Nothing resonated at the regional conference held in Baghdad last month more than the barbs exchanged by American and Iranian officials attending the conference. Yet the mere fact that officials from both countries agreed to take part in the meeting provided a window of opportunity for more substantive contacts between them over Iraq. A second meeting is expected to take place at the level of foreign ministers in Istanbul in early April.
A revolt which had been smouldering in the rugged mountains of northern Yemen for nearly three years has flared up again in the last few weeks. Hundreds of government troops, Zaidi Shi’as and civilians have died in clashes since early January; rebels led by Abd al-Malik al-Huthi have ignored a series of ultimatums that the government issued to the effect that they should disarm and surrender or be “rooted out.”
When bands of pro-government hoodlums and thugs, armed with sticks, chains, knives and assault and sniper rifles, attacked students in and around the campus of the Beirut Arab University on January 25, Lebanon again peered into the abyss of civil war. But it backed away, mainly thanks to the rigorous exercise of self-restraint on the part of the opposition
It is not easy to resist a sense of déja vu while watching the components of the US’s new drive to curb the escalating insurgency and extreme inter-communal violence gripping Iraq fall into place. Earlier attempts to shake up the disastrous US military effort inIraq have been failures. All indications are that the new, much-touted drive, which forms the cornerstone of America’s exit strategy from Iraq, is unlikely to fare any better.
It could have been an opportunity for Bahrain to set into motion a policy inspired by the Shari‘ah. But when prominent Sunni and Shi‘a Islamic groups won most of the seats in the second parliamentary elections in Bahrain in more than three decades, sectarian friction stoked the discord between the two communities. The election for the 40-member lower house ofBahrain’s Council of Representatives was marred by campaigning that brought tensions into the open.
Serious policy differences between the usually secretive members of the House of Saud have turned into a feud that is threatening to unravel the carefully constructed façade of dynastic rule maintained by bribes and terror for more than seven decades. Personal ambitions, coupled with fears that they may not survive long in power if the US flees Iraq after its defeat, have resulted in some strange public behaviour by Saudi royals.
After a quarter of a century in power, president Husni Mubarak of Egypt appears not to have learnt how to avoid making damaging decisions on sensitive occasions. Unleashing yet another crackdown on the popular and ‘moderate’ Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, he chose the month of Ramadan as the occasion for expressing his anger. The crackdown also occurred on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Hassan al-Banna, the Ikhwan’s founder.
That Yemen is in the grip of poverty, drought, political mismanagement and corruption is not in doubt. Nor is there any doubt that Yemen is steeped in tribal and regional tension and, at times, confrontation that might again split the country into South Yemen (a former British colony) and North Yemen.
The guns of Israel’s war of aggression had hardly fallen silent in August when Hizbullah, which emerged victorious after its fighters fought the most powerful military machine in the Middle East to a standstill, found itself in a number of domestic political battles. Some of the bones of contention are related to post-war reconstruction and the future makeup of the Lebanese cabinet; other issues are enmeshed with US-led efforts to disarm Hizbullah and put an end to its role as a resistance movement.
An acrimonious parliamentary and public debate, accompanied by a series of boycotts by several groups of parliamentary sessions, has repeatedly forced Iraq's legislature to postpone discussion of a bill to divide Iraq into autonomous regions.
Qana has become synonymous with Israeli crimes. On July 30 the zionists repeated an outrage they perpetrated ten years ago by firing missiles into buildings where families were sheltering from just such bombing attacks. At least 54 civilians, 37 of them children, were murdered in the latest outrage; one of the dead was a baby girl only a day old. Several buildings were completely destroyed.
Israel's assaults on Ghazzah (starting on June 28) and on Lebanon (since July 12) have nothing to do with the capture of three Israeli soldiers, one by the Palestinians and two by Hizbullah. The demand for their release was merely a pretext to launch a war that had been planned in conjunction with the US several months ago.
The death of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi in an American air strike on June 7 has been greeted with joy by the beleaguered US regime. Among Muslims, his image was mixed: some saw him as a courageous resistance leader, fighting against a global superpower, others as a murderous sectarian extremist. NASR SALEM discusses the life and legacy of a symbol of modern Iraq.
The two suicide bombings in Egypt on April 26 were the latest of a series of armed attacks in the country over the last two years. The coincide with demonstrations by thousands of Egyptians in central Cairo to protest against the prosecution of two senior judges who are known for their public criticism of the government's control of the judiciary.
It took four months of gruelling and protracted negotiations, bargaining and threatening, manoeuvring and arm-twisting before Iraqi leaders finally broke the prolonged deadlock that had been hindering the formation of a new cabinet, and agreed on a new prime minister.
Egyptian politicians and intellectuals often claim that other Arabs borrow their ideas or attitudes from Egypt. It would not, therefore, be surprising if they claim that the Saudi rulers are copying president Husni Mubarak in their recent overtures to France, in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from the US, which has become very unpopular in the Muslim world.
Egypt, under president Husni Mubarak, receives the second largest amount of US foreign aid per annum after Israel, but unlike Israel pays a very high price for it. Not only does it openly and loyally back US foreign policy in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world, but it is also publicly committed to the US government's ‘war or terrorism', which is really an ill-disguised assault on Islamic activists and Islamic groups.
That president Husni Mubarak of Egypt has been planning for some time to ensure that he is succeeded by his 41-year-old son Jamal, when he eventually retires, has been clear enough to leave no one in any doubt. But recent local, regional and international events have caused him to throw caution to the winds and accelerate his plotting to ensure that Jamal will not face a credible challenge at the presidential elections in 2011.
A sense of nightmarish unease must have descended on ruling circles in Damascus when former Syrian vice-president Abd al-Halim Khaddam became, shortly before the start of the New Year, the country’s first high-level official to break ranks with the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Asad.
As this article is written, it is still far from clear as to whether the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, scheduled for January 25, will take place. At the time, the situation is that special polling centres had opened their doors on January 21 for members of the Palestinian security forces to cast their votes in three days of early voting.
