Salon.com > Sean Kenny

London bombing — one year later

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 11:20:00 +0000

Mark Delamey's roadside fruit stall was doing a roaring trade Thursday night as commuters bustling in and out of the Russell Square tube station stopped to pick up strawberries fresh from the field. But today the stall remains shut in memory of those murdered on July 7, 2005, when four terrorists blew themselves up, one in a tube train below this station.

The terror attacks a year ago killed 56 people, including the four bombers themselves, injured more than 700 others, and brought a major city to a standstill. Even more shocking was that the four terrorists were "homegrown," Muslims born and bred in the United Kingdom who had come to see their fellow citizens as legitimate targets in a global jihad.

Fears of another attack have run high since then, amid warnings from the British government and security services. Officials say they have disrupted at least three attacks since the London bombings and have "intensified" their counterterrorist investigations. On Monday, Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, revealed that police are carrying out approximately 70 counterterrorism investigations.

The revolution will be blogged

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

In February, Iranian student Mojtaba Saminejad, celebrated a bitter anniversary -- one year in prison for authoring a blog that enraged the country's ruling mullahs. He's not the only blogger languishing in an Iranian jail: In 2003, Iran's was the first regime known to imprison a blogger, Sina Motallebi, author of the popular site RoozNegar.com. And in January, journalist Arash Sigarchi was found guilty and given a three-year sentence for "insulting the Supreme Guide" online.

Those were trumped-up charges, according to writer and advocacy worker Nasrin Alavi, the author of "We Are Iran," a recent anthology of Iranian blogs. "When Arash was first arrested, I went through his archives and couldn't initially find the inflammatory statements," she said. In these cases, "they were just unlucky in that someone decided to make an example of them. Especially with Arash, who was being tried by a small-town judge who wanted to really make a name for himself as revolutionary. A lot of that goes on Iran. To work your way up the system there's rivalry to show off your revolutionary credentials."

Nepal under the radar

Thu, 20 Dec 2001 22:25:00 +0000

Before the soldier came it was a pleasant evening in the Devkota household. After a traditional Nepali meal of rice, lentils and vegetables, we watched an Indian movie and chatted.

"Do you have the caste system in your country?" asked Dixon, 16. At first I was surprised at the question. The Devkotas are an educated, English-speaking Nepali family. An uncle was ambassador to Sri Lanka. But then I remembered the outdated textbooks of their children (Dixon, Nixon and Abhilok), with their ponderous lists of facts and figures about Europe that said nothing about real life. I was explaining Britain's meritocratic social setup when there was a rapping on the door. It was 8 p.m., an hour after the district of Tulsipur's strictly enforced curfew.

The curfew is part of the state of emergency declared by King Gyanendra on Nov. 26, three days after Maoist guerrillas broke a cease-fire and attacked army and police posts across Nepal.

We saw it was a soldier when Mrs. Devkota answered the door. She and her sister Neera went outside to talk with him. The soldier was upset and angry. There was a heated argument. The only words I understood were "emergency" and "Maobadi," the Nepali word for Maoist.

Getting high with the Sufis

Tue, 30 Oct 2001 00:13:00 +0000

The Islam seen in Pakistan since Sept. 11 has been a religion of the daylight. The austere fundamentalists hold their marches and speeches after Friday prayers in the heat and glare of the afternoon sun. Everything is clear-cut in the bright light, and the streets of Peshawar, Quetta and other fundamentalist strongholds are deserted a few hours after dusk.

But there is also an Islam of the night. A widely practiced mystical branch of Islam that promotes tolerance and celebrates music and dance, Sufism is loathed by such fundamentalists as the Taliban, and even by some mainstream branches of Islam such as the Wahhabi, next to whose restraint it can seem decadent.

Here in Pakistan, Sufism is part of the culture. Anti-mullah, anti-intellectual, anti-establishment, Sufis, who prefer to call themselves "we friends," have no hierarchy, no organization and no set text; instead they search for direct communion with God through poetry, music and dance. Much Sufi teaching is done by sharing fables and jokes, such as "The Subtleties of Mullah Nasruddin," a classic Middle Eastern collection of extended haikus about a holy fool's misadventures.

Peshawar protests peacefully

Sat, 13 Oct 2001 23:38:00 +0000

Two years to the day since he seized power, Gen. Pervez Musharraf faced -- and passed, for now -- the toughest test of his control over Pakistan.

The first Friday since the attacks on Afghanistan began was, as the Muslim day of prayer, bound to be a litmus test of the support for religious hard-liners among average Pakistanis. The religious groups and the government have been waging a war of words over who really speaks for the Pakistani majority.

Despite government support for the U.S., there is widespread anger in Pakistan over the strikes on Afghanistan. The protests on Friday were the Islamic parties' chance to show that they could get crowds onto the streets to challenge Musharraf's authority. Though protesters gathered in force here in Peshawar and filled mosques and streets, the day ended peacefully.

The Friday protests were only the latest move in an ongoing chess game between Musharraf and the Islamicists. The general's first move had been to eliminate the threat of dissent within the army by forcing out senior officers with Taliban sympathies, including Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad, head of the ISI, Pakistan's powerful secret service. The ISI was instrumental in backing and arming the Taliban during the 1990s, and Mahmood was considered one of the most significant threats to Musharraf from within his own ranks.

The first casualties

Tue, 09 Oct 2001 18:08:00 +0000

There was no electricity in Hayathabad hospital, Peshawar, and Assadullah's ward was pitch-black and very hot. By the light of a cigarette lighter, I saw bloody bandages wrapped around the boy's arms and legs, and there was a large round bandaged stump where his left foot should have been.

According to Assadullah, 16, he is apparently one of the first victims of the raids on Afghanistan Sunday night. At the time, he had just taken a break from working at his French fries stand in Jalalabad when the town was hit by cruise missiles. "I was thrown 50 feet by the blast. When I woke up I was in Jalalabad hospital," he said. "My father had found me and taken me there."

Assadullah is apparently one of just a few casualties to make it over to the Pakistan side, and to Hayathabad hospital, though reports of civilian injuries dominated the day's news from the region. Four workers at a United Nations-funded mine-clearing operation just east of Kabul were killed, according to the U.N., the first independent confirmation of civilian deaths inside Afghanistan. Taliban representatives were claiming that civilian deaths from the first day of bombings ranged from 8 to 20.

Taking to the streets

Mon, 08 Oct 2001 19:20:00 +0000

The boys and young men protesting against the attacks on Afghanistan in Islamabad this morning had Muslim freedom-fighter style down pat. They brandished sticks or bamboo poles, and wrapped turbans and scarves around their heads, leaving only their eyes visible.

It was a threatening display that looked good on television but did little to intimidate the hundreds of riot police armed with machine guns, tear gas and water cannons. Security in the capital was tight and the violence that marked the day in Quetta and Peshawar was absent. No shopping malls or cinemas were burned in Islamabad today. There was anger on display, to be sure, but the demonstrators were also plainly enjoying themselves.

Like any schoolchildren let out of the classroom for the day, these Pakistani madrassah students were in a bouyant mood. The presence of TV cameras and the righteousness of their cause only added to the bravado.

"America wants to kill Islam then every Muslim will go with Islam. We will attack them again and again," said a young man. When I asked his name he replied: "I am Muslim, he is Muslim, we are all Muslim." All his friends laughed at this evasion. When pressed he decided to be called Abdullah, Arabic for "slave of God."

All quiet in Islamabad, for now

Sun, 07 Oct 2001 22:38:00 +0000

Islamabad's U.N. Club could be any anonymous bar anywhere in the world. Assorted professionals are engaged in subdued chatter around candlelit tables. For the last couple of evenings the conversation of the journalists, aid workers and diplomatic staff has revolved around one subject. When will the strikes happen?

Three days ago I was in Peshawar, Pakistan's epicenter of religious extremism, and the question had a deadly urgency. The group of journalists staying at Greens Hotel in the center of town made contingency plans, checked the hotel for exits, swapped mobile numbers. We all knew that Greens had been bombed during the Salman Rushdie affair, and that was just a book, not a huge air attack. Late night conversations left us each lying in bed, anxious and unable to sleep. Arriving at the hotel late one night a group of youths on a street corner held out their forefingers and fired their pretend pistol at us. Was it a joke or a threat?

I didn't want to find out. I left the increasingly heavy atmosphere of Peshawar for the manicured sanity of Islamabad, Pakistan's distinctly un-Asian capital. As soon as the car left Peshawar I got the feeling of being a spectator, not a participant. Whereas Peshawar is full of tiny winding streets where a mob can be compressed and brought to boiling point, Islamabad is a city of American-style boulevards which could swallow all but the largest crowd.

The unwanted

Fri, 05 Oct 2001 23:59:00 +0000

When the U.S. attacks Afghanistan, as expected, Pakistan could face one of the largest refugee crises of modern times. As many as 1 million Afghans could flee from the conflict, as well as from already rampant starvation caused by the drought that has afflicted Afghanistan for almost four years.

Thousands of Afghans with money and connections have already handed over their savings to smugglers and crossed into Pakistan illegally. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that since Sept. 11, 15,000 Afghan refugees have arrived in Pakistan. In the last year alone, UNHCR says, an estimated 180,000 new refugees entered Pakistan due to drought, starvation or the ongoing civil strife.

Most have joined relatives and friends in the Afghan refugee community of more than 2 million in this country. Many live in sprawling refugee camps, such as Peshawar's Katcha Gari camp, a semi-permanent shantytown of mud houses, shops and mosques where fetid open sewers bisect the tiny alleyways and there are always freshly made coffins outside the carpenters' workshops.

Anger in the bazaars of Peshawar

Sat, 22 Sep 2001 17:34:00 +0000

Chowk Yadgar, in the heart of Peshawar's Old City, is usually a thriving arcade of moneychangers trading everything from U.S. dollars to Iraqi dinars. Boys dart among the crowds fetching the moneymen cups of sweet green tea, beggars hobble from shop to shop and the air is full of fumes and noise from the constant stream of auto-rickshaws.

But the bazaar was virtually deserted Friday as a general strike gripped this Pakistani city and Islamic groups staged virulently anti-American rallies.

"Come to Islam, support Osama bin Laden and sacrifice yourselves. If America fights the Taliban then we will make graveyards full of Americans," shouted Mulanna Mohammad Umar of the Jamiaat-e-Ulema-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic extremist party.

"General Musharraf is shameful, stupid and against Islam," he said.

Peshawar, 180 miles from Kabul, is the heart of fundamentalist Muslim opposition to the Musharraf government, and its willingness to let the U.S. use Pakistani airspace and intelligence for an attack on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. In Friday's uprising, protesters chanted "Long live the Taliban" and "America is a dog" and burned a crude effigy of President Bush. One man shouted: "I will sacrifice my wife, my children and myself for Osama bin Laden." Across the city men declared their willingness to die in a jihad if America attacks Afghanistan.