The Supreme Court verdict on September 28, dismissing several petitions challenging General Musharraf’s attempt to contest presidential polls while retaining his army post, has dealt a severe blow to the opposition’s hopes of preventing him from continuing his rule. There was an immediate adverse reaction on the streets; the police resorted to their customary brutality, attacking lawyers, political opponents and journalists, and a number of cameras were smashed. Protests continued as Crescent International went to press, amid signs that though the verdict might have brought some respite to Musharraf, Pakistan’s troubles are far from over.
Iraqis have become victims of violence in many different circumstances since the American invasion of the country in 2003. Many have been victims of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shi‘i communities, in which Shi‘i religious institutions and occasions have been particularly targeted by Sunni militants. Few, however, could have anticipated that the Shabaniyah festival in Karbala on August 28, to mark the anniversary of the birth of the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, would end with over 50 people killed in fighting between Shi‘i gunmen and Iraqi authorities, sparked by the heavy-handed security arrangements in the city.
After years of precariously trying to balance the conflicting political demands of his American masters and Pakistan’s Muslim people, events in the last month appear to have pushed Pakistani dictator General Perwez Musharraf (pic) to the verge of being toppled. On July 26, news emerged that fellow generals had advised Musharraf to make a “graceful exit” from power.
Months of increasing tension between the Fatah and Hamas movements in Palestine came to a head on June 14, when Hamas militias captured Fatah-controlled institutions in Ghazzah that had refused to accept the authority of the Hamas government of prime minister Ismail Haniya. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas responded by dismissing the Haniya government and appointing a new administration, under Salam Fayyad, in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
It was business as usual for Egypt’s security forces last month, as Egyptians hoping to run in the Shura (Consultative) elections on June 11 began to present their candidacy papers. As soon as registration opened for the mid-term elections, to choose half of the members of the upper house of Egypt’s parliament, three leaders of the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) were reportedly arrested in Alexandria for being “in possession of leaflets aiming at inciting public opinion.”
Three times in the last 50 years – in 1960, 1971 and 1980 – the Turkish military has seized power from civilian governments whose policies they deemed unacceptable. In 1997, Turkey suffered a “soft coup”, when the military forced prime minister Necmeddin Erbakan out of power for being too Islamic.
The referendum on amendments to Egypt’s constitution on March 26 went almost exactly as expected by most independent observers. The turn-out was almost non-existent, as a result of an opposition boycott and widespread cynicism about the referendum.
While members of the UN Security Council were preparing to meet in London on February 26 to discuss what further steps they could take against Iran after the expiry of the UN’s illegal demand for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, Western diplomats in Vienna revealed on February 22 that US intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities had turned out to be false.
People all over the world have long been aware of the stark gap between the reality of American policy around the world, dictated by the drive to achieve “full spectrum dominance” at any cost, and the claims of its leaders to represent enlightenment and freedom for all people. One effect of the disaster in Iraq has been to make even Americans – notoriously ignorant of world affairs – aware of their leaders’ apparent disconnection from reality.
It seems likely that Somalia will not have peace for the foreseeable future, as war again breaks out between the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and the “interim government” (IG) with the Ethiopian forces entrenched in the region to protect it. Since it is laughable to call the handful of former warlords hiding in Baidoa an ‘interim government’, the current fighting is really only between Ethiopian troops and forces loyal to the Islamic Courts.
If anyone needed evidence that the deepening political crisis in Lebanon has entered an unpredictable phase, the government of Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora provided it on November 25. Siniora defied warnings from the opposition and other leading politicians and high-ranking officials, including president Emile Lahoud, and called for a cabinet meeting that approved a draft United Nations document for an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, who was killed in a massive truck-bomb on February 14, 2005 in Beirut.
Never has the spectre of disintegration, following full-blown civil war, seemed so imminent in Iraq as in recent weeks. Fears of the break-up of the country into feuding entities are being fuelled not only by the passage of a new federalism law through Iraq’s parliament but also by growing indications of support for the division of Iraq in the US. Despite all the shrill talk from US president George W. Bush’s officials about “staying the course” and never to “cut and run,” the fact remains that Washington has been abuzz with discussions of alternative courses of action, which include breaking Iraq up into three autonomous regions.
Months of negotiations between Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders on forming a coalition government, which they hope will break the political deadlock in the country and facilitate the lifting of the West's economic boycott, appeared to reach a significant breakthrough on September 11. It was announced that agreement had finally been reached after a series of meetings in Ghazzah between PA (Palestinian Authority) president Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader appointed prime minister after Hamas's stunning victory in January's parliamentary elections.
With their zeal, courage and discipline, Hizbullah's intrepid fighters stood off Israel's military juggernaut in the hilly, forested landscape of southernLebanon. Ensconced in villages and towns throughout southern Lebanon, Hizbullah's fighters weathered 33 days of intense Israeli air-strikes and a series of tank-led ground incursions, and emerged victorious.
Since launching its murderous assault on Lebanon on July 12, Israel has destroyed 55 bridges, ripped up almost all the major roads in Lebanon, blasted scores of apartment buildings, and bombed Beirut's brand-new $600-million international airport, a power plant, milk factories, grain warehouses and hundreds of homes of the Lebanese: all ostensibly to "expel" Hizbullah, the Islamic resistance movement, from Southern Lebanon.
The agreement reached on June 22 at Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, by Somalia's nominal transitional government and the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) – which is in control of the capital,Mogadishu, and most of southern Somalia – has been hailed as a first step towards the restoration of peace, tranquillity and unity to the violence-ridden "failed state".
It is a remarkable development that in a country like Egypt, ruled autocratically by a former military officer, members of the judiciary and strongly anti-regime Islamic activists find themselves on the same side in the war the dictator is waging to stay in power and pass it to his son.
Three months after Hamas won a decisive victory in the elections for the Palestinian legislative council, and a month after the new Hamas administration was sworn in, it remains under immense political pressure from Israel and Israel’s Western allies to abandon the program on which it was elected and accept instead the West’s plans for the future of Palestine.
It has been three years since America’s military juggernaut rumbled its way across the desert landscape of southern Iraq towards Baghdad. Three years ago the invasion was justified as a necessary move to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s presumed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and the invaders promised to transform Iraq into a prosperous, oil-rich democracy that would serve as a model to spark emulative transformation in the rest of the Middle East.
After weeks of intense consultation, discussion and negotiation with other parties, Hamas leaders have nominated Ismail Haniyeh (pic), a powerful 43-year-old Hamas leader in the Ghazzah Strip, as prime minister. The decision resulted from internal deliberations over whether to choose a non-Hamas figure, who might be more acceptable to the West, to lead the next cabinet.
