Kazakhstan lifted the ban on Russian rocket launches from the launching-pad at Baikonur on September 1, ending a two-month stand-off between the two countries.
When, like Kyrgyzstan, you are a small land-locked country in a volatile region, with a poorly-equipped army, you do not engage in battle highly-motivated groups that even mighty Russia is not confident of defeating and that are not targeting you.
Black activist Al Sharpton, who organised a vigil at the site of the shooting on February 9, asked at a forum on police brutality on the night of the shooting, ‘Are we talking about policing or are we talking about a firing squad?’ He pointed out that Amadou must have fallen to the ground after being hit twice or thrice.
People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a Muslim organization based in Cape Town in South Africa, where crime and drugs are a growing threat to everyone, has had a particularly bad press in South Africa.
The men who surround Nawaz Sharif, with hard looks, bulging bellies and overflowing bank accounts, are casting nervous glances over their shoulders these days. The prime minister of the ‘heavy mandate’ suddenly appears clueless and out of his depth.
Sister Safa Merve Kavakci’s hijab battle dominated the political debate in Turkey about the functioning of democratic norms and secularism until it was buried by the August earthquake. While the secular Kemalist government got egg on its face for its poor handling of the rescue efforts, the hijab issue is still being debated.
After 200 years of relentless struggle, the people of the Caucasus are rolling the frontiers of Russia, slowly but surely, back to where they rightly belong. In the latest fighting in Dagestan, a few hundred Chechen mujahideen led by the intrepid commander Shamil Basayev...
A Kashmiri alim based in Oldham, UK, is fighting government attempts to deport him to Pakistan. Shafiq ur-Rahman, who came to the UK in 1993 as an imam, is accused of being the UK leader of the Lashkar Tayyaba (LT) Islamic group fighting the Indian occupation of Kashmir.
Surprised Nigerians have witnessed two unprecedented events in the last month. A new truth-commission, known as the Oputa Panel, held its first hearings into abuses of power by military rulers, and the administration of the recently-elected president Olusegun Obasanjo announced a plan for the drastic reduction of the army that could cut it by half. Nigerians are watching both developments with interest and no small trepidation.
When the Saudi defence minister, prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, appeared in Islamabad in May, and reportedly toured Pakistani nuclear installations with prime minister Nawaz Sharif, he congratulated his hosts on the acquisition of the latest military technology of which ‘the Muslim was proud’...
The two Moroccan enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, occupied by Spain for more than five centuries, are unlikely to be returned to their rightful owners in the forseeable future, if Madrid’s reaction to a recent Moroccan call for a ‘bilateral rethink’ on the issue, and Rabat’s anxiety to avoid a confrontation, are anything to go by.
The Turkish government requested 45,000 body-bags from the UN on August 24, giving the first clear indication of the final death-toll it is expecting from the earthquake that struck north-western Turkey at 3am on the morning of August 17.
Russian troops launched military operations on Muslims controlling an area of southern Dagestan on August 8, after claiming that Chechen fighters had crossed the border the previous day and begun fortifying the villages of Anslta and Rakhata in the Botlikh district
Shaikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian alim and leader of the Gama’a Al-Islamiyya who is being held in solitary confinement in a US jail on spurious terrorism charges, is gravely ill. His already failing health has deteriorated rapidly in the last few months.
Fears of US action against Shaikh Osama bin Laden were further raised on August 9, when US military aircraft carrying commandos were reported to have landed at Islamabad and Quetta airports. Speaking at a rally later the same day, Maulana Fazalur Rahman, head of the pro-Taleban Jami’at Ulama-e Islam (JUI)...
The Muslim campaign against the US government’s Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, by which Muslims can be arrested, imprisoned and deported without ever being charged with any offence, or even informed of the evidence being used against them...
While Russian president Boris Yeltsin spends his few sober moments fighting with whoever happens to be prime minister at the time, his interior ministry troops are trying to assuage their injured pride by provoking fights with Chechen mujahideen. It seems that some people never learn, either from their own mistakes nor from others’.
Last month’s brief troubles in Tehran - which were effectively ended by the mass rally on July 14 at which almost one million people came into Tehran’s streets to support the Islamic system and the Rahbar, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei - were clearly manipulated by the enemies of the Islamic Revolution.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis marched in the streets of Lahore on July 25 to protest against prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s acceptance of a US-imposed settlement to the confrontation with India in occupied Kashmir which amounted to a humiliating withdrawal by Pakistan.
The Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo - former military dictator and retired general before his controversial election as head of state last February has stepped up his purge of Hausa and Fulani officers in the security forces, largely replacing them with members of his own Yoruba tribe.
