Lebanon's deputy prime minister and defense minister Elias Murr survived a car bombing July 12 which left a bodyguard dead and several injured. The bomb was placed in car parked along the route of his motorcade in a Beirut suburb. He was the first pro-Syrian politician targetted in the recent wave of attacks in Lebanon. Druze leader Walid Jumblat claimed that the blast is linked to the investigation of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination on Feb. 14. Jumblat alleged the assassination attempt on Murr is part of a plan to eliminate the eyewitnesses to Hariri's assassination. (Zaman, Turkey, July 14) (See our recent story on Lebanon)

The conspiranoid site Prison Planet has picked up on a BBC Radio 5 report from the evening of July 7, the same day as the London attacks, in which Pete Power, a former Scotland Yard counter-terrorism official and now managing director of the private security firm Visor Consultants, states that his company was carrying out an exercise on how to manage multiple bomb attacks on the London Underground at the precise time that the real attacks happened. He declines to say who contracted his firm for this work, saying only that it was "a company," and that he can't mention its name for "obvious reasons."

Bad news for Nuristan, the remote and isolated region of Afghanistan's central mountains, known until just over a century ago as Kafiristan (land of the infidels) because of the survival of the ancient Indo-European nature religion there. The region straddles the border with Pakistan, and on the Pakistani side the name Kafiristan, and the ancient "pagan" religion, still survive. Its isolation has kept it out of the war which has wracked Afghanistan for the last generation—but perhaps not for long. The anti-terrorist Jamestown Foundation website claims that the recent US anti-Taliban offensive (which resulted in the loss of a Chinook helicopter and several US soldiers), dubbed Operation Red Wing, has forced Osama bin Laden to take refuge in Nuristan:

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The new peace deal in Sudan, ending a 22-year civil war in which two million people lost their lives, took effect July 9, when Col. John Garang of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was sworn in as Sudan's first vice president in Khartoum, the capital. After six years of power-sharing between Garang's SPLA and President Omar el-Bashir's National Congress Party, there will be a referendum to decide Sudan's future, with the southern stronghold of the SPLA potentially having the option to secede.

Al-Jazeera reported July 6 that Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, spiritual mentor of Iraq's al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been arrested in Jordan, after a brief period of being free under close surveillance. He was freed following his acquittal on terrorism charges, and it is uncertain on what charges he is now being held. Ironically, the arrest comes immediately following an interview with al-Jazeera in which the Sheikh criticized his protege's brutal tactics. "I have reservations on expanding jihadi operations or what others call suicide or istishhadiya [martyrdom]," he said. He was apparently referring to suicide attacks on civilians. Al-Zarqawi did not appreciate the criticism, immediately issuing a communique blasting his mentor. "This [criticism] does not harm me as much as it harms this jihad...the blessings of which are apparent to anyone who has eyes," said the statement posted to an Islamist website and signed by Zarqawi. "Do not follow in the devil's footsteps or you shall perish, and beware, our virtuous sheikh, from the cunning of God's enemies and from being lured into dividing the mujahideen." (The Peninsula, Qatar, July 13)

What a strange twist of fate. It seems the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan are apparently using Pakistan, key regional US ally, as a staging ground. This from Pakistan's Daily Times, July 12:

Six more Pakistani fighters arrested in Afghanistan

* Missing US commando found dead in Kunar province
* Four Arab militants escape US detention centre at Bagram

KABUL: Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry on Monday [July 11] said that local forces had arrested six Pakistani fighters and eight Afghan Taliban insurgents with weapons and explosives.

Meanwhile, the London terror, which has shocked the world, is roughly equivalent to your average bad day in Iraq, as TruthOut reminds us.

23 Killed in Bombing at Baghdad Recruiting Center
By John F. Burns
The New York Times

Monday 11 July 2005

Baghdad - A brief lull in the suicide bombings here ended on Sunday when an attacker mingling with a crowd of men outside an Iraqi Army recruiting center detonated an explosive vest, killing at least 23 volunteers and wounding at least 40 others.