Articles

On December 22, almost exactly 22 years after the Soviets installed a puppet government (on December 27, 1979, headed by Babrak Karmal) in Kabul, the Americans repeated the feat. Hamid Karzai was “sworn in” as prime minister with British troops guarding the interior ministry building where the ceremony took place...

Thirteen Pakistani troops were reported killed on December 26, as a result of Indian shelling across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir.

The persistent speculation of the last month about whether Somalia will be the next battleground in the US’s “war on terrorism” is practically over. Senior US government officials assert that Washington is indeed interested in Somalia, and US special forces and diplomats have already arrived there.

In a move to cripple Muslim charitable work, the US government moved against three leading charities during Ramadhan, accusing them of “supporting terrorism”.

THE GLOBAL GAMBLE: WASHINGTON’S FAUSTIAN BID FOR WORLD DOMINANCE by Peter Gowan. Pub: Verso Books, London/New York, 1999. Pbk: 320. £13.00 / $ 20.00

While assorted representatives of Afghan groups were meeting with Western leaders in Bonn to map out a government for Afghanistan “freely determined by its own people,” and American bombs were continuing to fall on towns and villages in some parts of the country, two other conferences on Afghanistan’s future were taking place in Washington and Pakistan.

In the two-month period from October 7 to December 7, the Taliban’s world has been turned upside down; from controlling more than 90 percent of Afghanistan’s territory they were forced to surrender their last stronghold of Qandahar to tribal elders on December 7.

Mubarak has ordered the arrest of 94 Islamic activists and their appearance before a military tribunal, accusing them of plotting terrorism against American, Israeli, Russian and Balkan targets. According to Muntassir al-Ziyat, an Egyptian lawyer representing 87 of those appearing before the military tribunal...

Intoxicated by the devastating display of America’s military juggernaut in Afghanistan, senior US officials have been issuing bellicose statements about Iraq. President George W Bush joined the chorus on November 26 when he warned Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to readmit UN arms-inspectors or face unspecified consequences.

Two Palestinian children, one of them just three years old, were killed in al-Khalil (Hebron) on December 10 when two missiles fired from Apache helicopters — supplied to Israel by the US after the current intifada began last year — slammed into cars at the city’s busy al-Salaam junction during the afternoon rush-hour.