The ability of the Iraqi resistance to strike at will at the heart of the U.S.-led administration in Baghdad is causing deep unease among American military commanders in Iraq, and political embarrassment for Bush administration officials who have repeatedly claimed that the coalition is winning the war against the guerrillas.

The barrage of rockets that slammed into the hotel was fired from a launcher positioned on a mobile generator. The attackers had fled the scene after being approached by Iraqi guards, who could do nothing to prevent the rockets from launching.

“It seems they have learned to attach fuses to timers, so that rockets fire long after they run away,” the security adviser said.

The array of weapons and devices used in the attacks on coalition targets, which number up to 35 a day, should come as no surprise, the adviser said. “The Iraqi army did not disarm, they just took off their uniforms and went home, along with their weapons.”

Hong Kong, Nir Rosen in Asia Times

Sergeant Scott Blow, a 27-year-old from Denver, is confounded by the same problems all the men of the 3rd ACR [Armored Cavalry Regiment] face. “Nobody knows who the enemy is here until they shoot at you. Any time you kick down a door you don’t know what to expect.” For a conventional force accustomed to expect to fight an obvious enemy, the challenges are not merely intellectual.

On June 7, Bandit Troop’s Sergeant Michael Dooley was standing at a checkpoint when a car approached containing three men. Two of them called out that their friend was injured and needed attention. When Dooley approached the vehicle to assist, he was shot in the face and killed immediately. The car sped off, but soldiers shot at it and later found it abandoned containing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), hand grenades, flares and C4 explosive.

The men on Tiger Base are curious what the Iraqis think of them, and baffled by the hostility the daily attacks make so obvious. “They hate us,” soldiers often say of their new neighbors in Iraq. Sergeant Reginald Abram, 24, from San Diego, exclaims, “These people are pretty persistent. If they killed three of my buddies for shooting at them I’d be like, damn, maybe it’s time to find a new hobby. But it’s not difficult to understand why somebody might pick up an AK-47 against us. Maybe we killed his father in the first Gulf War, maybe in this Gulf War, maybe he’s just a dick.”

Captain Chris Alfeiri also expresses sympathy. “I wonder how I would feel if someone was breaking down my door,” he says, “or if it was my grandfather who didn’t understand instructions at a checkpoint and panicked and was shot by the foreign force.”

United Arab Emirates, Editorial in the Gulf News

The Americans have changed their minds and agreed that a security force in Iraq manned by Iraqis is welcome … The American welcome to the development of an Iraqi security force is an important breakthrough. It is vital the Americans learn to trust Iraqis, since in the end they will have to hand the country back for Iraqis to administer Iraq. The American decision to disband the Iraqi army was a mistake, particularly since the army largely did not fight the Americans. The further decision to ask all former party members to leave the civil service compounded the error.

In a country which has been run by the Baath Party for decades, it was not possible to refuse to give government employment to any who were members of the party without causing the collapse of the system that Iraq has witnessed in the past few months.

It is understandable that a fervent Saddam loyalist should not be allowed to continue in a position of influence, but it is not right to turn out the thousands of experienced government workers who were simply doing their work within the system.

The governing council has outlined a plan for taking to trial senior Baath Party members, Saddam loyalists, and those who committed crimes under the regime’s orders. This legal process should be the limit of the proceedings against those who worked for the former regime. It is time to rebuild the system, under completely new Iraqi political leadership, but including all Iraqis with skills to contribute.

Qatar, Lawrence Smallman in Al-Jazeera

Tikrit is a two-hour drive from Baghdad … but despite the large number of U.S. forces here, it is likely the ousted president is in this part of the Salah al-Din province…

With the lack of security and resentment felt in Tikrit, many ordinary Iraqis say tribal strength and importance is on the rise — as is their ability to protect and hide.

Dakhil is the Arab word for a man on the run who pleads for tribal protection. Once given, a tribesman would rather die than give up any information. The shame of handing over a fugitive would be worse than death.

The $25 million dead-or-alive reward is highly unlikely to achieve results…

Before driving out of town, I stopped to drink tea while watching schoolchildren and young men wave pictures of Saddam Hussein at American soldiers.

I was sitting next to a Saddam in-law — who cannot be named. He was happy to tell Aljazeera.net what he thought of Saddam and Iraq’s occupation.

“When I see the Americans here, I feel like my throat is being squeezed,” he said.

He straightens his shimagh, or headdress, and looks at a Humvee with two soldiers in it, not 200m away.

“I’m sure if Americans had Iraqi troops patrolling their streets, searching their houses, stopping their cars and pointing guns at their women and children — they would be the first to resist.

“Who is this Bremer? What on earth is he doing in Baghdad? By what right does he make decisions for our country and our people?

“What right do Americans have to put the soles of their boots on the back of Iraqi necks when they make arrests? … But let them continue, for every day they act like this — more will come to take part in fighting them.”

“Saddam is safe because nobody — even those who hate him — would ever think to hand him in. The vast majority here would rather have him back than continue with this occupation — ask anyone you like, and you’ll see”…

Until he is caught, many Iraqis will always be looking over their shoulders, wondering if a man who controlled their lives for more than 20 years may still have some final part to play.

United Kingdom, Patrick Cockburn in the Independent

Hostility towards the occupation has increased sharply over the last few months in both Sunni and Shiite Muslim districts. An opinion poll carried out by Iraq’s Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, a think tank set up by Iraqi professors after the fall of Baghdad, shows that only 15 percent of Iraqis see the invading coalition as ‘liberating forces’. This compares to 43 percent who broadly welcomed the coalition six months ago in a poll by the same organization.

The number of Iraqis who see the U.S.-led coalition as ‘occupying powers’ has risen from 46 percent to 67 percent over the same period. One wealthy Shiite businessman said: “It used to be the Sunni who opposed the occupation but now I notice that my Shiite friends are also becoming hostile to it.” This is a significant development since Shiites are at least 55 percent of the population. The only Iraqi community which still supports the invasion is the Kurds.

The rejection of the occupation by most Iraqis has not yet turned to armed resistance, except in Sunni districts north and west of Baghdad, but guerrillas are likely to find an increasingly sympathetic environment in which to make attacks. The battering by rockets of the al-Rashid, the most visible sign of the U.S. presence in Iraq, may also increase a feeling among Iraqis who do work with the coalition that they are not necessarily betting on a winner.

Nigeria, Lanre Towry-Coker in the Vanguard

Kudos must be given to Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a cult hero turned governor, he’s really made it big. So big, in fact, that he could easily be the president of a country, bearing in mind that California has the world’s fifth largest economy. He is, therefore, now a bigger player than France, were California to be in the European Union and not in the U.S.

Therefore, I suggest sending him to Iraq.

President Bush’s problems there mean that he should send the “terminator” to go in instead — or better still, promise that the next episode of “Terminator” will be filmed in Baghdad with Saddam playing the lead role as the bad guy. Bush also has the opportunity to send Arnie to explain exactly what U.S. policy is in Iraq — and since Arnie can’t speak English anyway, anything he says will be greeted with loud cheers!

Finally, the U.S. has somebody who can compete with bin Laden’s video tapes. And Arnie’s tapes even have special effects.

Switzerland, Anna Nelson in Swiss Info

Monday’s blast is the first time the Red Cross has been targeted by suicide bombers in its 140-year history and has served as a stark reminder that neutrality does not guarantee protection.

“We always believed that we were protected by the humanitarian work we do,” Nada Doumani, the ICRC’s spokeswoman in Baghdad, told reporters. “We thought that people knew us … and that we were different from the rest.”

The Geneva-based organization has been operating in Iraq since 1980, providing humanitarian assistance in the country and monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions.

It was also the only aid agency to remain active in Iraq throughout the United States-led war against Saddam Hussein and has since declined protection from the occupying forces in an effort to maintain its neutral stance.

But when asked whether the ICRC had relied too heavily for protection on its reputation for not taking sides, ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal said that the organization had no choice.

“We’ve been doing our humanitarian work throughout the past 20 years in Iraq, irrespective of who was in power, who was winning or who was losing, and we really have acted as an independent organisation all along,” Westphal told swissinfo.

“As anywhere else in the world, that has got to be our main security guarantee. Humanitarian aid cannot be imposed by force of arms,” he added…

So far, it’s unclear whether Monday’s blast will force the organization to pull out of Iraq altogether.

But regardless of what decision is taken, Westphal says the Iraqi people are the ones who lose out when such attacks are carried out.

“We feel that the real victims with these attacks are Iraqis,” he said.

“If we are forced to alter our activities because of the security situation, the people who need our help, who are Iraqis, will suffer,” he added.

Saudi Arabia, Khaled Al-Maeena in the Arab News

Today is the first of Ramadan…

Indeed, the month of Ramadan should be used to reflect and to question whether we Muslims are really on the true path…

Let us also remember, on this day and in all the days ahead, that our faith demands that our concerns go beyond our own selves and families…

Yesterday’s rocket attack on Baghdad’s Rashid hotel shows the near anarchical situation prevailing in Iraq … Palestine is going through one of the worst crises in its tragic history.

Our heart goes out to all those who suffer on account of their faith, occupation or simply because they find themselves on the wrong side of a border or are pawns in a game played by big powers for geopolitical objectives.

Let the families of those who lost their near and dear ones in terrorist attacks in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Bali and elsewhere have the fortitude to bear their suffering with dignity. But it is not enough to pray for the victims of terrorist fury. We should make a determined effort to eradicate the menace of terrorism from the face of the Earth. Nothing we do or say should even remotely encourage the purveyors of hatred…

Let us once again pray that this Ramadan that all Muslims will make a sincere effort to come closer together and closer to Allah through fasting, prayers, zakah and charity. And, through hard work, let us make this a better world for us and our children…

We know that all major battles in Islamic history were fought and won during the month of Ramadan. There are still battles to be fought and won — against poverty, intolerance, prejudice, racism and terror.

Despite Boykin’s apology for his recent remarks, the official reaction only inflamed the issue further. When asked about Boykin’s comments, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: “We’re a free people. And that’s the wonderful thing about our country.”

To many Muslims, such statements could only add insult to injury and confirm the belief that a war is indeed being fought against Islam. It also highlights the West’s double standards, in light of the criticism received by Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohammed for his comments on Jews in his opening statement at the Organization of Islamic Conference, which according to Malaysian officials were misunderstood. After all, it was Mahathir who earlier this month called on Muslims to embrace the values of ‘peace, friendship, brotherhood, and tolerance of people’.

No doubt, the state of the world today demands that such principles be put into practice, especially in dealings between the West and the Islamic world. Inciting and confrontational comments such as those given by some in the West against Islam, are guaranteed to allow extremism to survive and indeed flourish.

Hong Kong, Ehsan Ahrari in Asia Times

The man in charge of hunting down Osama bin Laden has bin Laden’s exact frame of reference regarding the “enemies” of his religion, and about the mega-conflict that has intensified since 9/11. That man’s name is William “Jerry” Boykin …

As an evangelical Christian, Boykin believes — according to a statement that he made to a religious audience — that radical Islamists hate the U.S. “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian … and the enemy is a guy named Satan”. Bin Laden made very similar statements describing why the U.S. “hates” Islam, and why Muslims should cooperate with him in his fight against the “super-Infidel”. Bin Laden regularly couches the current conflict as being between Islam and the “Judeo-Christian” West.

Boykin has dropped other pearls of wisdom as well. Discussing the US military entanglement with one of Somalia’s warlords, Osman Atto, in the early 1990s, he described it to a religious audience as a contest between two gods, and added, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” …

What is bizarre is that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on October 16, dismissed Boykin’s religious drivel as his exercise of freedom of expression in a democracy. But wait a minute. Boykin also represents the U.S. government abroad. In that capacity, is he also expressing the real views of the Bush administration? I am sure Rumsfeld would hasten to say no, but that question is already being asked in the Muslim world: “Whose god is real, and whose god is bigger?” Bin Laden has been answering those questions all along. His answers are very similar to the utterances made by Boykin. Or, is it the other way around?

United Kingdom, Neil Clark in the Guardian

First, they tried to dismiss Iraqi resistance as the work of “Saddam loyalists”. Then they sought to blame “outside forces”. Now, as it becomes clear that Iraqis of all sects oppose the occupation, a third explanation has arisen. Terrorism, anarchy and criminality are prevalent in Iraq because … er … terrorism, anarchy and criminality are what Iraqis do.

Arabophobia has been part of western culture since the Crusades, with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden only the latest in a long line of Arab bogeymen. For centuries the Arab has played the role of villain, seducer of our women, hustler and thief — the barbarian lurking at the gates of civilisation.

In the 20th century new images emerged: the fanatical terrorist, the stone-thrower, the suicide bomber. Now, as the Project for a New American Century suffers its first major setback in the back streets of Baghdad and Basra, Arabophobia has been given a new lease of life. “I read T.E. Lawrence before I came here,” a British officer was quoted in the Mail on Sunday. “A century ago he recognised dishonesty was inherent in Arab society. Today is the same. They do nothing for love and nothing at all if they can help it.”

The attitudes of the officer, shocking though they are, only mirror those of the people who sent him to war. Scratch a neo-con and you find an Arabophobe. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser, has berated Arabs on the “need to change their behaviour” … And the veteran foreign policy hawk Richard Perle, when asked about the fears Egyptians had of the Iraq war provoking an Arab backlash, replied: “Egyptians can barely govern their own country, we don’t need advice on how to govern ours.”

Issues of mendacity have, of course, been a major theme in international events this year. The British public had to decide who was telling the truth: Tony Blair, with his claim that Iraq posed “a very real threat to Britain”, or Saddam, with his repeated denials. The neo-cons knew that their case for war was painfully thin. But they banked on Arabophobia — stoked by their allies in the media — to do the rest: Tony, the white, middle-class churchgoer, or Saddam, the swarthy Arab? For many, there was no contest. Of course, Saddam couldn’t possibly be telling the truth about not possessing WMD. He’s an Arab. Arabs lie. We know this from T.E. Lawrence.

Canada, Tami Zer and Sjifra Herschberg in Maclean’s

Arna Mer, the daughter of Gideon Mer, a distinguished Jewish professor of medicine, was one of the first Israelis to ignore parental warnings when she married Saliva Khamis, an Arab and one of the leaders of the Israeli Communist Party, in the 1950s. They were wed in a Catholic church by a priest who was drunk at the time. But Mer wouldn’t realize how deep the divisions ran until 1958, when she joined a protest against the imposition of martial law on Arab villages in Israel. Mer was pregnant with her son Juliano, and went into labour. She was rushed to the hospital, “but the doctors refused to stitch her and she nearly bled to death,” says her son, Juliano Mer-Khamis, 45, a well-known actor living in Haifa. “They knew she was married to an Arab. I experienced this racial lunacy from the day I was born.” As he grew up, Mer-Khamis says, he constantly asked himself: “Do I hate Arabs and love Jews or do I love Arabs and hate Jews?” That question was on his mind when he met the parents of a Jewish girlfriend. “I was sitting with her translating an Arabic movie,” he recalls. “Her father walked into the room. I eluded his questions, but he researched about me and forced her to leave me.”

To compensate, Mer-Khamis for a time adopted his Jewish maternal name and joined an elite fighting unit of the Israeli army. “For a whole year my father wouldn’t talk to me. He simply kept silent,” he says. But he soon had to face his Arab heritage. The confrontation came in 1978 when he was stationed at the West Bank town of Jenin and a car arrived with three young passengers and their grandfather. When he refused an order to remove the old man from the car, he ended up in a fight with his commander and was imprisoned for a few weeks and left the army. “It was then that I realized,” he says, “that I don’t belong on the Jewish side.” …

Sometimes the struggle is so painful children grow up hating their parents for marrying outside their race. Suad is one of those: walking on a beach at Tel Aviv, the 30-year-old woman admits that she once became so angry, “I imagined taking a knife and killing my mother.” Her father was Arab and mother Jewish; Suad is beautiful with long black hair. As two boys on the beach stare, she looks down, saying bitterly, “If they knew, they wouldn’t be wasting their gazes on me.” Suad believes her parents should never have wed. “My only consolation,” she says, “is that I was born out of love.”

Egypt, Nyier Abdou in Al-Ahram Weekly

Muslims and Arab-Americans in the U.S. military are in the spotlight following the recent arrests of two servicemen and one civilian translator working at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba … The arrests of Muslim military chaplain Youssef Yee, a convert to Islam, and translators Senior Airman Ahmed Al-Halabi and Ahmed Mehalba, both born in the Middle East, turn attention back to the U.S.’s contentious detention centre, where prisoners identified by the Pentagon as “enemy combatants” are kept incommunicado.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has insisted that Muslims and Arab- Americans in the military will not be “racially profiled” as the military tightens the screws on Camp Delta, however, it seems impossible that an internal revue of security concerns would not focus on those with ties to the Middle East — something all three suspects share …

Above the issue of how the military looks on its Muslim and Arab members, however, the widely covered cases of Yee, Al-Halabi and Mehalba could cement a lingering association in the collective American consciousness between Muslim and Arab-Americans and terrorism. In many ways, the arrests pose another setback for the image of Muslim and Arab-Americans.

Although Yee has only been charged with disobeying orders, the fact that he is a serving military officer and a graduate of West Point Military Academy makes his case particularly problematic, says ADC’s Hussein Ibish. “It compounds the impression that being a Muslim in and of itself invites disloyalty to the United States under the current circumstances,” he said.

Conceding that “there are many racist voices who have and will continue to frame these arrests in precisely this manner,” Ibish also warns against looking at recent events in any “conspiratorial terms”. The association between Muslim and Arab-Americans and terrorism, he notes, is unfortunately reinforced not so much by recent events, but by the continued reality of al-Qaida, “and the fact that it and its politics, or similar politics, are not without support in some parts of the Arab and Muslim world.”

Nigeria, Abdulrazaq Magaji in the Daily Trust

Who cares if Washington is getting worried over the number of body bags coming out of Iraq since the end of hostilities last May? Sincerely, I don’t. And why should I care? I am neither an Iraqi nor an American. I am a Nigerian, yes a Muslim. Aha, I can almost hear you say my position is informed by my religious beliefs … I am not laughing at the misfortune of the dead Americans, and I am not crying either. Why should I? Who cried for the innocent Iraqi children and their harmless parents when the Americans rained bombs on them? Did the Americans think they were just shooting another of their Hollywood films? No! People were being killed. And some of those killed probably did not agree with Saddam Hussein and would have willingly sided with the Americans if somebody in Washington was not doctoring reports to justify a needless war.

Now, come to think of it, what makes war so appealing when there is a peaceful alternative? Why must thousands die simply because somebody in Washington does not like the face of a man in Baghdad? …

In getting only one man, Saddam Hussein, out of the way, President Bush, the father, and President Bush, the son, must have killed close to one million Iraqis and permanently deformed many others. For others yet, the sorrow and agony of living with the tragic memories of loved ones are enough to melt a heart made of steel. Who cares for these innocent people? Certainly, not the murderers in Washington and not the misguided American troops bombing and shooting in the name of defending some foolish American interests. So why should I care for American lives if nobody cares for the lives of their victims? …

Please don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the average American. Some of my long-standing friends are white Americans. I have benefited from the large-heartedness of Americans and the American society. But there is something odious about a policy which encourages killing innocent people in order to control their national wealth.

Israel, Daniel Ben Simon in Haaretz

Laurent Levy, a sworn liberal and a total atheist, noticed dramatic changes in his two daughters, but he did not attribute much importance to them. One day, about two years ago, the two girls stopped eating pork. “No problem,” he said. A while later, they informed him that they intended to fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Levy thought it the most natural thing in the world that his daughters were adopting the religious customs of his former wife. Although she is a Muslim and he is a Jew, during their life together they never allowed their religious affiliations to stand in their way … When Levy’s daughters — Lila, 19, and Alma, 16 — told him that they were going to fast for the entire month of Ramadan, he did not stand in their way …

A while later the sisters informed him of their intention to pray five times a day, as commanded by the Koran. There is no reason why they shouldn’t do this, thought the father. Then they stopped going to the beach and wearing bathing suits, and even stopped using the family swimming pool during vacations. At night the two sat and learned chapters of the Koran by heart. Friends in the neighborhood and at school were amazed by the change in the two cheerful young women. Gradually they began to wrap themselves in long clothing, even in the summer, and covered their legs with thick stockings …

Quickly the two sisters became a phenomenon. Even in Aubervilliers, the northern Paris suburb where they live, eyebrows were raised. In recent years this suburb has been taken over by Muslim immigrants from North Africa, and Parisians have moved away.

It is not only Islam that scares the French, but also any religion that lifts its head and threatens to blur the secular outlines of the Republic. Studies show that only one out of 20 French citizens sees himself as connected to religion, the lowest proportion in all of Europe … The question that is being asked today is how to stop the spread of Islam.

Lebanon, Abdulwahab Badrakhan in Al-Hayat

The electoral battle that Bush will be fighting in the coming months will try to invest the Americans’ fears and the results of both wars on terror and on Iraq. As for the radical and resentful gang surrounding the president, this battle represents a golden opportunity to test how strong the conservative rightist movement is, as well as how widespread and influential it is over the American society. In other words, Bush’s victory and stay at the White House would mean to the hawks that the change they had operated on the administration’s work has also taken over the voters’ minds who, if they elect Bush again, would be giving a green light for further adventures abroad; they would also express their acceptance of the idea according to which controlling security necessarily requires restricting civil freedoms.

The Democrat candidates do not seem to have reached a plan that draws a limit between fighting terror and respecting freedoms. During their meeting with American-Arab representatives in Dearborn, none of them was able to suggest one single interesting idea, not only regarding the Arabs who are also Americans like others, but also for Americans in general. If Bush is not counting on the Arab vote to support him like last time, he is relying on the Jewish vote, which he has for granted this time. However, there is a great difference between both votes, as Jews are organized and united, not to mention that they have an efficient financing network, whereas the Arabs are divided and are a hopeless case in terms of getting organized and united … Still, the Democrats are trying to gain the Arabs’ support by making as many balanced speeches as possible. Joseph Lieberman, a Jewish candidate, went to the Arab conference, however, in Dearborn for an opposite purpose, as he defied the Arab anger by slamming the Palestinian terrorism and defending the Israelis’ right to defend themselves, lauding the separation wall. The Arab vote is left with two bad choices, even if it is capable of making a difference. It would be hard to choose between them, unless they opt for changing the current administration that has gone too far in its radicalism.

The Philippines, Conrado de Quiros in Inq7

I don’t know how anybody can sleep nights knowing the future of the planet is in the hands of someone who says, “I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe — I believe what I believe is right.” …

Well, Bush himself admits the problem in another Bushism he regaled an interviewer with on Air Force One in June this year: “I’m not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.” Doubtless meant to suggest he is spontaneous, his unintended meaning better catches his true character, such as he has one …

You suspect that Bush finds it the easiest thing in the world to embark on reckless adventurism because he really believes the U.N. is an extension of the American legislature, Latin American populations are predominantly white, the slaves from Africa contributed to American progress because of their love for freedom, the Middle East is somewhere out there, probably in Africa, suicide bombers are primitive cavemen who have no beliefs, the French have no word for entrepreneur and need to be educated, other cultures are inferior to the American one …

This was the fellow we greeted with much fanfare the other day, whose path we literally cleared of human flotsam and debris, whose presence we took to be a favor granted to us, whose utterances we clung on to like pearls of wisdom. We have a saying that a man who takes a fool seriously is an even bigger fool. But how call a whole nation that does so?

Ah, but we always misunderestimate ourselves.

Today, the men in suits are gathering at Olympia, in London, for a two-day conference and exhibition entitled Doing Business in Iraq. Protesters will be gathering outside.

The event, which is sponsored by the U.S.-Iraq business council, is one of a series being held in different parts of the world over the coming 12 months…

This fits in neatly with plans announced in June by Paul Bremer, the head of Iraq’s provisional authority, to sell off the country’s state-owned industries (excluding, for the time being, oil, gas and minerals) and turn it into a U.S.-style capitalist wonderland.

Last month, Mr. Bremer issued CPA order number 39, giving foreign investors unrestricted rights to establish businesses in Iraq and/or buy up Iraqi companies.

The order also allows foreign investors to repatriate profits, dividends, interest and royalties immediately and in full. In other words, they can make a fast buck if they want to, without putting anything back.

While few would disagree that Iraq’s industry needs modernization and restructuring, two questions arise: has Mr. Bremer the legal powers to do this, and is he going about it in the right way?

He has already acknowledged that his plans will create large-scale unemployment, at least in the short term. His earlier decision to disband the Iraqi army exacerbated the country’s fragile security situation by leaving several hundred thousand disgruntled ex-soldiers with nothing better to do than cause trouble.

That is now widely regarded as a major blunder, and Mr. Bremer now seems intent on repeating the exercise with the civilian population. According to the U.N., the current level of unemployment in Iraq is around 50-60 percent: the last thing the country needs is more job losses.

Germany, Bernhard Zand in Der Spiegel

The early onset of darkness makes walking home from his office a dangerous undertaking, but the Iraqi fall also brings the prospect of excitement into Feisal al-Chudeiri’s daily routine. The duck hunt begins in the meadows along the Tigris in late October, and in November al-Chudeiri and his friends plan to hunt buzzards in the desert. The 38-year-old millionaire from Baghdad is not worried about his personal future.

His family, one of the oldest in the land of two rivers, has seen the Ottomans, the British and Saddam Hussein come and go. Since 1772, the family has traded in dates, tea and spices, and in 1881 it founded the first steamship company on the Euphrates River. “Things don’t throw us off track that easily,” says the junior head of the Karady Group, “but I doubt that this applies to the rest of the Iraqis.”

Four sheets of paper bearing the sober heading “Law on the Regulation of Foreign Investment” sit on Chudeiri’s desk. “The Americans have already made quite a few mistakes in Iraq,” he says gloomily, “but this law is their biggest mistake so far. It has the effect of dynamite.”

Minister of Finance Kamil al-Kilani has promised that the law, only recently put into force by US Administrator Paul Bremer, will liberate Iraq from a planned economy, open the country to the global market, bring technology to the Tigris, and create jobs.

In truth, the package of reforms promises foreign interests virtually unlimited access to the country’s most profitable industries. Beginning next year, foreign nationals will be able to acquire full ownership of local firms, and even a few banks, and it will be possible to siphon off profits to other countries without restrictions.

The British business publication, The Economist, praised the new law for fulfilling the “wish list of international investors,” and called Bremer’s creation a “capitalist dream.”…

Iraqis, however, are incensed at what they fear is a sell-off of their country … All of this affects chicken farmer Mohammed Hussein. In March, the 39-year-old still employed a work force of about 70 people. Now only four men pass the time of day in his shut-down slaughterhouse, where hundreds of thousands of chickens were once processed. Hussein says he has nothing against the market economy, but that he cannot hope to compete against foreigners. He says that today it costs about a thousand dollars to produce a ton of chicken meat in Iraq, while frozen imported chicken from overseas can be had for only $480. “I always believed that the only victims in this business were the chickens,” complains the poultry baron, “but now it’s my turn to be slaughtered.”

Lebanon, Jihad Al Khazen in Al-Hayat

Al-Hayat won the biggest share of awards at the Dubai Press Club, during its third meeting last week … Earlier, my colleague George Semaan, editor-in-chief, had run the most exciting sessions of the forum, as it addressed the situation in Iraq and examined its case through the Arab media war coverage…

Several people and I thought that the Arab satellite networks covered war much better than the international ones, particularly the American ones, which aired incomplete images, sometimes even false ones, regarding the course of the war. They also practiced self-censorship to please the American troops, knowing that they also submitted to other censorship terms.

I admit that I had never imagined myself saying that the Arab media has beaten the Western one in relating facts of a major event such as war on Iraq. However, this did happen and some of the foreign journalists who were present at the session did not like it, so they objected but I did not seem to find any logic or objectivity in their arguments, but rather the behavior of a Prima Donna, or the first ballerina.

I know that the superiority of the Arab satellite channels in covering the war on Iraq was an exception, as we are underdeveloped in everything, and always look for new reasons to sink lower. And yet, none of the 500 participants at the Third Arab Media Forum, whether the media professionals or guests, some of whom are most eminent in their fields, noticed any sort of underdevelopment…

I shall return holding in my heart the memory of baby Fatima who had on her chest the picture of her father Tareq Ayoub, Al Jazeera’s reporter who was killed in Iraq. I escorted her mother to receive the honoring prize of the late colleague. I fought the tears in my eyes, but I saw one welling up in the eye of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zeid, the UAE Information Minister, as he held the baby girl in his arms.

United Kingdom, Rory McCarthy in the Guardian

The first they hear of Specialist Brian Wilhelm is an indecipherable crackle over the walkie-talkies. It is an early October afternoon and the Black Hawk pilots and paramedics of the 54th Medical Company, one of the U.S. army’s medevac units, are lounging in a small, chilled wooden hut. A camouflage net shades them from the relentless sun, and the comforts of Gatorade and chocolate snacks tempt the young soldiers to forget for a moment the bloody trials of postwar Iraq. On a small television the medics are watching re-runs of Scrubs, an U.S. sitcom about overworked junior doctors. The helicopter pilots, with a swagger all their own, are playing Black Hawk Down, a shoot ‘em up computer game based on the infamous American military operation in Mogadishu a decade ago which left 18 of their comrades dead.

“First up,” shouts the voice on the radio, calling the priority medevac team to work. A convoy from the army’s Eigth Infantry Regiment has come under attack yet again just outside this base at Balad, in the heart of resistance country north of Baghdad. A soldier is down, alive but badly wounded. A smoke flare marks the exact spot by a pontoon over the Tigris river. It’s a “hot LZ”, says the voice on the radio: the Iraqis are still shooting.

This is the hidden story of America’s military adventure in Iraq…

The military has never admitted the total number of soldiers injured so far, though the figure appears to run into the thousands. At the combat hospital in Balad, one of a handful of military medical centres in Iraq, a total of 1,088 patients were admitted for treatment between May and the end of August. As many as 916 had to be evacuated, although not all suffered combat injuries (soldiers who break their ankles in football games are also sent home to recover). One report last month said 6,000 US soldiers had already been evacuated home, of whom more than 1,000 were designated “wounded in action” — twice the toll for the first Gulf war…

In the quiet after the terrible casualties, there is little encouragement to question the reasons for war. “We are here doing our job. It is part of the risk we take,” [a surgeon] says. “If being in the army was easy, there would be a lot more soldiers around.”

United Arab Emirates, M. J. Akbar in the Gulf News

It must be a suffocating moment for Blair when a journal as pro-war as The Economist headlines a cover story featuring Blair and Bush with the caption “Wielders of mass deception?”

The television news on Friday was marked by two funeral ceremonies. One was in London at St. Paul’s. Just how much the perception of the Iraq war has changed in Britain since Saddam Hussain’s statue was brought down by US troops in Baghdad is evident in how this event changed.

It was first envisaged as a “victory parade”, in the manner that Margaret Thatcher celebrated the triumph in the Falklands over Argentina, or US President George W. Bush promoted the official end of conflict in April. This was scaled down to a glittering parade through London, before morphing gradually into a mere “thanksgiving service”.

When it became evident that there was little to thank for, the event became, more simply, “A Service of Remembrance, Iraq 2003″. And, in a fine and moving British gesture, the service not only remembered the 51 British and 315 Americans who have died, but also all those who died in Saddam Hussain’s armed forces, as well as the thousands of Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives in this brutal conflict…

The second funeral shown on television on Friday took place in Baghdad: it was in some ways a celebration of two Iraqis who had given their lives in another suicide mission against the American occupation and its fellow travellers.

Crowds unafraid of being recorded by cameras chanted “Allah-o-Akbar” as they took the cortege towards the burial ground. A young man with a sophisticated gun in his hand and grim determination on his face led the procession. Bush and Blair have created an enemy that never was. You can see this truth etched in their eyes. Tony Blair may win another election, but he has lost his people.

Canada, John Geddes in Maclean’s

Their widows wept. A bagpiper played an old, sad song. The faces of comrades were ashen. Memorial services for fallen soldiers are, of course, painfully unique to the families and friends of the dead; but what they offer the nation is familiar ritual, perhaps a feeling of closure. This time, though, the sombre images from a hockey arena in Pembroke, Ont., where Cpl. Robbie Beerenfenger and Sgt. Rob Short were mourned, could not carry the solace of finality. Instead, the news from Afghanistan, where they were killed the previous week by a land mine, reminded anyone paying attention that routine bloodshed in that unfortunate country is far from at an end…

Getting rid of the Taliban was an essential post-Sept. 11 goal: the regime harboured al-Qaeda terrorists. Yet the promised follow-up to that initial victory has taken the lustre off a good start. The aid group CARE estimates that at least US$20 billion is needed in the next four years to begin rebuilding the country. Only about one-quarter of that has been pledged.

Competing with Iraq for attention is a major problem. Washington’s latest plans suggest Kabul’s needs have been relegated to very much a second-tier priority. Of the U.S. $87 billion that President George W. Bush has asked Congress to approve for military and rebuilding costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, just $800 million is earmarked for Afghan reconstruction. “There is a large disconnect,” says Asif Rahimi, an Afghan working for CARE Canada in Ottawa. “The world community thinks you can do a cheap job in Afghanistan and be finished with the business.” With the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai aiming to finalize a new constitution late this year and hold elections in 2004, more aid is needed — with military support to ensure it can be delivered…

Afghans can only hope that Canada, and other rich nations, don’t soon grow weary of their enormous problems and turn away.

Nigeria, Dele Sobowale in the Vanguard

Pardon me for putting you through a simple test in international relations. But the questions that follow are designed to expose one of the greatest lies the world has been subjected to in the last 60 or more years. Here they go:

1. Which country was established by the total annihilation of the native inhabitants who were non-white people by the settlers who were mostly white people?

2. Which country was the recipient of most of the slaves from Africa during the slave trade and continued slavery within its borders long after it was stopped worldwide?

3. Which country produced the first nuclear weapon and used it to annihilate over two million non-white people during the second world war?

4. Which country has the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the world today?

Now you have two choices : a) America or b) Iraq.

If your answer is America then you must be a dummy; after all, the American President and the British Prime Minister have been telling their intelligent people that they went to war with Iraq because it is the country that poses the most danger to the world. But a recent CIA report has once again confirmed what this column has maintained all along namely: the allegation of weapons of mass destruction was a bogus lie which Bush and Blair have concocted to wage an unjust war.

Which reminds me of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who said: “The great masses of the people … more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one”. The man must be smiling in his grave as the leaders of countries which stopped him in 1945 from colonizing the world adopt his methods.

Her family says she did not tell anyone where she was going and they assumed she was on her way to the law office in Jenin where she worked.

Instead, Jaradat went north to the bustling Israeli seaside town of Haifa, managing to slip through the cordon thrown over the West Bank by Israel as a precautionary measure for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Despite the vigilance of guards and staff at Israeli eateries, Jaradat was able to walk right into the heart of the beachfront Maxim’s restaurant — a popular family venue jointly owned by Jews and Arabs and frequented by an equally mixed clientele.

Four children were among those killed as Jaradat detonated her vest packed with explosives …

According to her family, Jaradat completed her law studies in Jordan five years ago and subsequently began an apprenticeship to qualify fully as a lawyer — something she was due to complete next week.

As a Palestinian born and raised in Jenin, a prime recruiting ground for Islamic Jihad and the scene of frequent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, Jaradat would have been no stranger to the problems gripping the Middle East.

However, on 12 June this year those problems came sharply into focus when an undercover squad of Israeli soldiers, searching for her militant brother and cousin, killed the two men.

Her family say Jaradat was inconsolable, that she had always been religious, fasting twice a week in a sign of piety, but after the deaths this became even stronger. She began studying the Koran and fasting throughout daylight hours every day.

The west Jenin village of Sila Alkhartiya, where her family live, is known for its connections to Islamic Jihad, and her brother was one of the group’s leaders — Jaradat’s desire to strike back was easily satisfied.

“The only thing that would push her to do that would be to avenge my brother’s death,” said her 15-year-old brother Thaher.

And for the militant group, Jaradat would have proved an attractive prospect — a pretty, intelligent Arab woman capable of evading the usual security checks Israel has in place to block such atrocities.

Jaradat’s relatives claim they were shocked when they heard it was Jaradat who had carried out the attack, but they had no tears for those slain:

“We are receiving congratulations from people,” Thaher said. “Why should we cry? It is like her wedding today, the happiest day for her.”

Even as Jaradat’s family praised her final act, they hurriedly packed up their belongings before the inevitable — Israeli forces razed their home to the ground on Saturday — standard practice for the relatives of suicide bombers.

United Arab Emirates, editorial in the Gulf News

A bombing of a restaurant is not the right way to take the struggle against the Israelis forward. There are other and better tactics to use against Israel, but one can only wonder at the desperation that leads a young Palestinian lawyer to the decision to kill herself while killing many others. It speaks volumes for the horror that so many in Palestine have lived with, that such a course of action can even be contemplated.

However, calls for restraint have been totally ignored. Israel accused Syria of harboring and funding Islamic Jihad, and has used its alleged evidence (films of training) to justify this attack as part of the worldwide war against terror.

Israel did not make this evidence public, nor did it seek any other more peaceful route than all out violence.

This evidence is suspicious. Israeli claims of “terrorist” training camps have been comprehensively denied. An Islamic Jihad spokesman said that there were no Islamic Jihad bases in Syria. “All our bases are inside the Palestinian occupied territories,” said Abu Emad El-Refaei in Beirut; and a senior commander of the PFLP-GC has said that this camp used to be one of the PFLP-GC bases but it is now out of use.

Israel is unlikely to face much pressure from American President George W Bush over this attack since Bush himself introduced the concept of pre-emptive war. As widely feared, it allows states to strike at those it wishes, with little hindrance or come-back. Any powerful state is now in the position of being able to attack those it wishes, using the war against terror as the perfect excuse …

It is very clear that Israel does not plan to contemplate any kind of peace, if it is willing to both continue its active war against the Palestinians, but also to do so in the territory of a sovereign nation.

Saudi Arabia, editorial in the Arab News

No one doubted that there would be Israeli reprisals after Saturday’s suicide bomb attack in Haifa. But no one in their wildest dreams imagined that the target would be Syria.

Why Syria? For all its hard-line rhetoric against Israel, there has not been a shot fired across the makeshift frontier on the Golan Heights for years. If the Israelis were seriously interested in hitting Islamic Jihad, they could have done so far more effectively in the Gaza Strip or with a strike on one of its bases in Lebanon. Yet they chose a target deep in Syrian territory even though both the Syrians and Islamic Jihad deny there are any bases there.

This was no message to Islamic Jihad. It was a cold, unambiguous threat to Syria: Either jump to Israel’s diktats or else … Immediately after the strike, the Israelis then warned Syria there would be more if it did not close down so-called terrorist organizations.

An inevitable conclusion must be that the Israelis were acting on behalf of the U.S.; it is difficult to believe that they would have struck without the green light from Washington. We know that the Americans have loudly accused Syria of supporting terrorism and warned it to stop. Damascus is further seen by the Americans as a problem in Iraq, providing support to officials of the former regime and allowing Syrian volunteers to cross the border and join in attacks on U.S. troops. The notion that Washington used the Israelis to threaten the Syrians into line makes too much sense to be dismissed.

But whether the Americans were actively behind this attack — and the remote possibility exists that a manic Ariel Sharon acted alone, ordering the attack to ingratiate himself even further with Washington — it is a terrifying development. This could have potentially catastrophic results. It could well end in war …

What matters is that, at a stroke, the whole region has been put in immense and immediate danger. Sharon is on the rampage; he must be reined in — fast.

Israel, Uzi Benziman in Haaretz

Feelings of frustration and rage that grip the heart after a terror attack like yesterday’s in Haifa’s Maxim restaurant, push aside individual and public powers of reasoning …

Such feelings are also likely to lead to a vicious circle of reprisal and counter-reprisal, a cycle adding to the casualty toll and bringing the conflict to extreme levels from which there can be no return.

At the end of a cycle of sorrow and vengeance, both sides will find themselves faced with a necessity to coexist with one another, lest they be doomed to live endlessly in the hell which has taken hold for the past three years …

The lesson to be drawn from the last three years is that the two sides refuse to relinquish the original sources of the dispute — the Palestinians are unwilling to give Israel unconditional recognition of its right to exist; Israel refuses to abandon its conquest, and it continues to expand the settlements while it negotiates with the Palestinians about a peace settlement.

Seen from the historical point of view, the occupation of the territories is a justifiable result of Arab aggression and attacks on the state of Israel. The 1948 Independence War and the 1967 Six Day War expressed the Arab people’s refusal to recognize the Jewish people’s right to establish a sovereign state on a small piece of territory in its historic homeland.

In retrospect, it appears that the use made by the state of Israel of its military success in 1967 has transmogrified, and become a threat to its own existence. Territories which Israel occupied and settled present a demographic threat, a security danger, an economic burden and a diplomatic problem …

The occupation is a circumstance which must be brought to an end so as to preserve the state’s moral fiber, and its capacity to survive. Should Israel’s control in the territories persist, processes that cause the two sides to clash will intensify, and this fighting will eventually exhaust resources needed by both.

The recent decision reached by the government regarding the construction and placement of the separation fence reflects its hasty, imprudent thinking. What was once a legitimate defense measure that emerged as a result of murderous terror attacks like the one in Haifa yesterday,has become a lever for land-grabbing …

The separation fence is designed to eliminate prospects for a viable Palestinian state. For this reason, settler leaders have accepted it with equanimity. Under the design endorsed by the government, the fence will create a South African reality whose result is easily predicted.

Australia, editorial in the Age

It is understandable that the U.S. was reluctant to criticize Israel for the attack on the camp in Syria, given that it came in response to a terrorist act that killed so many innocent civilians. Nevertheless, it must do everything possible to ensure that the conflict does not escalate into a wider regional war, which means it has to pressure the Sharon government not to repeat the Syrian action.

Syria has certainly allowed Palestinian terrorists to operate from its territory in the past, and this record makes the Assad Government’s present denials of complicity difficult to take at face value. Israel’s government, however, surely understands the implications of extending its policy of retaliation beyond the borders of Palestine. A renewed war with the Arab world would serve the interests of terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad, whose aim is precisely to prevent any negotiated peace and division of land between Israel and Palestine.

Although the Sharon government must know what it risks by attacking the territory of a neighbor, it appears resolved to do so again if similar circumstances arise. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli leadership has yet found the will to end the worsening conflict. If that is to happen, it will require concerted effort by the international community, and especially by the U.S. However, Washington will not bring about the Middle East peace it has so often called for by issuing statements that, while rightly condemning Palestinian terrorism, appear to wink at any form of retaliation Israel chooses.

United Kingdom, leader in the Guardian

The attack on civilians in Haifa on Saturday by a lone suicide bomber was an act of infamy. However keen an individual’s sense of grievance, however great a people’s sense of injustice, there is no justifying such pitiless slaughter. Islamic Jihad, which admitted responsibility, has once again done grave disservice to the Palestinian cause. But Israel’s response to the attack is equally unjustified. Its air raid deep inside Syrian territory was a reckless act typical of Israel’s leader, Ariel Sharon. It will dissipate international sympathy and further entrench Arab hostility. Mr. Sharon has a genius for putting Israel in the wrong.

It is unlikely that the assault on the alleged Islamic Jihad training camp north of Damascus will curb future terrorist attacks; quite the opposite, in fact. The Maxim restaurant atrocity will meanwhile convince ever more Israelis that a peace settlement is impossible. That this escalatory cycle of attack and counter-attack is bitterly familiar does not make it any more acceptable or sane … Syria’s decision to take the matter to the UN security council last night, rather than resort to rash retaliation, provides a small glimmer of common sense in an otherwise anarchic, utterly irrational situation …

It has long been apparent that Israelis and Palestinians are incapable of resolving their problems by themselves. In the light, or rather the shadow, of these latest events, those who stand at one remove from the front line now have a duty to re-examine both their policies and their consciences. It is all very well for Hosni Mubarak loudly to denounce “aggression against a brotherly state”. What is he going to do about it? Launch, 30 years on, another Yom Kippur war? Hardly. The inescapable reality is one of Arab weakness and division in the face of U.S.-backed Israeli power … Rather than indulge in anti-Israeli posturing at an emergency Arab League meeting, Arab leaders should tell Yasser Arafat to stop playing politics or else stand down …

As for George Bush, he certainly needs to think again — and act quickly. U.S. pressure on Syria and Iran has been intense of late. Far from reining in Mr. Sharon, Washington’s effete, partial policy seems to have emboldened him to attack, to escalate, to spread the conflict in the much-abused name of the “war on terror”, while actively subverting the road map. This is no Bush-ian vision of a transformed, peaceful Middle East. This is a vision of hell, of a Haifa every day.

Hong Kong, Gregory Sinaisky in Asia Times

Do you wonder what President George W. Bush reads at night? Westerns? Methodist sermons? His favorite, it seems, are popular military histories by Professor Victor Davis Hanson, who reads classics in the California state university system … His book Why the West Has Won has a place on the president’s night-table.

In [a London] Times story, Hanson unintentionally explained to Times journalist Giles Whittell precisely how it is that radical Islam might destroy the West, namely, by “cherry-picking Western culture”. He said, “If you’re a Wahhabi mullah and you want American antibiotics for your daughter’s strep throat, do you deny her them because that’s the country that gives the world [television shock jock] Jerry Springer? If you’re a Saudi sheikh and you want a heart bypass or Viagra, do you go without because it’s contaminated with Western decadence? I don’t think so. It’s as if they don’t realize that the whole supporting infrastructure … is a product of a complex system of secularism, rationalism, tolerance, sexual equality, consensual government and free expression … they’ve tried for 50 years to cherry-pick the West and it doesn’t work well.”

Despite himself, Hanson has put his finger on the reason militant Islam well might defeat the West. It can cherry-pick Western culture, e.g., weapons of mass destruction … The challenge to the United States comes not from ignorant relics who do not understand the US, but from a generation of Western-educated Muslims who understand the US perfectly well, and would rather be dead than be absorbed into it.

Today’s raiders are not horsemen but terrorists, and their objective is not to conquer territory but to demoralize the populations of the West … Flushing out the terrorists is a wearisome, dirty, costly chore that threatens to exhaust the patience of Western populations.

The winner in this game is the one who best can tolerate instability. U.S. policy remains obsessed with bringing stability to the Middle East, no matter how much the U.S. must spend. Bush gambled and lost a good deal of his reputation blowing soap-bubbles about an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative.

Islamic radicals benefit from instability … More chaos means more recruits and less patience on the part of Americans. At the point that American patience with counterinsurgency operations in distant theaters has exhausted itself, only then launch the next mega-terrorist attack. It is not hard to imagine the will of the West gradually eroding over a decade or two.

Has he seen the error of his ways? Hardly. If Bush has changed his tune … it is because the cost of Iraq, in terms of American lives and American tax dollars, is beginning to have a seriously negative impact on his re-election hopes…

These and other considerations pose a strategic choice with implications stretching far beyond Iraq. Why should the international community gathered at the U.N. help Bush get out of his Iraq mess? Why not let him stew and, by withholding cooperation, possibly hasten his electoral demise?

This is indeed tempting, for another four years of Bush in the White House is an unappealing prospect…

A second Bush term promises more, not less, WMD proliferation and more confrontations … On a wide range of other issues, from the international criminal court to civil rights to climate change to multilateralism in its broadest sense, it is plainly in the national interest of many states to see the back of Bush…

France, Germany, Russia and other big powers could and perhaps should hold out for a government in Washington that is more amenable to their vision of a multipolar world…

The problem with such recalcitrance is that it does not help the people of Iraq right now…

The answer must thus be to do all that is possible in terms of immediate humanitarian and technical aid to Iraq while insisting, with France, on a greatly accelerated handover of sovereign powers to a provisional Iraqi government and on primary political oversight for the U.N. security council…

Until Iraqis are able physically to control their country, and unless it cuts and runs, the U.S. will continue to bear the main security burden. Yet as the war’s progenitor, it is only right that it should. It is a price Bush should be made to pay even though, thanks to his foolishness and hubris, it is America’s soldiers who pay the highest price of all.

Such a hard-nosed approach by the international community will hardly help Bush’s re-election chances. It may even dish him. But it will help Iraq recover its dignity and get back on its feet.

Iraq, Mustafa Alrawi in Iraq Today

It is now more than likely that a United Nations force will join Spanish and Polish troops to take some of the responsibility of policing Iraq from the workhorses of the “coalition of the willing”; Britain and the United States…

This new development, seemingly triggered by a change of policy in Washington, could open a door for Arab nations to finally get involved.

On the face of it, wouldn’t it have been better from the beginning to have Arabic speaking soldiers in Baghdad, who can relate to the local culture in a way a Westerner can only dream of? … Having Muslim troops stationed in a Muslim country makes sense, doesn’t it? A Saudi Arabian officer, or a Jordanian trooper would be much easier to trust than one with the Stars and Stripes on his uniform, right?

Wrong…

The grim reality, particularly hard to hear for all those Arabs that felt they were supporting their Iraqi brethren when demonstrating to stop the war, is that most people here don’t want anything to do with them … Iraqis have had enough of seeing their own lives compromised for the benefit of Arabs from neighbouring countries.

The deal on oil between Saddam and countries like Syria and Jordan, affectionately known as memorandums of understanding, irked the population. Even now, in a country that has the world’s second largest reserves of crude, Iraqis must go begging to Syria, Turkey and Jordan…

“Foreigners had more rights in Iraq than Iraqis did under Saddam,” is not an uncommon complaint to be heard here. There is a lot of animosity towards those countries that managed to gain from Saddam’s thirst for international recognition and popularity. In this light, the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in August is not difficult to comprehend. It was even more tragic and disgusting an act if you consider that it was mainly Iraqis that died in the blast.

Pan-Arab nationalists will find that their dreams have died in the dusty streets of Baghdad, and the narrow lanes of Fallujah. Iraqis just aren’t interested. They have enough problems of their own and just want to get back on an even keel, to enjoy their country as they hoped they were always supposed to.

In Jordan, King Abdullah champions his “Jordan First” campaign, struggling to get the message through to his people. Iraqis have learnt their lessons — Iraq comes first, there is no second place.

United Arab Emirates, Luc Debieuvre in the Gulf News

In Iraq, Americans have simply lost the way and the only thing to do is to go the other way round; not a slight shift of direction but a complete U-turn. They must accept the fact that what they thought was a military issue actually is a political one. This is a complete change of logic and an additional military presence on the ground will obviously change nothing in the prevailing dramatic situation…

Going back to the U.N. with no intent to deeply change the contents of the foreign presence in Iraq is perfectly useless, whatever the position of France, Germany, Russia and others. No international settlement can take place with unilateralism, especially when this strategy derives from a country which sometimes seems to have no leader.

Besides the controversial aspects of Bush’s election, [this is] a country which is daily ridiculed by the Sharon government and unable to arbitrate between its State Department and the Pentagon…

When one reads that a reason for the U.S. to go to the U.N. is to obtain a kind of validation of what has happened in order to secure the conditions which will allow countries such as Turkey, India or Pakistan to send troops, just because “Muslim soldiers would better be accepted by the Iraqi population”, it is clear that the Bush administration has not yet realised where and how they have gone wrong.

“Washington seems only to want cash and troops for what Bush called the central front in the war against terrorism. But signing up to a failed policy will only deepen and multiply its consequences.”

This was written in the Financial Times last week. How many people will have to die before we read that in an American newspaper? The world’s security cannot be protected without hearts being won.

Hong Kong, Ehsan Ahrari in Asia Times

How much ill-will President George W Bush has created for the United States over his predilection for unilateralism in Iraq is becoming apparent when Secretary of State Colin Powell is given the lead in damage control … In a quintessential diplomatic tone, Powell rejected France’s demands — that the Iraqi constitution be written and elections be held within a matter of months — as “interesting but not executable”…

On Sunday, the Bush administration made Vice President Dick Cheney available to the national media to explain the thinking of its inner sanctum on how far it is willing to go in accommodating the demands of France, Germany and Russia on the issue of sharing the ruling authority with the U.N. and with other potential contributors to peacekeeping in Iraq. Cheney stated that no further changes in Iraq policy were warranted. Instead, he talked about “major success and major progress” in that country…

There is little doubt that France, Germany and Russia paid high attention to Cheney’s interview on Sunday. What lessons these countries would draw from that interview will become clear only in the specifics of their response on the issue of cooperating with the U.S. on Iraq. My strong sense is that no cooperation from their side is forthcoming unless the Bush administration decides to accommodate their demands about sharing ruling authority in Iraq. It should also be clearly understood that the United States is not likely to bring about such changes in its position unless the security situation in Iraq deteriorates further…

Regardless of whether the Bush administration moves toward multilateralism or remains loyal to its natural instincts related to unilateralism, a mounting preference of the Iraqis is to see the end of foreign presence in their homeland. That predilection is the driving force behind attacks not only on the U.S. forces, but also on the U.N. Given that earlier weapons inspections were carried out under the auspices of the U.N., and given that Iraq remained under sanctions of one sort or another since 1991, most Iraqis see the world body as a puppet of the United States. Even for those who are somewhat neutral about the U.N., it is only because they deem it as a lesser of the two evils, the U.S. being on top of their list of “bad actors.”

Germany, Ralf Beste, Konstantin von Hammerstein and Romain Leick in Der Spiegel

Bernd Mützelburg is a quiet, thoughtful man. For the past year this top-level government official has been the Chancellor’s foreign policy advisor — Gerhard Schröder’s Condoleezza Rice.

Last Thursday, however, this 59-year-old consummate diplomat was virtually unrecognizable…

It was the day of the summit between the German and French governments in Berlin. Gerhard Schröder, surrounded by an army of aides and security officers, calmly chatted with Jacques Chirac. A few meters away, Mützelburg sighed and loudly proclaimed: “I scarcely know whether I’m coming or going”…

Although Schröder wishes to embody a “self-confidence without arrogance” to serve the interests of an enlarged Germany, his approach so far has been characterized by questions: Just how much of a friendship with France can the German-American relationship tolerate?…

Even Schröder knows that the cool relations of the recent past cannot be allowed to continue.

Schröder, until recently an unwelcome guest in Washington, seems to be making an effort to tone down his cockiness. He knows that his sudden popularity is not a result of his own performance, but rather of the poor fortunes of the Americans, who have managed to get themselves into an untenable situation in Iraq and are now desperately seeking partners.

The U.S.’ situation in the Gulf is so disastrous that Schröder, in an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, was practically able to portray himself as being magnanimous: “Satisfaction is not the issue here. Instead, we must solve the problem.”

He is confident that the U.S. president will not ask for German troops…

Instead, the guest from Berlin will offer assistance in other areas. Political insiders say that Germany is willing, “on a grand scale,” to train Iraqi soldiers and police officers — not on-site, of course…

Now Paris is also willing to train Iraqi police officers and soldiers in France, and its willingness is not contingent upon the U.N. Security Council’s ratification of a new Iraq resolution. “If the Chancellor supports this approach, France will take the same position, and will do so for the same reasons,” gushed Schröder’s flexible guest.

India, V. Sudarshan in the Times of India

At the end of their meeting, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stepped out of the room where they had been closeted for all of 35 minutes.

Erdogan turned to Vajpayee and asked, “So are you going to send troops to Iraq?” Vajpayee promptly replied, “No.” After his customary, famous pause, he then added, “There’s no clarity at all.” Erdogan mulled over Vajpayee’s reply and responded, “We are in the same boat.”

A few months ago, it would have been difficult to imagine India and Turkey sailing the same boat in the choppy waters of international diplomacy, quite palpably in upheaval due to U.S. President George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. As Air-India’s 747 Tanjore jet took off on September 16, Vajpayee became the first prime minister in 15 years to visit Turkey … Against this backdrop, you could well describe the PM’s trip as historic.

What precisely was Vajpayee’s impulse to visit Turkey, beyond the trite jargon of nurturing cooperation and friendly ties, was glimpsed on the Tanjore flight itself. He walked to the media enclosure and snuggled into a chair. After minutes of that very familiar silence, he was requested to spell out the import of his visit to Turkey. Vajpayee replied, “Because of developments in Iraq, many questions have arisen. These will have a bearing on the future of the world. These questions will be discussed.” He then retreated to his office aboard the aircraft, leaving journalists to mull over the special context in his words.

It wasn’t only the Indian entourage that was conscious of the troubled Iraqi backdrop. This became clear the moment the prime minister’s delegation arrived in Ankara. Vajpayee was on Page 1 in three newspapers. In one, he said domestic considerations would be a factor at the time India takes a decision on the troops question. A day later, he was quoted as saying that “our internal security situation” would also have to be borne in mind. With the U.S. keen to solicit both India and Turkey’s assistance in Iraq, Vajpayee’s remarks were subtle attempts at raising the bar for troops requests from Washington, where he will be next week.

South Africa, Ali Mazrui in the Sunday Times

We are caught up in other people’s wars and conflicts. We are being drafted to combat terrorists, but we are given no say in determining the causes of terrorism. The more we become part of the U.S.’s shield against terrorism, the more we may become targets of external anti-U.S. terrorist attacks.

What is more, the money we receive from the U.S. to combat terrorism may tempt our security forces to show results, however spurious. How are we going to use the coming millions of dollars against terrorism?…

During the years of the Cold War our liberties were compromised because the West was in conflict with the communist world. People went to jail for possession of The Communist Manifesto. Kenyans in possession of the works of Mao Tse-tung were liable to prosecution…

If today I saw a work by Osama bin Laden in a Nairobi dustbin or a beautiful framed painting of Saddam Hussein on a heap of garbage, should I dare rescue them?…

In the years of the Cold War under both Kenyatta and Moi, possession of communist literature was often regarded as proof that one was a communist.

In the new dispensation after September 11, 2001, is possession of an al-Qaida document proof that one is a terrorist?…

On the other hand, the Kenyan Suppression of Terrorism Bill 2003 turns almost every crime of violence into terrorism. Terrorism is the “use or threat of action which involves serious violence against a person; involves serious damage to property; endangers the life of any person other than the person committing the action…”

The word terrorism loses its meaning when it seems to include robbery with the use of a weapon, lovers threatening each other, a crime of passion by a jealous husband.

There is also a considerable threat to civil liberties in the Bill.

The new Kenyan Bill is so wide-ranging that the police or the minister can decide which kind of public demonstrations constitute support for terrorist forces abroad.

The particular protest T-shirt a demonstrator wears could be a punishable offense. Or a Muslim elder in robes and a long beard could be regarded as suspicious.

The U.S. may or may not have a right to damage its own democracy in exchange for its own security. Does it have a right to damage the fragile democracies of African countries — in exchange for American security rather than Africa’s own well-being?