China is studying how European immigrants to North America wiped out the indigenous peoples and seized their country.
Following in the footsteps of the occupiers of Palestine, L. K. Advani, the Indian home affairs minister, announced on August 20 in Srinagar, capital of Indian-occupied Kashmir, that Indian soldiers accused of torture, extrajudicial executions or rape of women would be immune to prosecution under a new law.
The North Atlantic Council (NAC), the decision-making body of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), on August 21 authorized the deployment of 3,500 allied troops to Macedonia to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian militants.
The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan arrested 24 staff members of a German charity working in Kabul on August 5, setting off yet another international outcry about their alleged inhumanity.
Until a month ago it was a firm western policy to arm the Macedonian military and isolate Albanian fighters by branding them as ‘terrorists’ out to break up the country in their alleged pursuit of ‘Greater Albania’.
Since China and Russia recently signed a treaty of friendship in Moscow, supposed by some to be a response to US president George W. Bush’s missile project, trade and military contacts between Moscow and Washington have mushroomed.
The recent ban on Turkey’s Islamist Fazilat (‘Virtue’) Party (Fazilet Partisi or FP) caused division in the ranks of the country’s largest Islamist party along the lines of a longstanding rift between its so-called “traditionalist”/ “loyalist” and “modernist” / “reformist” factions.
Perhaps for the first time in history, a Pakistani ruler has stood his ground against India on an issue that is vital to his country’s survival. Previous Pakistani rulers often camouflaged their sell-out to India by citing external pressures or difficult circumstances.
The Chechen mujahideen lost a prominent commander late last month; with the martyrdom of Arbi Alaa-Eddin Barayev on June 23 during heavy fighting in the village of Alkhan-Kala, about 15km southwest of the Chechen capital, Johar-Gala (Grozny).
As Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf headed for Agra for another summit-meeting with Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the divergent expectations of the two countries became clear in the manner in which they formulated their respective approaches.
There were angry demonstrations in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, on June 25 as Macedonians protested that members of the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) and other Muslims had been allowed to escape from the village of Aracinovo in the outskirts of Skopje.
A vigorous debate is underway in York Region (the site of Crescent’s Canada office), on the question of racism, or more precisely how to address the issue of racism in the school curriculum.
Commentators in Pakistan as well as abroad expressed surprise when general Pervez Musharraf assumed the title of president on June 20. It is a step in the opposite direction “to the restoration of democracy”, lamented a US state department spokesman after hearing the news.
Turkey’s constitutional court has banned Fazilat (‘Virtue’), the Islamist opposition party, for undermining the country’s secular order. The court’s decision, delivered on June 23, came just a few days after general Huseyn Kivrikoglu, chief of general staff...
For nearly a decade Canada has been regarded by the United Nations as the best country in the world to live in; this may be true, but there are persistent problems reflected in statements of officials and organizations that mar this image. The most obvious is racism, an attitude almost universal in European and North American societies.
When the Muslim Central Asian countries became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, their leaders — who had been regional heads of the KGB in most cases — promised prosperity and democracy.
Iranian president Sayyid Mohammad Khatami was re-elected to office on June 8, in the country’s eighth presidential elections since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The excitement generated by Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s invitation last month to Pakistani chief executive general Pervez Musharraf, for peace talks in Delhi, quickly proved hollow when the very different positions of the two sides were made clear.
The Albanian Muslims of Macedonia, who constitute more than a third of the country’s population, are fighting for the constitutional rights enjoyed by the Slav majority but denied to them, and for autonomy only in the regions inhabited predominantly by them.
