Alan Fisher’s World
News you may have missed
Wednesday 22 October
To watch the main bulletins on British TV at the moment it seems there are really two main stories anyone is bothered about: the economy and its political fallout; and the US presidential election.
In the last few days the Egyptians have put forward a plan to heal the Hamas/Fatah rift in Palestine and perhaps bring a broader peace to the region; the Americans have warned Russia they would take action to protect the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia if Moscow moved against them; Georgia secured international donations of $4.5 billion to help it recover from the short summer war; and more than two million people in North Korea face a terrible time this winter because of chronic food shortages.
The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is denying that she sent a message to Hamas, praising the organisation that America doesn’t talk to for halting rocket attacks into Israel. The communication was verbal and through intermediaries visiting the Gaza Strip, so there’s enough room there for everyone to deny that anything official has gone on. Hamas is still listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation, but perhaps there’s a realisation that if peace in the region is the ultimate goal, discussions must include Hamas.
All of these stories may have passed you by because someone in the US was up in the polls and someone was down and a Conservative politician forgot that what happens on the yacht stays on the yacht.
Thursday 23 October
The Americans have killed eight students at a school in north-west Pakistan. They were aiming to kill a leader of the Taliban who apparently lives nearby – but they missed. The pilotless drones fired two missiles which smashed into the school building.
The Pakistani authorities are investigating but the US, for the moment, is saying nothing. The attack came just hours after the parliament in Islamabad adopted a resolution calling on the Government to defend its sovereignty and expel foreign fighters from the region, as well as asking it to take steps to stop Pakistani territory being used for attacks on another country.
I’ve travelled in that area and it’s so remote that it’s almost impossible to police. The resolution has been made more for its symbolic value than any real impact it will have.
Meanwhile, the US has probably turned another eight families against it and the campaign that it’s waging. If, in that horrible phrase, wars are won through ‘hearts and minds’, America is losing.
In Iraq, US forces have handed back control of another province to the local security forces. That now makes 12 of the 18 in the control of Iraqi forces. The province of Babil runs south of the capital Baghdad and includes the ancient city of Babylon.
In the run-up to the war in 2003 I travelled to the city and stood in the exact spot where Alexander the Great had spoken to the masses. Under Saddam the place had taken on a sinister and sad air. He had ordered the reconstruction of many of the buildings, which was to be applauded, but insisted on every brick bearing his name and it looked dreadful. But the thing that stuck in my mind of that overcast Saturday was our guide. Saddam had built a magnificent palace overlooking this ancient site but we were forbidden to even look at it and certainly no pictures could be taken in its direction. I remember this small thin man with bad teeth being so fearful, watching our every move for some thoughtless act on our part which would get him into trouble, even though it had been reported that Saddam only ever spent one night in the building. It was a sharp reminder of the awful power and menace of Saddam.
As I write this nine people have been killed in a car bomb in Baghdad which targeted Iraq’s minister of labour, who survived.
The return of Babil is a small victory.
WEEKEND
INBOX
THE END OF OCTOBER
I. HOW DO WE REMEMBER?
Thoughts about October by Kenneth Roy
[click here]
II. AUTUMN IN GLENROTHES
A photo essay for October by
Islay McLeod
[click here]
III. THE SEABIRDS’ PROTEST
A poem for October by
Tessa Ransford
[click here]
IV. OCTOBERS PAST
Diaries for October by David Daiches and Ian Mackenzie
[click here]
ALSO TODAY…
HUMES’ FUMES
Walter Humes
[click here]
ALAN FISHER’S WORLD
Has Obama just had his Sheffield moment?
[click here]
THE POSTBOX
[click here]
OPENING SOON!
The Scottish Review Bookshop
From Friday 7 November you will be able to order ICS books online for Christmas
Including:
an outstanding collection of character studies
Islay McLeod’s Faces of Scotland
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