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A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned. The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, "Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.]," issued by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas, and obtained by FoxNews.com. The Afghans were attending the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The DLI program teaches...

Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran - if one can still call it a republic - is at a crossroads. What has been manifesting itself on Iran's streets since the disputed presidential elections is not only the electorate's collective feeling of injustice and rage, but also the religious-political elite's underlying divide over the future of the velayat-e faqih and its entire political system. When Mohammad Khatami was president of Iran from 1997 to 2005, reformist hermeneutics largely centered on the notion of justice - a fundamental tenet of Shia jurisprudence - civil society and human rights.During his tenure,...

KABUL: In an attack claimed by the Taliban, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed Afghanistan's most high-profile female police officer on Sunday as she prepared to leave for work in the southern city of Kandahar. The police in the city said she died instantly from gunshot wounds to her head. Her 18-year-old son, driving her car, was seriously wounded and taken to the hospital. The police officer, Malalai Kakar, who was in her mid-forties with six children, was an iconic figure among women's groups in Afghanistan and abroad. Often profiled in the Afghan and foreign news media, she...

Kabeer wala (AsiaNews) – His name is Altaf Husain and he is an 80-year-old man. He was arrested by police in Kabeer wala for desecrating the Qur‘an, a crime which is punishable with life in prison according to the Pakistan Criminal Code. The elderly man belongs to the Ahmadiyya, a Muslim religious movement condemned as heretical in 1974. With perhaps as many as 3 million followers, especially in Punjab, the Ahmadi community has suffered from harassment and persecution. According to police, a student saw Altaf Husain rip pages out of a Qur‘an last Monday and throw them on the ground....

Pakistan clerics persecute 'non Muslims' By Isambard Wilkinson in Rabwah  Last Updated: 11:22am GMT 25/12/2007     Hardline clerics are using Pakistan's blasphemy laws to persecute members of a small Islamic splinter group they say are not proper Muslims.   Hardline clerics protest against the Pakistan government The two million-strong Ahmadiyya community, based in Rabwah in the Punjab, risks charges of "impersonating Muslims" under the country's controversial religious laws.Shameen Ahmad Khalid, a community leader, said: "We have people serving long jail sentences for blasphemy or for 'posing as Muslims'."The laws mandate three years' imprisonment for Ahmadis who dare to call...

Taliban fighters in a pocket of Kandahar province in Afghanistan "paid a very heavy price" for going on the offensive against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, and the NATO response, called Operation Medusa, resulted in a Taliban retreat, General James Jones, commander of European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO, said during a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday. The arrival of 6,000 NATO troops in Kandahar was "a culture shock to the region," and the Taliban "decided to make a test case of this region," Jones said. While NATO forces were surprised by the level of violence, "what...

Tehran, 16 Nov. (AKI) - The sole defendant in the trial for the death of Canadian photo-reporter, Zahra Kazemi in Tehran in July 2003, has been acquitted by an appeals court. The court has absolved Reza Ahmadi, "because the inquiries carried out to date on other accused have not been satisfactory, it is not possible to condemn one of the co-defendants". Kazemi, 54, a Canadian of Iranian origin, was arrested in June 2003 after taking photos of demonstrations outside a Tehran prison. She died in a Tehran hospital on 10 July 2003 after falling into a coma, having received...

The United States has granted a visa to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend U.N. meetings in New York but said Wednesday that it was still investigating whether he had a role in the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege in Tehran. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had issued a travel visa to Ahmadinejad on Tuesday in Bern, Switzerland, which would allow him to attend United Nations meetings with other world leaders next week. Switzerland has handled U.S. interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran in 1980, and the U.S. and Iran are at odds now...

Never underestimate a revolutionary regime. In particular, never underestimate the durability of the revolutionaries' fervour to fight for their cause. The French revolution began in 1789, but it was only after two decades of war that the fight was finally knocked out of the revolution's heirs, and repeatedly - in 1830, 1848 and 1870 - they threatened to make a comeback. The Russian revolution began in 1917, but the Soviet Union posed a mortal threat until the mid-1980s. As for the Chinese revolution of 1949, it was only last month that the regime in Beijing was threatening to go nuclear...

Al Muhajiroun (Khavarej) is referred to a clandestine group of four who cooperated to assassinate four leaders at promptly the same time: Imam Ali who was a religious leader (the fourth Suni's Khalif and the first Shiite's Imam), Moavieh who was the leader of the land, Amro Aas who was a canning politician and a senior advisor to Moavieh, and - Of the four only one, namely Ibn Moljam, successfully carried out his assassination by wounding Imam Ali with a poisonous sword, during the Imam's pray. Imam Ali died of his wound on the third night, the 21st, of Ramadan....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday for the first time accepted that Iran can develop civilian nuclear programs, backing an EU proposal that would allow Tehran to pursue atomic power in exchange for giving up fuel work. In a compromise that completed a gradual shift in U.S. policy, Washington acquiesced because it believes the EU offer has enough safeguards to prevent Iran diverting its civilian work into making nuclear bombs. "We support the (Europeans') effort and the proposal they have put forward to find a diplomatic solution to this problem and to seek an end to Iran's nuclear...

TEHRAN, July 22 (MNA) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is due to visit Tehran and take part in President-Elect Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s inauguration ceremony, the FARS News Agency reported on Friday. Chavez, who visited Iran three times during President Khatami’s tenure, will travel to Tehran on 30 July, for the fourth time. The presence of Chavez in Tehran can strengthen friendly ties between Iran and Venezuela, which have developed closer relations over the past several years. Ahmadinejad will be sworn as Iran’s next president on August 4.

At Friday prayers this week, Hashemi Rafsanjani appeared for the first time since his defeat and announced: "we have serious problems and we're faced with serious danger." His statement came amid the excited speculation about the part Ahmadinejad played in the U.S. hostage taking, and the hoopla surrounding Iran's head of parliament's first visit to Belgium and a cancelled reception. It seems Scott Ritter was right when he said recently: "The war against the Islamic Republic has begun." Western Media Against Iran In the nine days since the annoucement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the sixth president of the Islamic Republic,...

I hesitate to weigh in on this subject with so many interesting and insightful contributions already posted. However, since I've been doing a series of interviews, I have had to develop opinions on all aspects of the Iranian elections. Since everyone else is doing it, here are my own questions, comments and evolving views. Ahmadinejad seems to have been the beneficiary of a populist revolt (in addition to a little polling station assistance from his friends in the Revolutionary Guards and Basij). A friend of mine compares this to the election of Communist mayors in Italy during the Cold War...

Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah hailed the shock landslide victory in Iran's rigged presidential election of hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad, saying it was a slap in the face for the United States. "The Iranian people has one again shown that it possesses an extraordinary vitality in the face of challenges and that it is determined to impose its choice in the presidential election and in the affairs of state," Hezbollah's terrorist master, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said. "The big success of the election was the size of the turnout, which shows the Iranian people's independence of mind and its determination to confront...

Iran-Israel ties coming? Nameth Ahmadi, advisor to Iranian presidential candidate Ali Ahbar Rafsanjani, says his candidate could move to renew ties with Israel By Orli Azoulai, Yedioth Ahronoth 6/19/05 TEHRAN – Could Iran be on the road to reestablishing ties with Israel? According to at least one Iranian law professor, the answer is yes. Prof. Nameth Ahmadi is a professor of law at the University of Tehran. He is also an advisor to the favorite to win Iran’s presidency, Ali Ahbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. While he is under no illusions about the conservatives' power in his country, he does not rule...