Articles

Shaheed Samer Karameh was buried with full military honours on March 17, the day after he died in a Palestinian hospital.

Since its creation more than 50 years ago, Pakistan has been trapped in a crisis of identity. For the ruling elite, it has meant the continuation of raj by other means with all the attendant pomp, ceremony and priveleges.

One feature of the recent Iraq crisis was the role played by Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations. A couple of weeks after returning in triumph from Baghdad, Annan was honoured with a meeting with Bill Clinton at the White House and presidential praise for his efforts, which he reciprocated by appreciating Washington’s role.

Like newly-hatched chicks, rulers of the Central Asian republics have been reluctant to stray too far from the cozy warmth of mother Russia even if the bipolar world was dead.

Kosova went to the polls on March 22, to re-elect Dr Ibrahim Rugova as president and to elect 130 members to the country’s second Parliament, even though the first Parliament, elected in 1992, was never able to meet.

THE AGONY OF ALGERIA By Martin Stone. Published by Columbia University Press, New York, NY, US. 1997. pp. 274. Pbk: US$16.50.

Nowhere in the Middle East was the anger of the masses at yet another threatened strike against Iraq by US-British forces more apparent than in Jordan.

As Serbia moves against another of Europe’s indigenous Muslim communities, comparisons are inevitably drawn with events in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbs’ attempted genocide of the Muslims of Bosnia had a great impact on Muslims everywhere.

Fifty years after its creation, Pakistan is still unsure of its identity. Notwithstanding the Zionist settler entity in Palestine, Pakistan is the only country in the world to have come into existence on the basis of religion - Islam - but it has yet to find its moorings.

The long awaited and feared Serb assault on the Muslims of Kosova was feared to have begun earlier this month. In scenes eerily reminiscent to the beginning of the Serb assault on Bosnia-Herzegovina...