The US and its allies have intensified military activities in Somalia and along its 2000-mile coastline to prevent ‘al-Qaeda terrorists’ from finding refuge or setting up new bases there, according to American officials.
To the chagrin of Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, there is growing evidence to suggest that it makes little difference (perhaps none) in Washington whether Khartoum stands with or against the US-led “war on terrorism.”
Before his meeting with US president George W. Bush at the White House on November 27, all that president Abdullah Ali Saleh was prepared to do to accommodate Washington’s concerns about “anti-US terrorists” in Yemen was to expel a group of ‘Arab Afghans’ allegedly allied to Usama bin Ladin, and to take steps to prevent fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters or supporters from entering his country.
On December 22, almost exactly 22 years after the Soviets installed a puppet government (on December 27, 1979, headed by Babrak Karmal) in Kabul, the Americans repeated the feat. Hamid Karzai was “sworn in” as prime minister with British troops guarding the interior ministry building where the ceremony took place...
The persistent speculation of the last month about whether Somalia will be the next battleground in the US’s “war on terrorism” is practically over. Senior US government officials assert that Washington is indeed interested in Somalia, and US special forces and diplomats have already arrived there.
In a move to cripple Muslim charitable work, the US government moved against three leading charities during Ramadhan, accusing them of “supporting terrorism”.
Almost two months after the US began its bombing of Afghanistan, the Taliban remain defiant in substantial parts of the country. As we go to press, the Northern Alliance and the US are claiming to be about to capture the northern town of Kunduz...
In an audacious and defiant move, Lebanon has refused to bow to America’s demand that Hizbullah’s bank accounts be frozen as part of Washington’s “war on terrorism.”
John Danforth, the US president’s peace envoy to Sudan, arrived in Khartoum on November 12 with four proposals that favour the southern warlords and seem to be designed for partition of the country rather than for the peace his mission is supposed to be working for.
Addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 10, US president George W. Bush did something that no US president has ever done: he used the word “Palestine” to describe the emasculated Palestinian ‘state’ that the US and Israel would like to set up in the West Bank and Ghazzah as part of a ‘peace settlement.’
While America has couched its ‘war’ on Afghanistan in the language of morality, more sinister motives are at work: desire to control the Caspian Sea’s oil and gas, as well as the destruction or removal (‘neutralisation’) of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
The anthrax outbreak in the US has put many on edge about biological warfare and ‘bioterrorism’. Anthrax has killed four people and made 13 others ill since it appeared in the US in late September.
Northern Alliance troops were reported to be moving south through the Afghan countryside towards Kabul on November 11, two days after their capture of Mazaar-e Shareef from Taliban forces.
US plans for attacking ‘terrorist bases’ in Somalia as the next stage of the ‘war on terrorism’ are well advanced, according to media reports that quote US intelligence and military officials.
Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s must have winced earlier this month when he heard that George W Bush, his American counterpart, has decided to extend by another year unilateral US sanctions against Sudan.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Turkey offered its airspace and military bases for use by the US and its allies in their ‘war’ on Afghanistan, reaping ample praise for its “loyalty to the West”.
Much has been made of George W. Bush’s throwaway characterization of the US’s “war on terrorism” as a ‘crusade’. To be fair, he was probably using the word in the sense of a determined, even zealous, pursuit of a cause, rather than in any specifically anti-Islamic sense...
President Husni Mubarak of Egypt has been fighting Islamic movements since coming to power in 1981. Exploiting Egypt’s influence in the Muslim world, he has been instrumental in the adoption of anti-terrorism conventions and resolutions by the Arab League, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and the General Assembly of the UN.
Propaganda is an important tool of war but, like everything else the Americans do, it is one which they wield crudely. On October 22 the Taliban reported that a hospital in Herat had been bombed, killing more than 100 people, including many children.
Three days after the bombing of Afghanistan began, US officials admitted that they were running out of targets. The bombing is likely to continue, however, to satisfy public opinion. Hawks in Washington also want to attack other countries.
