Talk about desperation; the Americans are falling over themselves to talk to the Taliban but the Afghans are in no hurry to meet, even if offered lamb kebab and rice as inducement. Carefully planted rumors in the media by American officials have been circulating for years. “Taliban representatives have secretly met US officials in Saudi Arabia;” according to one of such report. Others have claimed meetings have taken place in Turkey, Qatar or even Germany. The Taliban have vehemently denied all such reports. One is inclined to accept the Taliban version because past US claims have come to naught.
The negative fallout from the Osama bin Laden episode is only slowly trickling out into the public domain but Pakistani officials are already scurrying to find support elsewhere as they desperately try to present a brave face over the whole affair. The Pakistani public is shell-shocked, unable to fathom how the Americans could mount an operation deep inside Pakistani territory, in a supposedly secure military base, that lasted 40 minutes without being challenged by the military. It should now be clear even to the most dim-witted that Pakistan’s relations with the US, strained at the best of times, have undergone a sea change. Further, the US is no friend of Pakistan — never has been and never will be.
This month, as in every June since 1989, Muslims around the world will hold prayer meetings, lectures and other events to mark the anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini, who died in Tehran on June 4, 1989, a decade after the Islamic Revolution in Iran with which he will always be associated. The usual speakers will give the usual speeches, focusing on the usual aspects of his life and character.
The pent up rage of the masses that erupted in Tunisia last December 17 has engulfed the entire Muslim East. Two dictators — General Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and General Hosni Mubarak of Egypt — were consigned in quick succession to the dustbin of history but others are fighting back.
Bahraini security forces backed by Saudi troops and their masters in Washington have and continue to perpetrate indescribable crimes against innocent civilians in Bahrain. Those targeted include not only peaceful protesters, but also doctors and nurses treating the injured in hospitals.
The witch-hunt of Qaddafi opponents began on 2 October 2005 with the arrest and detention of five Libyan dissidents, who had been granted asylum by the UK, on the grounds that they were a threat to national security.
The West’s attack on Libya is yet another crusade launched against a Muslim country on the pretext of protecting its people. Pope Urban II would be pleased to learn that his disciples are still marching on as good “Christian soldiers” against another group of “heathens” in the Muslim world nearly a thousand years after his sermon on Mount Clermont.
General Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster from power has opened Tunisia’s political landscape somewhat. Political parties and various groups, such as trade unions and lawyers’ associations, are jostling to secure an advantageous position in the uncertain political climate that currently reflects Tunisian society. Political parties that existed legally were obviously tainted by cooperation with the regime.
Friends and neighbors of Abouzizi’s were so horrified by his suicide that his funeral was turned into a protest rally despite threats from the police.
The global political scene is not only changing, it has changed quite dramatically over the last decade or so. The pompous notion of a unipolar world in which the self-proclaimed “sole superpower” maintains perpetual full-spectrum dominance a la Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is no longer tenable.
Beyond the clichéd-ridden rhetoric on Kashmir, real people — men, women and children — are getting killed and maimed by one of the most ruthless military machines in the world: India’s 1.2 million-strong army, of whom 700,000 are deployed in Kashmir.
One ordinary spectator said, “I just came today to say welcome to our home… Iran helped to rebuild Lebanon, and most of all, they helped in building a strong resistance, the first to defeat Israel, the strongest army in the region.”
“The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State… The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber.
True, there is no shortage of armchair warriors in Washington insisting that the US cannot cut and run, or that President Barack Obama does not have the spine for a fight.
Zardari owns a huge property in France where his father Hakim Ali Zardari now lives
Pakistan turns 63 this month but it would be difficult to say a great deal positive about its style of governance or development in all these years. True, its birth was marred by great suffering and bloodshed, not in a formal war but during the migration of millions of people that were uprooted from their homes in India in August 1947.
The drums of war are once again getting louder in Washington. Led by the Zionist cabal and its neocon allies, American warmongers are itching for another war, this time against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not satisfied with the blood-letting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A visionary foreign policy approach Turkey had been a “wing country” of NATO throughout the cold war era, its assigned role being to stop or slow a possible Soviet invasion of Europe...
The Americans are caught, literally, between and a rock and a hard place in Afghanistan. The mountainous country has one of the toughest people on earth that have never allowed foreigners to dominate them.
Media would correctly argue that its function as a public watchdog is to disseminate news and information...
