The US has demanded that the Taliban in Afghanistan hand the Saudi mujahid Osama bin Laden over to them fro trial by November 14, or face international sanctions.
The Ichkerian capital Jauhar-Ghala (called Grozny by the Russians) was effectively under siege again as Crescent went to press. It had been subjected to repeated air and missile attacks in the previous few days, in which hundreds of people had been killed and thousands left homeless
Iran held a major International Congress on “The Elucidation of the Islamic Revolution” in Tehran from October 2-4, to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Imam Khomeini.
It is reflective of the bankruptcy of the political system in Pakistan that the dismissal of Nawaz Sharif, the ‘elected’ prime minister of ‘heavy mandate’ fame, should be greeted with relief – even joy – rather than protests by Pakistan’s people
Just as a 150-strong Saudi delegation, headed by the kingdom’s minister for industries, Dr Hashem Abdullah Yamani, was about to arrive in Tehran last month, the US announced that it had fresh evidence of Iranian involvement in the Khobar bombings in June 1996.
The UN security council has passed two resolutions this last month, ostensibly against ‘international terrorism’, but in effect backing state terrorism against Islamic movements worldwide.
Atal Bahari Vajpayee, leader of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and prime minister of the country for the last eighteen months, was invited to form the country’s next government on October 11 by the country’s president, K R Narayanan, on October 11.
Thousand of Chechen civilians have been killed or driven from their homes in several weeks of Russian military operations in the north of the country that began in the middle of September.
In the last issue of Crescent International, we reported the ruling of the South African Human Rights Comission (HRC) that a Muslim schoolgirl who was suspended from a top private school in South Africa for writing an essay about Palestine had had her human rights violated.
Asserting his authority as supreme leader but exercising it with compassion, the Rahbar of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, brought the rising temperature of political debate in Iran under control during his khutbah on Friday, October 1.
Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo apparently shares certain qualities with former US president Gerald Ford, of whom it was famously said that he could not go down the stairs and chew gum at the same time.
The men in khaki in Pakistan have a habit of storming the citadels of power in the middle of the night. General Pervaiz Musharraf, the army chief and a commando to boot, literally dropped in from the sky.
Gul Aslan, a journalist with Selam, a weekly Islamic newsmagazine in Turkey, was released from jail on August 20, 1999. She had been held since May 1996, accused of being a member of an Islamic organization. At the time of her arrest, she was just 21 years old and the mother of a six-month-old daughter.
Hoping to capitalize on the improved relations between Turkey and Greece, both victims of recent earthquakes, US president Bill Clinton is once again attempting to impose a political settlement on divided Cyprus. Last month, he appointed a new special envoy, Al Moses, for the island to replace Richard Holbrook...
Moscow has been desperately trying to involve the west in its futile war in the Caucasus by invoking the name of Osama bin Laden, the US’s current villain of the month, but with little success so far.
The Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), the military force which grew from nothing to become the main representative and protector of the Kosovars against the Serbs during the years of persecution and oppression before NATO intervention in the region earlier this year, was formally disbanded on September 20, when talks with NATO and KFOR commanders were finally concluded nearly 24 hours behind schedule.
Political instability is so much a part of life in Pakistan that it hardly evokes any concern. It is when the escalation of political instability begins to threaten economic life that the powers-that-be get restless and send their current ‘leader’ packing. That point may be approaching fast for prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
The South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) ruled last month that a Muslim schoolgirl, Layla Cassim, who was suspended for writing an essay about Palestine had had her rights violated by her school, Crawford College.
Nigerian troops cancelled their planned withdrawal from Sierra Leone last month, after the rebel Revolutionary United Front failed to disarm as agreed in the July peace deal. Fears remain of a resumption of the brutal fighting that has killed thousands and left many more deliberately maimed.
The optimism generated by Eritrea’s acceptance of a three-part accord proposed by the Organization of African Unity to end the costly 17-month Ethio-Eritrean war has given way to a mood of pessimism after Addis Ababa rejected the final part.
