The Middle East articles from November 2006

The Middle East archives from November 2006

Editorial comment.(veiling)(Editorial)
November 1, 2006... The issue of veiling has occupied a huge amount of media airtime and column inches in Britain over recent weeks. The debate was sparked by former foreign secretary Jack Straw who revealed he has asked female Muslim constituents to remove their...

Breaking up is hard to do; President George Bush and his policymakers insist there is no civil war in Iraq; few outside Washington would agree. As Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurd battle for supremacy, as the daily death toll spirals out of control and men like Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, the most moderate of Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, call it a day, hope diminishes and the situation for Iraqis looks increasingly desperate.
November 1, 2006... THWARTED BY IRAQ'S worsening sectarian bloodletting, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, the most moderate of Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, abandoned his efforts to rein in his sect's murderous militias on 3 September and told aides there was nothing he...

Under pressure: Israeli settlers in Hebron are hellbent on persecuting the inhabitants of the area, in an effort to drive them out of town.
November 1, 2006... THE CROWD OF Hebron settlers, 30km south of Jerusalem on the West Bank, were baying for blood as they impatiently waited for the Israeli Defence Forces soldiers (IDF) and Israeli policemen to illegally force open the house of UN employee Hasham...

Another Saleh victory: Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh won his country's presidential election in September, to the surprise of nobody at all. How free and fair were the elections and what does the result mean for Yemen's future?
November 1, 2006... THE DRAMA THAT was the Yemeni presidential election began more than a year before the polls opened on 20 September. Back in July 2005, the incumbent, President Saleh, announced he would not be contesting the election scheduled for the following...

Taking a shot at war: who better to take an impartial look at the devastation of the latest Middle Eastern conflict than the photographers who get close to the action? But hardened as they are to devastation, many have been incensed by events.
November 1, 2006... IT IS LATE July 2006, roughly halfway through what has since been dubbed 'The Month-Long War'. A young Lebanese girl--no more than 10 years old --scurries from the building she is hiding out in with her family in a bomb-battered village in...

Karzai tries traditional tribal diplomacy: the top British officer in Afghanistan has sounded the alarm: Afghanistan has reached "tipping point" and desperately needs more troops to help speed up reconstruction and development efforts.(Hamid Karzai, David Richards)
November 1, 2006... GENERAL DAVID RICHARDS, the British officer who commands Nato's 32,000 troops in the strifetorn country warned that Afghans could switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if there was no visible improvement in people's lives over...

Strength in numbers: the Arab League, a toothless tiger or the region's last hope for equanimity and equilibrium?
November 1, 2006... EVERYONE, IT SEEMS, has a solution to the current crises in the Middle East, whether it's the earnest diplomats of the UN, meeting on occasions too numerous to document to discuss Iraq, Iran, Israel, the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria, or the...

Blocking Hizbullah's arms pipeline: arms shipments are said to be entering Lebanon on a regular basis and some fear this may lead to renewed conflict with Israel.
November 1, 2006... REPORTED EFFORTS BY Iran and Syria to resupply Hizbullah with missiles and other weapons are one of the most explosive issues in the aftermath of the July/August Middle East war. Israel and the US are adamant that the Shi'ite movement is being...

Condi goes on tour; America's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured five nations in the Middle East last month meeting the leaders and foreign ministers of 10 countries. A senior western diplomat in Cairo summarised her labours as "a cheerleading trip without substance", to The Middle East's Adel Darwish.
November 1, 2006... CONDOLEEZZA'S RICE'S EFFORTS were to secure four pivotal objectives of American foreign policy in the region: Iraq, Palestinian-Israeli peace, democracy promotion and fostering a so-called moderate bloc of Middle Eastern nations to stand...

Check but not checkmate: it's tempting for western critics to see Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadjinejad as out of his depth in a political game of chess. But according to Richard Seymour, he should not be underrated.
November 1, 2006... ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH the game of chess will recognise a pattern forming in the Middle East and surrounding region. With a star-spangled banner planted firmly in the ground in Iraq and another flying, albeit a little frayed, from Afghanistan,...

The forgotten refugees: in principle at least all Arab states support the rights of the Palestinian dispossessed. However, in this candid report Pamela Ann Smith looks at the lives of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq and finds that it is not only Israel that treats them as second-class citizens.
November 1, 2006... MORE THAN THREE quarters of Palestinian people are displaced, according to a new report by the Refuge Studies Centre at Oxford University, and approximately one in three refugees worldwide is a Palestinian. Yet most fall outside international...

Saudi Arabia: playing the numbers game: an ambitious project will boost crude oil production in Saudi Arabia by a third. At the same time, the country is clinging to its role as global oil lynchpin by pledging to increase its production capacity.(BUSINESS & FINANCE)(Cover story)
November 1, 2006... IN RECENT YEARS, the issue of 'peak oil' has been a huge discussion point, spawning any number of new books, magazine articles, broadcast features, Google references and stimulating much controversy. Proponents of the 'peak oil' argument...

The beauty business: business looks good for the beauty industry in the Middle East, with annual cosmetics and toiletries sales in the region climbing to nearly two billion dollars.
November 1, 2006... THE REGION'S BEAUTY market has seen unprecedented growth levels of as much as 12% in recent years, with the market for cosmetics, fragrances and other beauty products currently valued at $1.7bn. While Saudi Arabia dominates the regional market,...

Tunisian economy heads region.(Report)(Brief article)
November 1, 2006... The Tunisian economy is the most competitive in Africa and in the Arab world, according to the Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007 released by The World Economic Forum. Globally, Tunisia ranked 30th, moving up seven places compared to...

Turning Egyptian fortunes around: the Egyptian gas industry is thriving, with exports set to double in the next six years.
November 1, 2006... A FEW YEARS AGO, the prospects for Egypt's hydrocarbons sector looked bleak. Oil output was falling, the gas sector had yet to take off, and it seemed likely Egypt's main importance to global energy markets would be its control of the Suez...

Cameroon: ready for business.
November 1, 2006... Now boasting the most diversified economy in the region, Cameroon has achieved rapid expansion and industrialisation. Political stability and an excellent good business environment have also helped create an extremely attractive investment...

Writing on the wall.(MOSAIC)
November 1, 2006... WHATEVER YOU WANT to call it--a 'security barrier', or the 'annexation' or 'apartheid' Wall--it is Israel's largest and costliest engineering feat in the nation's 58-year history. The 'internationally recognised' border, or 1949 Armistice...

Chemotherapy for the soul: Udi Aloni's forgiveness appeals to both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to acknowledge the other's pain.
November 1, 2006... NOT SO MUCH chemotherapy, as a drug to exorcise demons: Forgiveness, Udi Aloni's new film, having won acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival has just hit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. There is no shortage of demons in a film about...

Iraqi exile voices fears for the future; from exile in Kuwait to pillar of his local Islamic community, Sayed Moustafa Al Qazwini is a descendant of the Prophet who has lived the American dream. But in an interview with Pat McDonnell Twair, he reveals his disenchantment with US involvement in his native land, Iraq.(Interview)
November 1, 2006... SAYED MOUSTAFA AL Qazwini can trace his family lineage back 42 generations to the Prophet Mohammed. He also is an American success story--having arrived in the US penniless in 1994, he is now the imam of the Islamic Educational Centre of Orange...

The Sultans of swing: John Stevenson reports from Tunisia, where the annual international jazz festival takes place against the sultry backdrop of a Roman amphitheatre.
November 1, 2006... AS MUSIC FESTIVALS go, the Tabarka Jazz Festival is an important fixture on the North African cultural calendar. It has rapidly become the place to go for the smart jazz set and thousands of fans throng the quaint west Tunisian seaside...

Globalization and the Gulf.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... GLOBALIZATION AND THE GULF Edited by John W Fox, Nada Mourtada-Sabbah, Mohammed AI Mutawa published by Routledge ISBN 0 415 77014 9 price 70.00 [pounds sterling] paperback For centuries, the Gulf has been a crossroads where seafaring...

7/7: The London Bombings: Islam and the Iraq War.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... 7/7: THE LONDON BOMBINGS ISLAM AND THE IRAQ WAR By Milan Rai published by Pluto Press ISBN 0 7453 2563 7 price: 11.99 [pounds sterling] paperback In July 2005, Al Qaeda struck in the heart of London. Despite the British Government's...

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... FIASCO THE AMERICAN MILITARY ADVENTURE IN IRAQ By Thomas E. Ricks published by Allen Lane ISBN 0 713 99953 5 price 25.00 [pounds sterling] hardback Five years after 9/11, we are in the fourth year of the war in Iraq, with much uncertainty...

Beyond the River: Ottoman Transjordan in Original Photographs.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... BEYOND THE RIVER OTTOMAN TRANSJORDAN IN ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS By Raouf Sa'd Abujaber and Felicity Cobbing published by Stacey International ISBN 1 900988 82 8 price 21.25 [pounds sterling] hardback During the 19th and early 20th century, the...

Rescuing Afghanistan.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... RESCUING AFGHANISTAN By William Maley published by C. Hurst & Co ISBN 1 85065 846 3 price 15.00 [pounds sterling] hardback Compared to post-invasion Iraq, Afghanistan seems a success story; but first impressions can be misleading. Although...

Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2006... OIL TITANS NATIONAL OIL COMPANIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST By Valerie Marcel published by Chatham House/Brookings ISBN 0 8157 5473 6 price 11.99 [pounds sterling] paperback Some 90% of the world's oil reserves are held by state-owned companies....

The last word.(british muslims)
November 1, 2006... Ramadan during the balmy October evenings in London's Edgware Road, the mile-long street that stretches from Marble Arch to Maida Vale, presents a snapshot of real Muslim life in the British capital, a world far removed from the professional...