Living up to his reputation as the “Butcher of Beirut,” Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has unleashed still more assaults on the besieged Palestinian civilians with helicopter-gunships, mortars and artillery shells in the West Bank and Ghazzah over the last two weeks.
The first regular Arab league summit in ten years concluded its business in Amman (capital of Jordan) on March 28, failing to solve the problems it had set out to tackle.
The Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic and defence arrangement among the six Gulf Arab monarchies, is twenty years old. Yet Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have only recently signed the first ever cross-border agreement in any utility sector by members of the GCC, which between them hold 43 percent of all oil-reserves and nearly 15 percent of world natural-gas reserves.
Always smooth, Dr Hassan al-Turabi, leader of Sudan’s opposition Popular National Congress (PNC), has been honing his skills lately. But the latest rabbit he pulled out of his turban, the alliance the PNC forged with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), has landed him and scores of his supporters in prison.
During his three-day Mideast tour last month, US secretary of state Colin Powell left no doubt about what the Bush administration has in store for Iraq and the region. Throughout his visit, Powell remained unrepentant about the recent American and British air-strikes on Iraq.
The speed with which president Husni Mubarak has succeeded in imposing his will on Arab leaders, including ‘president’ Yasser Arafat and the Arab League, confirms that Egypt’s claim to regional superpower status is not entirely hollow. Not only has Cairo managed to force other Arab capitals to accept Amr Musa, the Egyptian foreign minister...
After less than a month in office, US president George W. Bush left no doubt about his combative attitude to Iraq: like father, like son. George W.’s approach is one of gunboat diplomacy based on the unbridled use of force without scruple.
The last colonial outpost in the heartland of Islam is crumbling under the power of the intifada. The overwhelming vote for war-criminal Ariel Sharon in the Israeli elections (February 6) is a sign of zionist desperation in the face of the Palestinians’ achievements.
It is true that American and European traders and expatriates are the backbone of the multimillion-dollar market for smuggled alcohol in Saudi Arabia, and take the lion’s share of the proceeds.
Throughout his long rule, Egypt’s president, Husni Mubarak, has paid lip-service to ‘traditional Islam’ and to ‘freedom of expression’, while in practice repressing Islamic activists. Even the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, who cannot possibly be accused of being Islamic revolutionaries, are banned as a political party.
On February 8, Jordan’s state security court ordered the release of Dr Ahmad al-’Armouti on bail of 10,000 Jordanian dinars (about US$ 14,000). His release came just one day after a similar court directive ordered the release of another unionist, engineer ‘Issam Abu Farha, on the same bail.
Like autocratic rulers everywhere, nothing is more loathsome to Kuwait’s ‘royal’ family than accountability. Another mainstay of autocratic rule is a determination to avoid relinquishing key positions of power.
The recent parliamentary report on corruption under the late King Hassan II, the appointment of a judicial commission to examine it, and the limited political reforms introduced since his death in 1999 have given rise to widespread speculation that the new king, Muhammad V, is determined to distance himself from his father’s murky legacy.
The election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister of the zionist state was supposed to be a statement of intent that Israel was tired of talking to the Palestinians and had turned away from the peace process in favour of a hard response to the Palestinians’ continued uprising.
Two more Palestinians were killed by Israel on January 25. One was a 22-year-old youth shot dead by troops; the other was a 16-year-old boy who died in hospital, one day after being shot by Jewish settlers.
In Algeria the year 2000 was one of undiminished violence and bloodshed, very different from the harmony that president Abdul-Aziz Bouteflika claims to have ushered in by his offer of amnesty to the country’s armed groups.
The Emir of Bahrain, Shaykh Hamad bin ‘Issa al-Khalifah, announced in a speech marking the country’s National Day on December 16 that he will be taking the country another step towards democracy. But, like everything about politics in the Gulf Arab states, the Emir’s notion of political reform is of a controlled process in which freedom and participation are not rights of the citizenry but rather favours granted by the ruler.
The six member-states of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) signed a defence pact on December 31, pledging themselves to come to each other’s aid in the event of attack.
Dr Mazen al-Najjar, a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, was released from prison on December 15, 2000, after more than 3 and a half years in jail as a victim of the US’s notorious “secret evidence” system.
Like other Arab dictators, General ‘Umar Hassan al-Bashir thinks that nothing can offset the precipitous decline in public support for his regime like prattling about democracy and holding elections boycotted by all major opposition groups. In a press conference in Khartoum on December 29, the head of Sudan’s General Election Authority...
