War is a grim business, the more so in Afghanistan, but occasionally nuggets of humour emerge even from that harsh landscape. The latest is the Americans’ announcement that they will train Afghans to fight...
Indian Muslims won a brief respite last month when Hindu extremists were forced to postpone plans to start building a temple on the site of the demolished Babri masjid in Ayodhya on March 15...
Colonel John Garang, leader of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which has been fighting Khartoum for almost two decades to establish a separate state in the south of the country, has apparently secured US backing for his programme, if the high-level reception and the funding he received during his recent visit to Washington is anything to go by...
Tatarastan, the only Muslim republic still in the Russian Federation, is losing the autonomy that it gained in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and had consolidated since then. It has also been forced to put on hold the legislation it passed in early 2001, in defiance of Russian objections...
Despite making tall claims about wiping out Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the Shahi Kot mountains, reports from the area reveal a very different picture. Figures given out by the US for its latest operation, codenamed Operation Anaconda, after the snake that squeezes its prey to death, mention an estimated 1,000 Taliban...
Dead people, especially if they happen to be political leaders, assume a stature larger than life in many ‘third world’ countries. Politicians in Bangladesh, however, have turned the worship of dead leaders into a religious cult.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International has confirmed reports of continued repression by Beijing of its Muslim population.
A week of mayhem by Hindu terrorists that erupted on February 27 left at least 700 people officially dead, most of them Muslims, in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Eyewitnesses, including western journalists, have put the death toll at three times this figure, with many deaths from remote villages not being recorded at all.
Georgia, a member of the former Soviet Union, is in Moscow’s own back yard. So when America’s military links with Georgia were first announced, senior Russian officials were outraged by the prospect of the forces of their former cold war adversary being so close.
Soon after September 11 reports surfaced of Arab and Muslim men being arrested, shackled, denied access to lawyers and families, refused medical attention and sometimes even beaten, while in the custody of United States authorities.
As the fighting on March 2 in the Arma mountains showed, the war in Afghanistan is far from over. On March 4th, the Pentagon admitted that eight American soldiers had been killed and 50 injured in the latest US offensive.
Deep divisions in the interim Afghan government, papered over and ignored under American pressure, erupted last month when Abdul Rahman, the minister of aviation and tourism, was beaten to death on the tarmac of Kabul airport on February 14.
The International Prisoners of Faith conference organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission attracted a larger crowd than expected in London on 17 February 2002. During the day-long event academics, ulama, Islamic activists and IHRC officers addressed attendees on aspects of imprisonment for one’s beliefs.
Vladimir Putin — a former KGB operative plucked from obscurity by President Boris Yeltsin, who appointed him prime minister of Russia — used the Chechen war to secure his election as president in March 2000, and continues to exploit it to maintain his popularity while conceding privately that victory is not on the cards.
The US went into Afghanistan to get rid of the wicked Taliban, capture Usama bin Ladin, destroy al-Qaeda, restore law and order, and bring peace to the war-torn country. Amid much fanfare the Taliban were vanquished, thanks to massive aerial bombardment using 15,000-pound bombs fancifully described as “daisy cutters”...
An American-style crackdown on Muslim activists and aid-workers throughout the Balkans has been under way since September 11. The Bosnian government’s surrender of six Algerians, suspected of having links with al-Qaeda...
Some 2,700 participants, ranging from kings, presidents and business moguls to professors, clergymen and celebrities, paid $25,000 each to get into the gathering...
America’s treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan has embarrassed even its closest allies. France and Germany have officially urged Washington to ensure that the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are treated lawfully, and the European Union has called for their rights to be protected.
The former Soviet republics of Central Asia are not teeming with US servicemen, but more than 1,000 troops are based in Uzbekistan, and US forces have been allowed to use air-bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
With Qazi Husain Ahmed, its amir (leader), in detention since October, the Jama’at-e Islami, an Islamic political party in Pakistan, is feeling somewhat adrift, although acting amir Syed Munawwar Hasan is trying gamely to lead.
