Reading the Middle Eastern and South Asian Press

By Sandip Roy, AlterNet. Posted May 17, 2002.

Editor's Note: This roundup assembles from regional news sources a collage of headlines and viewpoints that have gone missing in action in the U.S. press.

Pakistan Tribes Issue Fatwa Against U.S. Troops

Widespread anger against American forces among tribal groups in South Waziristan Agency on the Afghan-Pakistan border has made American and Pakistani authorities postpone their operation against the al Qaeda and Taliban and retreat back behind the Afghan border. Pakistan had allowed U.S. forces to pursue fleeing Taliban and al Qaeda into Pakistan. Pakistani tribes have been so incensed by the presence of American commandos in the area that pamphlets have been distributed with a fatwa (edict) calling on people to gun down any American, whenever and wherever found. --Dawn, Karachi, Pakistan, May 10, 2002

West Bank Palestinians Accused of Faking Funerals

Palestinians are being accused of faking funerals in the refugee camp of Jenin to gain international sympathy. An Israeli intelligence officer screened video images of a staged funeral that showed pallbearers repeatedly trying to wrap a green blanker around a man pretending to be dead. The blanket kept falling off the man, who helped pallbearers put it back again. Israeli television showed the footage. Israeli intelligence sources also accused the Palestinians of exhuming corpses from nearby cemeteries and burying them in a mass grave in Jenin in order to raise the fatality count. They also said animal carcasses were being dragged there to create the "stench of death." --Israel Insider, May 5

Pakistani Dragnet Snares 300 Alleged Terrorists

Pakistani police have arrested 300 suspects with alleged links to Al Qaeda in a recent countrywide sweep. The action followed a suicide car bombing that killed 14 people, including 11 French technicians. Police also picked up 120 people from the North West Frontier Province near Afghanistan. Intelligence sources said members of outlawed organizations such as Jaish-I-Mohammed were sheltering Al Qaeda and Taliban members there. --Gulf News, Dubai, UAE, May 5.

A Kinder, Gentler Afghan Warlord?

Afghanistan's battling warlords are trying a little civility. Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum signed an accord with three of his rivals, and in an unprecedented move, admonished more than 90 commanders for alleged atrocities committed by their soldiers after the fall of the Taliban. The warlords listened to a recounting of a 52-page U.N. human rights report about atrocities committed by their troops. After hearing the report Dostum said, "If any one of my commanders commits these kind of acts, I will kill him tomorrow." He warned the soldiers that they could be taken to an international court of justice. --Dawn, Karachi, Pakistan, May 10

Intifada Taking Toll on Israeli Economy

An official of Israel's central bank said that the Israeli economy might lose up to 5 percent of its gross domestic production in 2002 if the Palestinian Intifada continues. The Intifada has already caused the economy to lose about $2.45 billion from October 2000 to the end of 2001. Tourism, construction, agriculture and specially exports to the Palestinian territories -- which reached more than $2 billion dollars in the late 1990s -- have been affected. --Al Jazeera Television, Doha, Qatar, May 9

Suicide Blast Draws Rare Criticism From UAE

The United Arab Emirates publicly criticized the recent Palestinian suicide bombing of a club in Tel Aviv that killed 16 people. Such criticism is extremely rare, especially in the Gulf Arab countries. The Emirati Minister of Information, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said that the suicide bombers did not do the operation "for the sake of establishing a Palestinian state or for the sake of peace, but for the sake of their radical objectives." He also decried such operations as useless, saying they only benefited right-wing parties inside Israel --Al Jazeera Television, Doha, Qatar, May 8

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