Così intitolava Oriana Fallaci (prima maniera) uno dei suoi libri, sottintendendo che dalla storia non avevamo imparato nulla, e amen… appunto. Ma rassegnarsi a dire amen è un esercizio a cui non voglio fare l’abitudine, sforzandomi invece di andar sempre…
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Turkey’s military under pressure
Published: 10/03/2010Last week, 68 serving and retired Turkish officers, including 24 generals and admirals, were taken into custody on suspicion of plotting a coup in 2003. It was the largest police operation against the military in Turkish history, and by week’s…
Scontro USA-Iran in Iraq
Published: 03/03/201025/02/2010
Original Version: US vs Iran in Iraq
Il 18 febbraio, l’ambasciatore americano Christopher Hill ha fatto presente che potrebbero volerci mesi affinché si formi un nuovo governo a Baghdad dopo le elezioni previste per il 7 marzo in Iraq, e che…
Head to head in Iraq
Published: 03/03/2010Parliamentary elections in any country tend to be influenced by local issues and concerns and sometimes by personalities. While politics is more complicated than that, voters still tend to give their votes to the candidates they trust and will serve…
Another lame summit
Published: 02/03/2010This year’s Arab summit, scheduled to be held in the Libyan capital 27-28 March, is unlikely to spark great excitement in an Arab public that has grown weary of how ineffectual Arab summits are. If the Arab League suffered a…
The El-Baradei phenomenon
Published: 26/02/2010Right now it is Friday morning, only hours before Mohamed El-Baradei is due to arrive in Cairo. Three days ago, I was in Kuwait where I attended a workshop on strategic circumstances in the Middle East. Although Iran, Iraq and…
Blair’s arrogant intransigence on Iraq is reminiscent of the colonial and imperial era
Published: 06/02/2010If it proved anything, the testimony of former British prime minister Tony Blair before the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry last week reveals that we are reliving the mediaeval age of discovery and colonial conquest. Blair’s account of the developments leading to…
Yemen’s slide into chaos is sending shock waves throughout the region
Published: 29/01/2010For some time now, Yemen has endured several crises on both the state and societal levels, casting doubts on the viability of the country’s unity and security. The current Yemen government is heading towards collapse unless it shoulders its responsibilities…
La politica di dialogo con l’Iran è in un vicolo cieco?
Published: 27/01/201021/01/2010
Original Version: Disengaging the Iranians
La politica di dialogo portata avanti da Barack Obama con l’Iran sul suo programma nucleare si è incagliata? I rappresentanti delle cinque più importanti potenze nucleari più la Germania, incontratisi a New York il 16 gennaio,…
Qaradawi slams Abbas
Published: 23/01/2010A heated exchange of recriminations, name-calling and blame casting has been raging in occupied Palestine between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood following scathing criticisms of President Mahmoud Abbas by Qatar-based Sheikh Youssef El-Qaradawi.
Qaradawi, one of…
The Coptic question
Published: 09/01/2010THE COPTS AND CITIZENSHIP: This approach to the Coptic question is based on the premise that the Copts are, first and foremost, citizens and members of the Egyptian national community. The Copts are not a separate group or closed entity.…
La questione copta in Egitto
Published: 09/01/201009/01/2010
Original Version: The Coptic question
Gli incidenti di questi giorni fra cristiani e musulmani in Egitto richiamano l’attenzione sull’annosa questione copta e sulle crescenti tensioni settarie nel paese; nell’analisi che segue, lo scrittore copto egiziano Samir Morqos afferma che tali tensioni,…
Iniziativa curda: lo spiraglio di possibilità si sta chiudendo
Published: 23/12/200917/12/2009
Original Version: Window of opportunity closing
Venerdì scorso la Corte Costituzionale della Turchia ha votato, all’unanimità, la messa al bando del filo-curdo Partito per la Società Democratica (DTP) poiché sarebbe diventato “centro di attività miranti a danneggiare l’indipendenza dello Stato e…
Siccità: la catastrofe ambientale dell’Iraq
Published: 17/12/200917/12/2009
Original Version: Drought hits Iraq
La siccità e le dissennate politiche idriche dei paesi confinanti con l’Iraq stanno riducendo alla sete questo paese, determinando una situazione ambientale ed umanitaria gravissima – riferisce il corrispondente Salah Hemeid
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Per secoli, gli iracheni hanno solo…
Non rinneghiamo Dubai
Published: 16/12/200910/12/2009
Original Version: Don’t disown Dubai
La città-stato di Dubai oggi viene punita. Viene punita per essersi allontanata dalla “strada maestra” e aver pensato l’impensabile. Alimentata dalla sua stessa ambizione, Dubai è volata in alto, ha trasformato il deserto in un’oasi piena…
Drought hits Iraq
Published: 12/12/2009For centuries, Iraqis only needed to dig small channels and use simple pumps to irrigate the green fields of Iraq that span tens of thousands of acres of fertile land. The ancient Greeks and Romans called the region now occupied…
Iraq – One step forward
Published: 12/12/2009Iraq’s parliament on Sunday approved plans to hold national elections early next year that are seen as an essential step towards political reconciliation and as paving the way for the country’s full sovereignty after the withdrawal of US troops by…
Don’t disown Dubai
Published: 11/12/2009City-state Dubai is being punished today. It is being punished for straying from the well-trodden path and for thinking the unthinkable. Fired by its own ambition, Dubai rose high, turned the desert into a lively oasis, and never looked back.
Across…
Iraq: elections at an impasse?
Published: 03/12/2009For weeks, feuding Iraqi sectarian and ethnic groups have been wrangling over a new election law that would clear the way for Iraq’s second parliamentary elections since the downfall of the Saddam Hussein regime in the US-led invasion of 2003.…
The hidden war: the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia
Published: 18/11/200911/11/2009 – Saudi Arabia has traditionally opted for a calculated, non- confrontational approach to counter Iran’s ascendancy as a key regional power player. Parallel to this quietest approach, however, it launched what one Saudi observer described as “a hidden war”…
Libano: aspre accuse all’Egitto
Published: 30/10/200930/10/2009
Original Version: Harsh accusations
L’Egitto è stato ultimamente accusato da diversi esponenti dell’opposizione libanese di ostacolare la nascita di un governo di unità nazionale in Libano. Il Cairo ha diversi interessi in Libano, tuttavia è solo uno fra i molti attori…
The Goldstone Report – Contested but not read
Published: 26/10/2009The Goldstone Report is back, taking centre stage in a raging international debate. What is most troubling is not the circuitous route the report took on its way to the UN Security Council. Rather, it is the fact that those…
Nubi minacciose si addensano sul Sudan
Published: 24/09/200924/09/2009
Original Version: Storm clouds over Sudan
Nel Sudan martoriato, ad una fetta di popolazione sempre più ampia che vive sotto la soglia di povertà si aggiunge la violenza tribale, salita ormai a livelli incontrollabili. Mentre si aggrava la crisi economica del…
Let’s try something else – Fayyad’s plan for Palestinian statehood
Published: 22/09/2009In three months time, we’ll mark the anniversary of UN Resolution 181 of 1947, which provided for the partitioning of Palestine into two states, a Jewish one and an Arab one, with Jerusalem being an international zone.
David Ben-Gurion agreed to…
Israele in Africa
Published: 20/09/200920/09/2009
Original Version: Israel in Africa
Il recente viaggio in Africa del ministro degli esteri israeliano ha suscitato la dura reazione di molti commentatori della stampa araba. Gli arabi considerano da sempre l’Africa sub-sahariana come il loro “giardino di casa”, e gli…
Storm clouds over Sudan
Published: 16/09/2009Pagan Amum, secretary-general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), has a story. He once went to a restaurant in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia with friends from north and south Sudan. The owner of the restaurant was puzzled to see…
Exercising Entebbe – Israel and the African nations
Published: 16/09/2009Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman flew to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa last Wednesday, 2 September, where he met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin. Lieberman’s visit to Ethiopia, strategically located in the heart of the…
Message of fear in Iraq
Published: 09/09/200927/08/2009 - On a scorching Wednesday morning last week, an enormous explosion ripped through an apartment block just outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, sending huge columns of smoke billowing over a large area.
The blast, caused by the explosion of…
Xinjiang e Afghanistan: due casi a confronto
Published: 29/07/200916/07/2009
La sommossa dei giorni scorsi ad Urumqi, nello Xinjiang, il cui bilancio è stato di 180 morti, ricorda disordini analoghi che si sono verificati in Tibet l’anno scorso, sebbene solo 19 persone siano rimaste uccise in quella circostanza. Sia gli…
Turkey -Who’s couping now?
Published: 24/07/2009Turkey’s powerful military suffered another blow last week when the country’s president approved a package of legal amendments that would allow serving military personnel to be tried in civilian courts. The move has been condemned by the fiercely secularist Turkish…
Clear calls from the NAM – paesi non allineati
Published: 22/07/2009The 15th summit meeting of the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM), held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh this week, saw the leaders of the 118-member organisation meeting for two days of discussions during which issues of…
Keeping the ICC at bay
Published: 16/07/2009Some consider Sudan to have come out on top after the recent African summit. It gained the strong support of the 54 African Union states in the form of a summit resolution not to cooperate with the International Criminal Court…
Cracking the case of pan-Africanism
Published: 15/07/2009“The stark contrast between the money disbursed to the world’s desperately poor after 489 years of painstaking summits and negotiations and the staggering sums found virtually overnight to bail out the creators of the global economic crisis makes it impossible…
Germany: bloodbath in court
Published: 13/07/2009“The attacker was a Russian immigrant. So this is yet another case of a non-Western immigrant killing another non-Western immigrant. This means that none of us in the West are to blame for this, except that we should stop letting…
La rivolta iraniana: volontà popolare o complotto occidentale?
Published: 09/07/200909/07/2009
La vera battaglia in Iran non sta avvenendo nelle strade, appoggiata dall’Occidente, ma nel cuore dell’establishment iraniano – scrive l’analista egiziano Mustafa el-Labbad
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Mentre il mondo sta seguendo gli eventi drammatici che si susseguono in Iran, l’opinione pubblica araba è divisa…
Foothold for the enemy: economic ties between Turkey and Israel could trigger a crisis of Syrian national security
Published: 06/07/2009The Turkish parliament has passed a law — now authorised by President Abdullah Gul — for the removal of mines in the regions bordering Syria within five years. The law also allows for this land to be rented and used…
Iraq: escono di scena le truppe americane, arriva l’anarchia?
Published: 30/06/200930/06/2009
Mentre le truppe americane si ritirano dalle città irachene, l’incertezza regna sovrana nel paese. I recenti attentati su vasta scala nell’area di Baghdad, di Kirkuk, ed in altre regioni, fanno temere che l’Iraq si stia incamminando verso un altro periodo…
La competizione fra Turchia, Iran e Russia nel Caucaso
Published: 02/06/200902/06/2009
Il Caucaso rappresenta il punto di incontro e di scontro tra le sfere di influenza di tre potenze a cavallo fra l’Europa, l’Asia e il Medio Oriente: Russia, Iran, e Turchia. L’interazione russo-turco-iraniana nel Caucaso ci insegna che gli interessi…
I delicati equilibri dell’Iran
Published: 29/05/200929/05/2009
Per farsi un’idea della posta in gioco nelle prossime elezioni iraniane e dei suoi possibili esiti, è necessario comprendere come è strutturato il panorama politico iraniano. Contrariamente alle apparenze, l’Iran non è governato da un’unica classe monolitica – il clero…
Israele contro il Libano: una guerra sotto altro nome
Published: 24/05/200924/05/2009
L’organizzazione di imponenti manovre militari israeliane e la clamorosa scoperta di una fitta rete di spionaggio del Mossad in Libano hanno spinto molti osservatori a chiedersi se Israele non stesse preparando una nuova guerra contro il Paese dei Cedri. L’analista…
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