Even two years after the Taliban’s removal from power, the hapless Afghans continue to suffer under a reign of terror; the perpetrators are none other than the US-backed warlords ensconced as ministers or wearing pompous titles such as commander. Rape, robbery, and murder and the bloody-mindedness of the US occupation forces have turned almost every Afghan into an anti-American fighter.
Two years after the US’s invasion of Afghanistan, there are increasing signs that the US may be looking for potential partners among the Taliban leaders for a possible peace agreement. At a time when its proxy regime under Hamid Karzai lacks all legitimacy, and anti-American forces representing both the Taliban and other mujahideen groups increasing their pressure on the US forces in the country, it is hardly surprising that the US should be looking for a way out of Afghanistan’s quagmire.
DR PERWEZ SHAFI, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in Pakistan, examines the reasons for the spectacular difference of opinions between the US and major European powers over the US’s plans for war war against Iraq...
Thirty-one months after removing the Taliban from power, the Americans are being forced to consider the unthinkable: strike a deal with the Taliban for power-sharing in return for a face-saving exit for US forces from Afghanistan. This remarkable turn-around has occurred primarily because the Afghans have refused to be cowed by US firepower...
US attorney general John Ashcroft remains unrepentant despite a stinging rebuke by Glenn A. Fine, his department’s own inspector general, confirming enormous abuses of detainees since September 2001. In a report released on June 3, Fine highlights the mistreatment of 762 persons, some of them held by the government for as long as eight months without charge.
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...
The announcement on April 29 by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld that American troops and aircraft would be moved out of Saudi Arabia by the end of the summer does not mean the end of trouble for the ruling al-Saud family.
Few empires have ever justified their enslavement and exploitation of subject peoples in such terms; the US is no exception. The Romans justified their imperialism by offering law and order...
On April 11, the day after American forces proclaimed the capture of Baghdad and the fall of Saddam Hussain’s regime, Ayatullah al-Uzma Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the Rahbar of the Islamic State of Iran, presented a detailed and broad-ranging analysis of the background and implications of the US’s war on Iraq as the first part of his jum’a khutbah in Tehran. Here we publish an abridged translation of this khutbah.
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
At a time when the world is debating the legality and morality of America’s determination to invade and occupy Iraq, the Turkish parliament’s rejection on March 1 of a motion allowing US troops to deploy in Turkey on their way to northern Iraq was widely seen both as a major act of anti-American defiance from a state which has recently seen a (vaguely) Islamist government win power...
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.
The current crisis in Iran arising from a court verdict against Hashemi Aghajari, a professor at Tehran University, is clearly a case of an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. As Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Rahbar, pointed out after several days of demonstrations by students...
Hundreds (perhaps a thousand) Muslims are being held in US jails as a result of new rules that require citizens of certain countries to register with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Many who have been resident in the US for many years...
The US government is not a single-issue organization. While huge attention is now being paid to preparing the ground for America’s occupation of Iraq, another arm of the administration is engaged, with a lower profile, in pursuing Washington’s interests in Venezuela...
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...
Now that Washington’s massive diplomatic offensive against Baghdad has succeeded in getting the UN weapons-inspectors back into Iraq, the US government seems to have inched one step closer to its ostensible goal of deposing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Since its war against Afghanistan ended, the US has been looking for a pretext to wage war against Iraq...
As Eid ul-Fitr looms, spare a thought for the 625 Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo Bay who, deprived of their dignity and freedom, do not even know when, or whether, they will ever celebrate the festival at home with their families.
Among the many Muslim political prisoners in the world, the case of Imam Jamil Abdullah al-Amin stands out as quite extraordinary. Convicted of murder last February in a trial that can only be described as bizarre, Imam Jamil has now been moved from the Reedsville prison...
