Gary Gibbon
Brown fends off a sense of Afghan mission creep
Gary Gibbon blogs that in his Lord Mayor’s Banquet speech, Gordon Brown will argue that the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan is government by a plan.
Search results for ‘Al-Qaida’
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Gary Gibbon
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America's options in Afghanistan are shrinking
Channel 4 News reporter Lindsey Hilsum examines the shrinking number of options available to the US in Afghanistan.
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The difference between an FBI plot and a real threat
The case of Najibullah Zazi, who has appeared in a New York court to plead not guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, is unusual because it appears not to be an FBI plot containing no legitimate threat.
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Jon Snow
Pontignano conference: the final messages
This final session of the Pontignano conference is dominated by Obama: whether he will “make it”. Consensus is that on health care, on a domestic climate change bill, and even in terms of economic recovery, he will…eventually (though he’ll need two terms). How the participants here love Obama – he really does walk on water…
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Napolitano's fears over Somali and other terrorists
Perhaps the most interesting line in the US homeland security secretary’s interview with me this morning concerns her fears over Somali Americans carrying out terrorist attacks inside the United States. She concedes that a small number of Somalis have travelled from the US to Somalia to train in jihad. “Right now we are talking about people going…
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Guantanamo, terror and protecting the US homeland
Obama came to power promising to close Guantanamo Bay. In June 2009, Channel 4 News talked to his top security official about the threat of al-Qaida and the controversial detention camp.
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Changing faces of Pakistani group linked to Mumbai attacks
Pakistan is in the grip of a bloody, intense fight against the militants in its midst – those who have threatened its capital, its economy and its broad existence as a state – that has displaced millions. But in the coming weeks a trial in a high-security courtroom in Mumbai means that the world’s attention…
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Torture memos: questions for Donald Rumsfeld
WASHINGTON DC, USA – There are lots of questions that lots of people would like to ask former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But right now the only “known known” is that he is not answering any. Unlike his old mate, the former vice president Dick Cheney, who is far more visible and far more vocal…
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Jon Snow
Saudi Arabia: still funding the Taliban?
Yesterday in Downing Street I asked Gordon Brown whether Saudi Arabia is still funding the Taliban. I was attending a news conference he was hosting with Pakistan’s President Zardari. Mr Brown did not address my specific question. Sidestepping the Saudi aspect, he described the MI6 financial units that are now hard at work tracking Taliban…
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Obama avoids the 'g' word on his Turkey tour
Before Barack Obama swept into town, I spent an evening in an Istanbul hospital, visiting the bedside of an old friend. My friend is a true Levantine, perhaps one of the last; his forebears built railways for the Ottoman Sultans in the 19th Century, coming to what was then Constantinople from what was then the…
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Sudan: was al-Bashir indictment worth it?
Make preparations,” the second-in-command of al-Qaida said today, “for a long guerrilla war, because the modern-day Crusade has bared its fangs at you.” Ayman al-Zawahiri was addressing President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague three weeks ago. I interviewed the ICC’s chief…
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Holbrooke on Afghanistan and Pakistan
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – This week the Americans will announce their new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attending a conference organised by the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, I’ve had a sneak preview at a session where President Obama’s envoy, Richard Holbrooke, spoke. He was scathing about the last US administration, describing the decision to switch focus…
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Bin Laden urges Somalis to overthrow leader
We’ve now had not one but TWO audio messages from Osama Bin Laden in the past week, urging Somalis to rise up against their new president, Sheikh Sharif, and wage jihad. Even though the sheikh has been quoted as saying he wants to introduce sharia law, Osama is not a happy man. The latest…
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Meeting Viktor Bout, the 'Merchant of Death'
BANGKOK, THAILAND – For an opening gambit, it didn’t suggest things would go that well. Viktor Bout had, at court, told me several times that the western media were untrustworthy and broadly despicable. Here, as I approached the visitor’s window in the remand centre where he’s been languishing for a year, he was set apart…
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Viktor Bout: 'I never supplied arms'
A piece in The Observer about my prison interview with the man nicknamed the “merchant of death”: Viktor Bout, the Russian accused of being the world’s biggest arms dealer, has angrily denied allegations that he supplied weapons to the Taliban and al-Qaida in his first interview for six years with the western media. Bout is…
