The New Yorker

War and Politics

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:47:00 -0400

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

AfPak | The New Yorker

Erin Drankoski — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:52:00 -0400

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

Nuclear Politics | New Yorker

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:09:00 -0400

The States We're In | New Yorker

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:02:00 -0400

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 »

In Search of Success

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:56:00 -0400

The Instigator

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 10 May 2009 10:13:00 -0400

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 circumstances. That was when a tangle between two rival cliques near an outdoor vending machine turned into a fight that spread to every corner of the schoolyard. Police sent more than a dozen squad cars and surged across the campus in riot gear, as teachers grabbed kids on the margins and whisked them into locked classrooms.

Brain Gain

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:46:00 -0400

No Nukes

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:53:00 -0400

Syria Calling| New Yorker

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:59:00 -0400

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 ...

The Back Channel

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:23:00 -0500

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