Articles

Although Western propaganda portrays the Hamas takeover of Ghazzah as a coup against the legitimate power there, this is an exact inversion of the real situation. While the world’s attention turned to the West Bank and the politicking there after Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Hamas government, people in Ghazzah were celebrating what many regarded as liberation from the oppression and exploitation of Fatah security officials, who were particularly known for their extortion from shopkeepers, businessmen and others, and for living well on the proceeds.

An uneasy calm settled over Nahr al-Bared camp when Lebanese defence minister Elias al-Murr declared on June 22 that government troops had captured all the positions of the Islamic militants holed up on the outskirts of this refugee-camp outside the Lebanese city of Tripoli. The announcement marked the end of a fierce battle in which the thud of bombing and the clatter of machine-gun fire echoed almost continuously around Nahr al-Bared while most of its 40,000 residents sought refuge mainly in the nearby Beddawi refugee camp.

It sounds strange, but even the highly secular western media now admit that the people of Somalia “yearn” for the return of the Islamic Courts Union, which had ruled some parts of the country, including the capital (Mogadishu), for several months before it was toppled as a result of the US-backed invasion by the Ethiopian army. The admission follows the failure of the so-called transnational federal government (TFG), restored by the invasion and backed by the West and the UN, to introduce even a semblance of peace or law and order since the expulsion of the ICU

When it hit the airwaves in 1996, Al-Jazeera took the Arab world by storm. Compared to the sterile reporting of government-controlled channels in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera came as a breath of fresh air, although the better informed knew this was a mirage. Al-Jazeera was slick and took on some subjects (though not all) that the rest of the Arab media dared not broach.

After another particularly bloody week in which the Americans and their Western allies killed more than 100 Afghan civilians, President Hamid Karzai stood on the lawn of the presidential palace on June 23 to denounce the air strikes and artillery fire as “careless”. He asserted: “Afghan life is not cheap and should not be treated as such.” These sound like brave words, but they carry little weight with the Americans or anyone else. They, as well as Karzai, know that Afghans’ lives are indeed cheap.

While Americans celebrate the US Declaration of Independence on July 4, campaigners around the world will mark the 2,000th day since the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention center on January 11, 2002. In this issue, FAHAD ANSARI discusses the differences between the ideals that the US claims to represent and its own behavior in the world today.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was in the headlines again last month. On June 12, Milan Martic, the former leader of the rebel Serb authorities in Croatia, was found guilty of most of the charges in the indictment against him. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment by the ICTY.

As the tragedy of Iraq draws attention to the problem of sectarianism in the Muslim world, the Majma al-Taqrib in Tehran has led efforts against this problem. IQBAL SIDDIQUI discusses issues that arose during its latest conference, at the Islamic Centre of England, in London, on June 23 & 24.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has become the only world superpower, with the result that its imperial ambitions have inflated enormously. In the past, those ambitions centred on the establishment of a monopoly over economic resources, such as oil, gas and other minerals, and of political control of those countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, that possess them. But with the arrival of president Bush at the White House those ambitions began to include the imposition of Christianity as the world’s dominant religion.

Chechnya: The Case for Independence by Tony Wood. Pub: Verso Books, London, UK, 2007. Pp: 199. Pbk: £12.99.