Since the war on Iraq ardent calls for "change" have become fashionable in Arab countries. These appeals come from various quarters. However, the variety of the demands for change betray the nature and the extent of the power-war currently unfolding in the region.
The UN’s announcement on September 27 that it is withdrawing its international staff from Iraq for security reasons came as a massive blow to the country’s US occupation authorities, who have been desperately trying to convince the world that they have full control over Iraq and are succeeding in introducing freedom and democracy to a grateful population.
Eighty-three Muslim worshippers were martyred by the bomb that exploded outside the mosque at the Imam Ali mausoleum in Najaf immediately after juma prayers on August 29, but there was little doubt that its main target was Ayatullah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of Majlis al-Aala l’il-Thawra al- Islami f’il-Iraq (The Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq).
ZAFAR BANGASH , director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), discusses the challenges facing Iraqi ulama under American occupation and their responses to those challenges.
Three months after George Bush declared an end to "major hostilities" in Iraq, the US and Britain remain under pressure, both from resistance in Iraq and from questions at home about their reasons for going to war. In Britain the issue is now being debated in the framework of the Hutton enquiry, established to look into the apparent suicide of a weapons expert accused by the government of leaking information to the press.
American and British claims that Iraq was calm except for limited resistance by a few pro-Saddam stragglers were blown away on June 24, when six British soldiers were killed by angry people in Majar al-Kabbir, a small town north of Basra, in response to aggressive and intrusive anti-resistance operations.
Several weeks after the US’s occupation of Iraq, its rule is in chaos. Iraq was the most advanced Arab country before the US destroyed its infrastructure in 1991; even after 1991, despite UN sanctions, there was a modicum of civil infrastructure and service provision...
General Jay Garner, the American-appointed ruler of Iraq, faced massive demonstrations in the centre of Baghdad on April 28, as he convened a conference of Iraqi leaders intended to discuss the formation of an interim administration — under his supervision — for the country.
Washington increased pressure on Syria last month, immediately after the fall of the Ba’athist regime in Baghdad. Although White House sources privately denied that there were any plans for further military action against other regimes in the region
The sudden collapse of the Ba’athist regime in Iraq is not surprising, although most Muslims would have liked to see the US given a bloodier nose in the process. It can be attributed to two main factors...
Citing security concerns, Hamid Karzai, the US-installed and protected president of Afghanistan, cancelled his visit to Pakistan only an hour before he was supposed to leave Kabul on March 22. His Pakistani hosts were taken aback...
When millions of anti-war protestors took to the streets in towns and cities across the world on the weekend of February 15-16, some commentators noticed that protests in Arab countries were muted at best.
Of all the countries that will be affected by the war on Iraq, Islamic Iran probably has the most to worry about. Neither US officials nor their zionist colleagues have made any secret of their real intentions: Iraq is merely the first step along the way to destroying Iran’s Islamic government.
US secretary of state Colin Powell’s long-awaited case for war against Iraq to the UN Security Council on February 5 was supposed to be the conclusive revelation of the full extent of evidence that America hold to justify its determination to go to war.
As a US invasion of Iraq looks ever more imminent, increasing details are emerging of Washington’s plans for the establishment of a reliable, pro-Western puppet-regime in Baghdad.
They were supposed to be the British government’s piece de resistance in its domestic war on terror: the smoking guns that confirmed the presence of al-Qa’ida cells in Britain. But a recent wave of police raids on homes, charities and, most spectacularly, a mosque in London have provoked accusations that the government is scapegoating the Muslim community in order to boost support for its involvement in the impending war against Iraq.
It was intended to be an extraordinary show of unity among Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s foes. But the Iraqi opposition’s conference in London last month ended up exposing the opposition for a faction-ridden quagmire having in common only a desire to be rid of Saddam.
As widely expected, the US declared Iraq to be in "material breach" of UN Resolution 1441 on December 19, after a perfunctory examination of Iraq’s 12,000-page dossier on its weapons programme.
A lethal brew of raw imperial ambition and personal greed, not the claims of US president George Bush that he intends to eliminate Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, is behind the drive for a renewed onslaught on Iraq...
The deafening noise of Washington’s war-drums is making it increasingly certain that a military effort to depose Saddam Hussein is on the cards. The question then arises of potential alternatives for Iraq.
