The peace deal signed on July 21 by the Sudanese government and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), the predominantly Christian rebel group that has been fighting Khartoum for 20 years...
The US-imposed Afghan government has begun to unravel. Public works minister Haji Abdul-Qadir, who was also one of three vice presidents, was gunned down in broad daylight in Kabul on July 6.
The war-clouds of Indo-Pak nuclear conflict have cleared temporarily, and so has media attention. The Vajpayee government had to keep the media and public distracted, lest they turn their attention to Gujrat.
Having bludgeoned the Sudanese government into cooperating with the “war on terrorism”, American officials now appear to believe that they can also bully it into accepting their plan to end the 19-year war between Khartoum and southern Sudanese rebels.
The utter subservience of international institutions to the United States was confirmed on July 12, when the UN Security Council accepted American terms for its recognition of the newly-established International Criminal Court (ICC).
Twenty-three years after the Islamic Revolution, Iranians continue to debate vigorously several issues that have important implications for the future of the Islamic Republic. Heading their agenda is the question of relations with the US, which were severed by Washington in early 1980. The country’s economy and the roles of the press and judiciary are also debated with great passion.
When the election of Olusegun Obasanjo as president on May 29, 1999, brought to an end 16 years of military rule, Nigerians were understandably relieved. And when the new president promised to strengthen democracy in the country, and to eradicate the culture of public corruption that Nigeria is notorious for, their relief grew into optimism.
Pakistani president general Pervez Musharraf has made a grand retreat on Kashmir while pretending to be safeguarding his country’s interests. The unkindest cut is that this has happened under American pressure despite Musharraf’s abandoning a 25-year policy on Afghanistan in order to appease Washington.
fghanistan’s long-awaited Loya Jirga (council of leaders) finally opened 24 hours late, on June 11. The circumstances make it clear that the traditional Afghan institution is in fact now little more than a front for decisions being made behind the scenes by the country’s established faction leaders...
The US government set off another round of anti-terrorist hysteria on June 10 by announcing that it had arrested an American Muslim alleged to have been planning an attack on a major US city.
The UN’s long-awaited Food Summit, which was postponed after September 11, opened in Rome on June 10, only to be snubbed by western governments only sending junior-level delegations to attend it, although UN officials and leaders of African countries regarded it as crucially important when there are currently famines looming in several southern African countries.
The mother of all Jirgas, touted as the panacea for all of Afghanistan’s problems, is turning into a grand farce. Amid allegations that tribal elders have been offered bribes of up to US$1,000 by various warlords in Paktia province to elect them to the Loya Jirga...
Pakistani president general Perwez Musharraf walked a fine line in his televised address to the nation on May 27, defiantly asserting Pakistan’s willingness to defend itself against India for popular consumption while also asserting his commitment to prevent ‘terrorists’...
The whole world is anxious to find out about the ‘post pogrom’ situation in Gujrat. They will have to be patient; the pogrom is not yet over.
The war in Afghanistan had spilled over into Pakistan long before the car/bus bomb explosion in Karachi on May 8 that killed 16 people, 11 of them French technicians working on Pakistan’s submarine project.
A month after an attempted coup by pro-American right-wingers in Venezuela failed to overthrow the popularly-elected government of Hugo Chavez in the world’s fourth largest oil-producing country, more and more details are becoming known of the US’s role it.
The long-awaited report on the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces in the UN ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica in 1995 blames the Dutch government, its army and the UN for the genocide. Prepared by the Netherlands Institute for War Documents (NIOD) and published on April 10, the 7,000-page document strongly criticises the government for sending ill-prepared troops on a vaguely defined mission to the UN safe haven...
The presidents of the five Caspian Sea littoral countries ended a two-day summit in Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital, on April 24 without reaching any agreement on how to share the Caspian and its rich hydrocarbon reserves.
Pakistan goes to the polls on April 30 (after Crescent press time) in a Zia-ul-Haq style referendum designed to legitimate general Perwez Musharraf’s continuing as ‘president’ for another five years.
Sudan’s attempts to normalise relations with its neighbours are being scuppered by the US, which aims to isolate the ‘Islamic rogue state’ and build up support for the Christian separatists led by colonel John Garang.
