The Denial of Bosnia by Rusmir Mahmutcehajic. Pub: Penn State University Press, University Park, PA, 2001. Pp: 156. $24.95.

There is little to be said for Saddam Hussein, but he has certainly managed to get on Washington’s nerves. For the last decade he has been the bogey-man that the Americans have invoked whenever they wanted to justify such things as their occupation of the Middle East, or to distract attention from unpleasantnesses elsewhere.

Globalization has become one of the buzz words of our era. But it means many different things to different people, and is the focus of an intense and global protest movement. YUSUF AL-KHABBAZ discusses.

Later this month, the US and its allies will mark the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11 of last year. IQBAL SIDDIQUI discusses some of the implications of the events of the last year for Muslims and the global Islamic movement

In a move that is certain to test president Mubarak’s determination to avoid a public quarrel with the US, the US government has refused to give more aid to the Egyptian government. Syria announced that Farouq Shara, its foreign minister, would visit Egypt to express solidarity against the US and protect Arab interests.

The ink on the agreement signed by Israeli defence minister Benny Ben-Eliezer with the Palestinian Authority (PA) was not even dry when the agreement was sabotaged. Ben-Eliezer said that it would be put on hold for several weeks because there was still a “potential” for Palestinian violence in the West Bank. ..

Events in Afghanistan are not going according to America’s script, despite tall claims of having routed the Taliban and al-Qa’ida. It is not just attacks on American and other so-called coalition forces, which are now becoming more frequent, but also the continuing factional fighting, especially between forces loyal to defence minister Mohammed Fahim and forces loyal to president Hamid Karzai...

The crash of a Russian army helicopter on August 19 near Johar-Gala (Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, also known as Ichkeria), in which at least 114 Russian soldiers, many of them officers, died, was a great embarrassment both to the military and to president Vladimir Putin.

Few politicians in Turkey’s recent history have stirred interest as have the secular and pro-Western Ismail Cem and Kemal Dervis.

Dr Mazen al-Najjar’s history encapsulates the plight of the Palestinians: they are accused of everything, but nobody is prepared to listen to their story. Dr Najjar, 43 years old and a former instructor at the University of Southern Florida, was finally released on August 24.

It was a grisly reminder of the Uzbek government’s brutality in dealing with Islamic activists. The bodies of two Uzbek prisoners who had died under torture while in police custody were handed back to their families on August 8 for burial.