A few weeks after the September 2001 incident, the Egyptian authorities began an appeal for what they called "the renewal of religious discourse".
Colonel Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s humiliating attempts in the last several years to woo the US have culminated in his country’s formal acceptance of responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon achieved his objective of forcing an end to the road map peace plan last month, when Hamas and Islamic Jihad issued a joint statement formally ending the conditional ceasefire they had declared on June 29.
Israeli military aircraft attacked villages in southern Lebanon on August 10, and flew at low level over Beirut early the next morning, in the latest stage of a significant escalation of its constant tension with Hizbullah early this month. It had resumed air operations over Lebanon earlier in August after a long gap.
The zionists continue to build a wall cutting off Palestinian villages and towns from each other under the excuse of "security." The same excuse has been advanced in the past for Jewish settlements...
Israeli authorities announced on July 27 that they will release 500 Palestinian prisoners, including 100 associated with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad Islamic movements, as a goodwill gesture towards the Palestinian Authority (PA), to facilitate the progress of the ‘road map’ peace plan.
Abbas Madani, the leader of Algeria’s banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and his deputy, Ali Belhadj, were released from house arrest and jail respectively on July 2...
US intelligence agencies, whose operatives now maintain a strong presence in Arab capitals and rural areas, play a decisive role in determining what organisations, or individuals, are to be classified as terrorists or financiers of terrorism, and therefore prosecuted or banned.
Bashar al-Asad, who succeeded his father, Hafez, as president in July 2000, has come under strong attack from Syrian human-rights groups, not only for failing to reform the repressive political and judicial systems he has inherited...
American and British claims that Iraq was calm except for limited resistance by a few pro-Saddam stragglers were blown away on June 24, when six British soldiers were killed by angry people in Majar al-Kabbir, a small town north of Basra, in response to aggressive and intrusive anti-resistance operations.
Jordan’s parliamentary elections finally took place on June 17, almost two years after the dissolution of the previous parliament at the end of its four-year term in July 2001. Since that time, king Abdullah II had repeatedly postponed elections, citing ‘regional circumstances’.
The two summit meetings at Sharm al-Shaikh on June 3, attended by US president George W. Bush, Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, and the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain, and at the royal palace at Aqaba, Jordan...
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon became a champion for peace on May 25, when he persuaded his cabinet to accept the US’s ‘roadmap’ for peace.
A week after the four bomb blasts in Riyadh which killed 24 people on May 12, the US, Britain and Germany shut down their embassies in Saudi Arabia after warnings that more deadly attacks could be expected.
Tens of thousands of celebrating Iraqis welcomed Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq’s main Islamic movement, as he journeyed through the south of the country to Najaf after his return from exile in Islamic Iran on May 10.
The Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, was rocked by four massive explosions late on May 12, as Crescent was going to press. They were apparently aimed at Western targets in the city, including residential compounds where Western expatriates live, and the headquarters of an American-owned company, the Saudi Maintenance Company.
The announcement on April 29 by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld that American troops and aircraft would be moved out of Saudi Arabia by the end of the summer does not mean the end of trouble for the ruling al-Saud family.
Only days after the parliamentary elections in Yemen on April 27, the US agency for international aid (USAID) announced the return of its mission to the country after seven years, saying that its activities would be restricted to the areas of public health, primary education and the provision of security, and the sources of income and food in certain rural areas.
America’s superhawks, also known as "neocons" (neo-conservatives), are ecstatic about the turn of events in Iraq, especially the lack of any effective resistance to the military takeover of Baghdad.
General Jay Garner, the American-appointed ruler of Iraq, faced massive demonstrations in the centre of Baghdad on April 28, as he convened a conference of Iraqi leaders intended to discuss the formation of an interim administration — under his supervision — for the country.
