Pakistani Religious Scholar Dies

Prominent Pakistani religious scholar Qazi Hussain Ahmed has died at the age of 74.

He was the chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's leading religious group, for 22 years before stepping down in 2009.

In November, Ahmed escaped unhurt from an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber detonated explosives near him.

He was a strong critic of the U.S.-NATO participation in the civil war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Ahmed died Sunday morning in Islamabad. He had suffered from heart disease for years.

Bin Laden Spent 30 Years Fighting, Then Hiding

Monday, 2 May 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that the world's most wanted terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden, has been killed. He was 54.

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, then-U.S. president George W. Bush vowed to capture bin Laden – the man the president believed was behind the attacks.

Bin Laden first publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks in a video released in October 2004. He eluded attempts to capture him, disappearing along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sparking perhaps the largest manhunt in history.

But bin Laden's image as the world's most-wanted terrorist stands in sharp contrast to his peaceful and comfortable upbringing.

He was one of more than 50 children of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate and was raised in the opulence of Saudi Arabia's upper-class.

Bin Laden went on to pursue an engineering degree and seemed prepared to work in the family business.

However, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden left home to join the fight against the Soviets.

He initially provided logistical support for new recruits to the Afghan mujahedin Islamic fighters – the same ones supported by the United States. But in the mid-1980s, bin Laden decided to use his share of his family's wealth to form his own militia force, which later became known as “al-Qaida” – Arabic for “The Base.”

In 1990, Saudi Arabia invited the U.S. to deploy troops within the country following Iraq's invasion of the oil-rich state of Kuwait. Bin Laden saw the arrival of non-Muslims on land considered holy in Islam as an affront to his religion. He protested strongly against the move, resulting in his expulsion from Saudi Arabia in 1991.

Bin Laden found refuge in Sudan, where he is said to have orchestrated attacks on the U.S. military in Somalia and Saudi Arabia. He returned to Afghanistan in 1996 after the Sudanese expelled him due to pressure from the U.S.

While there, he continued his campaign against the United States by allegedly masterminding the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. His popularity grew among disaffected Arabs and those unhappy with U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Stopping bin Laden became the top priority for the United States following the 2001 attacks, a goal that Mr. Obama says remained the top priority under his leadership.

The Taliban refused to surrender the al-Qaida leader to U.S. authorities, prompting the United States to go to war in Afghanistan. The U.S. ousted the Taliban in December 2001, and Osama bin Laden went into hiding.

In his years at large, bin Laden released a series of audiotapes condemning the United States.

Now, nine years, seven months and 20 days since the September 11 attacks, Mr. Obama says “justice has been done” after a U.S. strike team killed bin Laden in a firefight during a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.

World Leaders, Officials Honor Late US Diplomat Holbrooke

Richard C. Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (01/26/2009 - 12/13/2010). Photo: U.S. State Department.

World Leaders, Officials Honor Late US Diplomat Holbrooke
Kent Klein
White House
14 January 2011

President Barack Obama has eulogized U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke as a clear-eyed realist whose legacy of peace reaches around the world. World leaders and U.S. officials crowded the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Friday to pay tribute to the late ambassador.

President Obama says Richard Holbrooke was an extraordinary diplomat, who served his country until his final moments. "Speaking truth to power from the Mekong Delta to the Paris Peace Talks, paving the way to our normalization of relations with China, serving as ambassador in a newly-unified Germany, bringing peace to the Balkans, strengthening our relationship with the United Nations, and working to advance peace and progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.

Holbrooke collapsed while meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the State Department on December 11. He died two days later at the age of 69.

Holbrooke’s greatest success came in 1995, when he persuaded the two sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s bloody ethnic conflict to accept the terms of the Dayton Peace Accords.

At Friday’s memorial, Mr. Obama said Holbrooke’s hard-headed, clear-eyed realism about how the world works was a driving force behind the Bosnia accord. "And that coupling of realism and idealism, which has always represented what is best in American foreign policy, that was at the heart of his work in Bosnia, where he negotiated and cajoled and threatened, all at once, until peace was the only outcome possible," he said.

Richard Holbrooke began his career in the early 1960’s as a civilian representative for the Agency for International Development in South Vietnam.  He joined the State Department and worked for the U.S. ambassadors in Saigon.  And before the age of 30, Holbrooke was part of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Talks.

Holbrooke later led the Peace Corps in Morocco, advised presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in his 1976 campaign, and worked as an executive at a Wall Street investment firm.

He also served as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany and to the United Nations, and finally as President Obama’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The president said Friday Holbrooke created a lasting impact on American diplomacy and everyone affected by it. "His legacy is seen in the children of Bosnia who lived to raise families of their own, in a Europe that is peaceful and united and free.  And young boys and girls from the tribal regions of Pakistan, to whom he pledged our country’s friendship.  And in the role that America continues to play as a light to all who aspire to live in freedom and in dignity," he said.

In his eulogy, Mr. Obama announced the creation of an annual award named for Holbrooke, to honor excellence in U.S. diplomacy. 

Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were among others who spoke at the memorial.