The subservience of Pakistan’s rulers was again displayed on January 13: the US bombed a border village in Pakistan's Bajaur Agency, killing 18 civilians, six of them children. Far from confronting America's state terrorism, Pakistani officials from general Pervez Musharraf down proffered lame excuses: "foreign terrorists" were the intended target, for instance. In particular, they claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri was a guest at one of the houses for an Eid al-Adha celebration in Damadola village.
By taking a firm and principled stand over its right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has forced the US to blink. The meeting on November 24 of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna was a far more civilized affair than the bellicose threats issued by the same body two months earlier.
The US occupation of Iraq, which has destabilised the country, driving it into effective civil war, may have unsettling consequences for neighbouring Syria. US president George W. Bush is exerting strong pressure on Damascus to cooperate with Washington's colonial schemes, to end its links with Lebanon, and to help the UN's enquiry into the murder of Lebanon's late ex-prime minister, Rafique Hariri.
In recent months the world's richest countries, led by the US and Britain, have been claiming noisily that they plan to have the world's poorest regions, particularly Africa, lifted out of poverty; they also intend to improve human rights there, they say.
1Iran won what may be regarded as a partial and temporary victory at the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) on September 24, when the UN nuclear agency’s board refrained from acceding to American demands that it immediately refer Iran to the UN Security Council for alleged breaches of the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT).
That Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, shook hands with a war criminal like Ariel Sharon of Israel—better known as the Butcher of Beirut—was bad enough; it was even worse that he chose to do so on the twenty-third anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres (September 14-16).
As if Hurricane Katrina had not caused quite enough damage, Rita came roaring in and swept across Louisiana and Texas, putting out of action more than 25 percent of the US's oil-refining capacity.
Nothing illustrates the West’s hypocrisy better than its attitude to the issue of nuclear technology and its use for the generation of energy. There are several layers of hypocritical behaviour: countries that do not possess nuclear know-how must be denied its use because it is alleged that this would lead to their making nuclear weapons.
Even the elaborate Independence Day celebrations on August 14 could not conceal the panic that has gripped Pakistan’s ruling elites since America’s military and nuclear agreements withIndia in June and July respectively.
America’s humiliation in Iraq has led some observers to describe it as another Vietnam. This is not quite accurate; the US’s Iraqi experience is much closer to the Russians’ in Afghanistan, with very similar outcomes, both positive and negative. Should the US military stay in Iraq extend for a decade or more, as did the Red Army’s in Afghanistan, there will perhaps be noUnited States left to return to, at least as far as its superpower pretensions are concerned.
The election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as president of Iran in June shocked Western governments, apparently misled by their own propaganda that suggested that Iranians had turned against the Islamic State. ZAFAR BANGASH, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, explains why Iranians elected him, and the threats Iran now faces.
Anti-Sudan propaganda in the West has reached such a pitch that even a movie, Hotel Rwanda, a fictional account of the Rwandan genocide, is being used to create the impression that a similar genocide is being perpetrated in Darfur.
Flaunting the banner of democracy in the Middle East is the latest fad in Washington. Since the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, so-called ‘democracy promotion' has become one of the leading notions ostensibly guiding US policy in the Middle East.
Such is the US’s sense of uncertainty in Iraq that they have not even been sure how to respond to persistent rumours that Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-proclaimed “Leader of Al-Qa’ida inIraq” has been wounded in action and may even have died.
Ordinary Americans can be forgiven for failing to understand why people around the world hate their country and their government so much; successive governments in Washington and the media have kept them in the dark about the true nature of US policies that adversely affect the lives and welfare of billions of people everywhere.
Can the US be a friend of the Muslims? This is not a rhetorical question; Muslims must consider it seriously because it has enormous implications for their future. First, a clarification is in order: when one talks about “the US”, one does not mean the American people but the government, although it could be argued that the 51 percent of Americans who voted for George Bush should bear some responsibility for the crimes perpetrated in their name.
The United States, which last September accused Sudan of committing genocide in the Western region of Darfur, is now charging it with “crimes against humanity” and has even dropped its usual assertion that the Sudanese government has the ability to control the so-called Arab Janjaweed militia, who had been accused of arming to kill Africans in Darfur.
The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in an enormous explosion in Beirut on February 14 sent as many political ripples through the region as questions it raised about the motives and identity of those who carried out the attack.
Kuwait’s role as a launch-pad and base for US-led troops operating in Iraq is coming to haunt the Gulf emirate. A string of gun-battles between government troops and militants planning to target American troops in the country, as well as oil facilities, has pushed Kuwait closer to the brink.
Writers are prisoners of the language they use, particulary if they wish to express ideas that run contrary to the way in which words are commonly used. There are idioms, expressions and even names that convey certain meanings and impressions, when the reality to which they are applied is very different.
