Articles

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.

Over fifty years after the United Nations proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the human rights of the vast majority of people in the world are completely unprotected.

It is difficult to believe, surveying Pakistan’s 52-year history, that when the country was founded in 1947, Islamic activists all over the world looked to it for leadership and inspiration.

Societies governed by man-made laws run the risk of getting into awkward situations. Take the example of Canada where the Supreme Court ruled last month that the provincial government must change within six months the Family Law Act of Ontario relating to spousal benefits.

‘Internationalisation’ has become the new buzzword in the post-Kargil environment in Pakistan. Government spokesmen miss no opportunity to put the most positive spin on the Washington Agreement that prime minister Nawaz Sharif was humiliatingly forced into on July 4.

Arab interior and justice ministers met in Jeddah, in the Hijaz, on August 1 to establish structures for the implementation of the Arab treaty against ‘terrorism’ which came into force on May 7 following its ratification by seven Arab League member states.

With a new king in Morocco, and a recently elected president in Algeria, relations between the two North African neighbours - frosty at the best of times, over the western Saharan issue - have suddenly thawed.