The New Yorker

War and Politics

Over the summer, the Afghan Taliban's military committee distributed "A Book of Rules," in Pashto, to its fighters. The book's eleven chapters seem to draw from the population-centric principles of F.M. 3-24, the U.S. Army's much publicized counter-insurgency field manual, released in 2006. Henceforth, the Taliban guide declares, suicide bombers must take "the utmost steps . . . to avoid civilian human loss." Commanders should generally insure the "safety and security of the civilian's life and property." Also, lest

Steve Coll | The New Yorker | October 19, 2009

AfPak | The New Yorker

According to a just completed study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became president. During his first nine and a half months in office, he has authorized as many CIA aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office. The study's authors, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, report that the Obama administration has sanctioned at least forty-one CIA missile strikes in Pakistan since taking office -- a

Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedemann | October 18, 2009

The States We're In | New Yorker

Besides the capitalists of the Bay Area Council, the center-left New America Foundation loves it. So does the left-left Courage Campaign, ... and more »
August 16, 2009

The Instigator

Steve Barr stood in the breezeway at Alain Leroy Locke High School, at the edge of the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, on a February morning. He's more than six feet tall, with white-gray hair that's perpetually unkempt, and the bulk of an ex-jock. Beside him was Ramon Cortines--neat, in a trim suit--the Los Angeles Unified School District's new superintendent. Cortines had to be thinking about last May, when, as a senior deputy superintendent, he had visited under very different… more

Douglas McGray | The New Yorker | May 10, 2009

No Nukes

Steve Coll | The New Yorker | April 20, 2009

Syria Calling| New Yorker

Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who served on Israeli peace delegations in 1995 and 2001 and also as an adviser to Prime Minister Barak, said that Netanyahu “may have huge coalition problems, not least within his own Likud ...
Daniel Levy | March 29, 2009

The Back Channel

Two years ago, Pervez Musharraf, who was then Pakistan’s President and Army chief, summoned his most senior generals and two Foreign Ministry officials to a series of meetings at his military office in Rawalpindi. There, they reviewed the progress of a secret, sensitive negotiation with India, known to its participants as “the back channel.” For several years, special envoys from Pakistan and India had been holding talks in hotel rooms in Bangkok, Dubai, and London. Musharraf and Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, had encouraged the negotiators to seek what

Steve Coll | The New Yorker | March 2, 2009