Iraqi faith in security forces shattered in Baghdad blasts
August 22nd, 20090 BAGHDAD — At the site of the deadliest Baghdad bombing in 18 months, Iraqi faith that their security forces could protect them lay shattered in the wreckage. A victim of a bomb attack in a hospital cries while waiting for receiving a medical treatment in Baghdad, August 19, 2009. A series of explosions killed at least 75 people...
Reaching the next generation with ‘Muppet diplomacy’
August 15th, 20090 When Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard invaded Kuwait in 1990, they brought back some unusual war booty to Baghdad: tapes of the region's "Sesame Street" show. Troops also took a Muppet camel. The furry blue monster, Mahboub. Haneen and Karim are two of the Muppet stars in "Shara'a Simsim," the Palestinian version of...New blood invigorates Fatah leadership
BETHLEHEM (IPS) - Despite internal divisions, much criticism and against enormous odds, the Fatah movement has emerged from its Sixth Revolutionary Council here with new blood in its leadership and hopes for a fresh agenda. F Employees of the Fatah election committee count votes during the Fatah congress in the West Bank town of...Lebanese brothers wounded by cluster bombs
BEIRUT - An undetonated cluster bomb originally fired by Israel went off on Wednesday, August 12, injuring 13-year-old Abbas Awali and his 10-year-old brother Hussein as they were gathering wood. A Cluster bomb The date marked the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions that formally outlined international law on the...Fatah: A new beginning or an imminent end?
This is hardly the rational order of things. An overpowering military occupation was meant to be resisted by an equally determined, focused and unyielding national movement, hell-bent on liberation at any cost and by any means. This is the unwritten law that has governed and shielded successful national liberation projects throughout...
Woman takes on Sudan’s ‘indecency laws’
August 7th, 20090 Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a Sudanese journalist, is at the center of a high profile trial in Sudan. She was charged by the government with "indecency" for wearing trousers. This crime carries the penalty of forty lashes from a whip. Lubna Hussein, a former journalist and U.N. press officer, talks to the media outside the court...Chance of a breakthrough with the Kurds?
WASHINGTON — A recent meeting between Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani appears to be a crucial step in lowering tensions in the country, but it has also prompted questions as to whether the two leaders can put an end to their differences. Kurdish President Massoud Barzani The...Fatah fights for survival
BETHLEHEM — Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is fighting for its very survival as the movement faces implosion and attacks from all sides. The issues have come to the fore at the sixth revolutionary council of the party that began in Bethlehem Tuesday. Palestinian President Mahmoud...
The seven pillars of Arab vulnerability
July 31st, 20090 A Damascus bazaar BEIRUT — It's bad enough for ordinary Arabs to sense large gaps in their personal quality of life and widespread dysfunction in the public management of their societies. It is much more painful — though always useful — for such self-awareness to be documented in a credible report by knowledgeable...Fatah’s leadership crisis deepens
Palestinians, whose houses were destroyed during the three-week offensive Israel launched last December, take part in a protest in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, July 29, 2009, calling on international donors to help in reconstructing their houses. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa WASHINGTON (IPS) — Fifty years ago, a small group...Occupation of Iraq continues despite rhetoric
"If the Iraqi forces require further training and further support, we shall examine this then at that time, based on the needs of Iraq," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently informed President Barak Obama in Washington. Iraq's Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim (L) sits alongside U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert...
Maliki teams with U.S. universities to rebuild Iraqi education
July 31st, 20090 Students preparing to graduate from the University of Karbala, Iraq. Aiming to restore the once renowned prestige of its devastated education system, Iraq plans to send up to 50,000 students abroad for advanced studies over the next five years, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a group of educators gathered Saturday...Israel to drop Arabic names
Thousands of road signs are the latest front in Israel's battle to erase Arab heritage from much of the Holy Land, according to critics in both Israel and the wider Arab world. Israeli Romy Achituv applies a sticker with Arabic writing on a public sign in Jerusalem, July 5, 2009. Most street and public signs in Israel are...
Protecting oil key to invasion
July 25th, 20090 Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power. A U.S. soldier stands next to an Iraqi family during a patrol with Iraqi forces in Baghdad, July 21, 2009....Rampaging settlers shatter fragile calm
RAMALLAH (IPS) — The northern Palestinian West Bank is turning into a flashpoint as Israeli settlers continue to attack Palestinian civilians and their property as part of a "price tag" policy. Jewish settlers attack a Palestinian woman in 2003 file photo. On Tuesday Walid Assaf, a Palestinian Legislative Council member, was......
Israeli soldiers admit war crimes
July 18th, 20090 JERUSALEM — Israeli combat soldiers have acknowledged that they forced Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields, needlessly killed unarmed Gazans and improperly used white phosphorus shells to burn down buildings as part of Israel's three-week military offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter. A Palestinian feeding...Kurds caught up in Biden’s diplomatic offensive
WASHINGTON (IPS) — The indefinite postponement of a referendum on Iraqi Kurdistan's controversial draft constitution just days after a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has given rise to speculation that Washington may have played a role in the delay. Supporters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) hold and wave......
Problems go far beyond narrow U.S. focus on terror
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Yemen's recent reappearance on U.S. radar due to its reputation as a safe haven for al Qaeda has brought more attention to the country of 23 million and its persistent underlying problems — the least of which may be terrorism. Yemeni al-Qaeda militants Ali al-Akbari (L) and Saeed Sankar (C) shout slogans...Succession issues face key U.S. allies
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Two key U.S. allies in the Arab world, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are now both facing succession crises that may absorb, or even split, their political elites. This promises a period of political unpredictability ahead in both countries. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak It may well also complicate Pres....Is another conflict in Iraq inevitable?
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Relations between Iraq's various Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman ethnicities are going through a new round of complications since a provision in the draft constitution of the country's northern Kurdistan region declared a range of disputed areas part of the historical Kurdish homeland, infuriating non-Kurds in the...Questions remain about the U.S. role in Iraq
WASHINGTON (IPS) — The United States largely complied with a plan, negotiated with Iraq's government last November, to withdraw its troops from the center of all Iraqi cities by Jun. 30. Vice President Joe Biden But the late June announcement that Vice President Joe Biden will be playing a lead role in coordinating the......
Forget the headlines: Iraqi freedom deferred
As U.S. combat troops redeployed to the outskirts of Iraqi cities on June 30, well-staged celebrations commenced. The pro-U.S. Iraqi government declared "independence day" as police vehicles roamed the streets of war-weary Iraq in an unpersuasive show of national rejoicing. U.S. mainstream media joined the chorus, as if commemorating the...
Syria: Israel’s most valuable partner for peace
July 10th, 20090 The recent gesture by the Obama administration to re-open the U.S. embassy in Damascus and renew talks with the Syrian government was meant to lay the groundwork for a resumption of Israeli-Syrian talks under American auspices. There is indeed a window of opportunity for Israel to make peace with another Arab country, which if......
Hamas’ political impasse: Principle vs. necessity
Much can be said to explain, or even justify, Hamas' recent political concessions, where its top leaders in Gaza and Damascus agreed in principle with a political settlement on the basis of the two-state solution. Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (C) attends a rally in Gaza City in solidarity with Palestinian parliament...
Leap of faith
July 4th, 20090 Boys jump from a hill into the Tigris River in Baghdad's Adhamiya District, northern Baghdad July 1, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer WASHINGTON (IPS) — U.S. combat troops pulled out of most Iraqi cities Monday, a day before the Jun. 30 deadline for their withdrawal in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) ratified by......
