democratization and intellectual freedom. [...]
A fierce ideological battle that appears to favor a radical Islamic constituency may hold the key to the future of a little-known but restive region in south Russia. The religious topography of the North Caucasus can no longer be reduced to a simple theological contest between Sufi traditionalists and Islamists. Increasingly, ideological schisms are emerging within the Islamist constituency itself, which Moscow rather ambiguously labels the “Wahhabi” community. The infighting revolves around differences in thinking between moderate reformers and radicals, a rivalry that, while long-prevalent in nearby Chechnya, has now become especially apparent in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, another patch [...]
Lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands have emerged as a flash point between officials on both sides over who is responsible for bringing order to a known Taliban safe haven in the face of a gathering insurgency. The blame game ignores the reality that the “Pashtun belt” at ground level belongs to neither country, with a history of rejecting would-be occupiers. The same rugged tribal areas that Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaida operatives retreated to following the U.S.-led 2001 invasion to topple the Taliban have become a rear base for Taliban militants launching cross-border attacks against NATO-led security forces in Afghanistan [...]
