Articles

Until his defeat in Spain’s elections in March, José María Aznar was a key member of the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’. His defeat, coming after the Madrid bombing, caused fury in Washington. FRANCISCO J. ROMERO SALVADÓ discusses its causes and repercussions...

US president George W. Bush’s endorsement of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plans for redesigning and legitimising the political infrastructure of its occupation of Palestine has been widely decried...

Most cliches are cliches because they contain at least an element of truth. The phrase ‘divide and rule’ is a case in point; the phenomenon has been recognised as a strategy of political power, particularly imperial power, since at least Roman times, and was raised to an art-form by the British during their colonial heyday...

Muslims in the Russian Federation and in China – who are pursuing their ‘universal right’ to self-determination in the face of horrendous opposition – were probably not surprised by the abrupt way in which moves in the UN to condemn violations of human rights in China and by Russia were blocked...

Cricket is over; now let’s get back to the real world. The first phase of general elections in the "world’s largest democracy" began on 20 April 2004...

The UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva debated a new code, the Human Rights Norms for Business, on April 8, in the face of strong opposition from companies and governments in the West and developing countries...

In the decade since the genocide in Rwanda, which resulted in the murders of more than 800,000 people in 100 days, the Muslim population of the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic West African country has more than doubled...

The Sudanese government has over the years been under strong pressure from western countries and international organisations, led by the US, to concede to rebel groups (which are predominantly Christian) the right to secede from the mainly Muslim north...

Even by modern standards, the last month has been spectacularly bloody in the scale of the political violence seen. It opened with the Ashura killings in Iraq and Pakistan, in which several hundred Shi’a were slaughtered...

The assassination of Shaikh Ahmed Yassin as he returned to his home after fajr prayers on March 22, 2004 (Safar 1, 1425) was a shock but not a surprise. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had declared him to be at the top of the list for assassination, and he had survived an attempt on his life in September last year, when Israeli fighter aircraft fired several missiles at the building in which he was staying...