The publication of a 900-page congressional report last month into intelligence lapses before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September 2001, ignited speculation about Saudi involvement after the White House refused to authorise the publication of 28 pages reportedly pertaining to allegations against the Saudis.
Five months after the Turkish government bowed to popular pressure to abstain from the US’s war against Iraq, it is continuing to face the consequences. Although the precise background and circumstances of the US’s arrest of a Turkish military unit in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyyah on July 4 remain unclear...
General Pervez Musharraf’s call for the recognition of zionist Israel, made during his visit to the US last month, hit the people of Pakistan like a bombshell. During a television interview on June 29, he called for an open debate in the media.
US military authorities said on July 3 that president George W. Bush has selected six of the estimated 680 Muslim detainees illegally held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base for trial by military tribunal and possible execution.
Thirty-one months after removing the Taliban from power, the Americans are being forced to consider the unthinkable: strike a deal with the Taliban for power-sharing in return for a face-saving exit for US forces from Afghanistan. This remarkable turn-around has occurred primarily because the Afghans have refused to be cowed by US firepower...
Last month’s student protests in Tehran have once again demonstrated the West’s animosity to Islam and the Islamic Republic. Despite the miniscule size of the protest group–a few hundred at most–it was immediately projected in the Western media and by American officials as reflecting the "unpopularity" of the Islamic government.
There have been two inter-related constants in Pakistan’s foreign policy: appeasement of the US, and warding off predatory India. The latter has been the bane of Pakistani policy-makers since the country came into existence in 1947; the core issue that has soured relations with India is the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The "suicide bombing" by two young women (both apparently Chechens) on July 5, which killed 14 people at an open-air rock festival on the outskirts of Moscow, has proven to be a blow to president Vladimir Putin’s efforts to convince the Russian people that the war is over, and has been won.
Yashwant Sinha, India’s external affairs minister, has joined the fire-breathing Indian home minister L K Advani in threatening a "pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan over Kashmir. In an interview published in the Hindustan Times on April 6, Sinha repeated the threat which had first been carried by the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP), three days earlier.
That the unanimous approval of the Shari’ah Bill by the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) assembly on June 2 should send the secular elites into a frenzy is a telling sign of the true state of affairs in the "Islamic Republic" of Pakistan.
US attorney general John Ashcroft remains unrepentant despite a stinging rebuke by Glenn A. Fine, his department’s own inspector general, confirming enormous abuses of detainees since September 2001. In a report released on June 3, Fine highlights the mistreatment of 762 persons, some of them held by the government for as long as eight months without charge.
During his African tour this month, there were both questions about the invasion of Iraq and jokes about president Bush, especially relating to the growing US budget deficit. On Iraq he was asked about Iraq’s alleged purchase of uranium from Niger.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is one of Central Asian’s most repressive rulers. Yet the US, which claims to be the world’s main protector of human rights, has made him its ‘best friend’ in the region since September 2001.
President Vladimir Putin is now even more determined to resist the Chechen people’s fight for independence, as he faces parliamentary elections this year and a presidential poll next year. Anxious to give the impression that the pledge he was elected on–to end the Chechens’ struggle for independence–has in fact been carried out...
Emboldened by the relative ease with which Saddam’s regime was overthrown, American hawks and neo-conservatives are now pushing for "regime change" in Tehran as well. Pro-monarchist groups, led by Reza Pahlavi, son of the late ex-Shah...
How serious is Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee about a dialogue with Pakistan to resolve the thorny issue of Jammu and Kashmir by peaceful means? In Pakistan there seems to be great euphoria about the volte face in India’s stance, first announced on April 18 by Vajpayee during a visit to Srinagar, capital of Indian-occupied Kashmir.
1The telephone conversation between Pakistani prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, on April 28, is believed to have renewed hopes for restored diplomatic relations between the two nuclear neighbours.
As evidence emerges of manipulation of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass-destruction (WMDs) by the governments of the US and Britain, demands for proof that Baghdad did indeed possess such weapons are being replaced by calls for the abandonment of an unsustainable stand.
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria was returned to a second term in office as a result of the elections held on April 19, amid loud complaints of foul play by the opposition and serious reservations of international and local monitors. The official results, announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), were that Obasanjo had met the dual requirement for victory of winning an overall majority...
The peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers have hit a snag: the Tigers have boycotted the meeting to be held in Japan in June to solicit financial support from donors. A ceasefire in effect since February 2002 is now in jeopardy because of an announcement on April 21 by Anton Balasingham, the Tigers’ representative
