In October 2004, we reported on the struggle of traditional Palestinian cave-dwellers in the South Hebron region to maintain their lands from Israeli settler theft and encroachment. An update is now provided by Neve Gordon, who witnessed an inspiring joint action by the cave-dwellers and Israeli solidarity activists to plant trees as a means of claiming the cave community's traditional lands, as well as recognizing coinciding Islamic and Jewish religious festivals that honor trees. Unfortunately, the settlers wasted no time in fencing off the trees after they were planted, appropriating the reclaimed lands—with the connivance of the occupation forces. A Feb. 20 account on the alternative media website Press Action:

How frustrating that a secular anti-imperialist perspective which has been virtually purged from the so-called "alternative media" finds its way onto the front page of the New York Times Metro Section. Peter Applebombe in his "Our Towns" column features a profile of Shemeem Burney Abbas, a professor at Westchester County's Purchase College and author of works such as The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India. The profile is aptly entitled "Lecturing on a World She Cannot Lecture In." Prof. Abbas has been effectively censored in her native Pakistan. Excerpts, links and emphasis added:

From a late-breaking AP account, Feb. 22. A day after the bombing of a Shiite market in Baghdad's Dora district, killing 22, comes the destruction of one of Shia's most sacred shrines in Samarra. Somebody is apparently hell-bent on plunging Iraq into civil war at any cost...and perhaps igniting sectarian warfare throughout the Islamic world.

Still hailing the cartoon protests as heroic anti-imperialism? From AP, Feb. 21:

Christian and Muslim mobs rampaged through two Nigerian cities Tuesday, killing at least 24 people in violence that followed deadly protests against caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed during the weekend.

This brief analysis of the challenges facing the expanded NATO mandate in Afghanistan sheds light on the real politics of the "cartoon jihad"—obviously, the Danish cartoons have been seized upon as a symbol and crystalization of a much wider set of greivances, which may vary from country to country but generally have to do with a sense of national humiliation. Afghans have bitter memories of the Soviet occupation, and even if they are happy to see the Taliban gone they are going to resent the increased NATO presence. The inter-related challenges NATO faces include popular unrest, Taliban insurgency (especially in the south), continued internecine warlord violence (especially in the north), and the potential for internationalization of the conflict, with US ally Pakistan ironically serving as a Taliban guerilla staging ground and Iran viewing the Western troop presence on its eastern border uneasily. From the (State Department-funded) Radio Free Afghanistan, Feb. 13:

Afghanistan's only female warlord, her existence heretofore a rumor, has been contacted by journalists in the remote Darisujan Valley of northern Baghlan province. From The Telegraph, Feb. 18:

This would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Having played the divide-and-conquer game of pitting Iraq's ethnic and religious groups against each other, treating the nascent state as a pie to be divided up by sectarian factions, the US and Britain now realize it could collapse into civil war and lecture about the importance of "national unity" and "nonsectarianism." Meanwhile, the heroic Iraqi resistance continues its glorious crusade against...liquor stores and beauty parlors. From AP, Feb. 21:

Ah, yes. "National security." That magical incantation by which all standards of transparency and humanitarian law can be summarily dismissed. This time applied in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was "renditioned" by US authorities to Syria to be tortured—the same Syria, incidentally, which the US is seeking to destabilize (and will doubtless use its grisly human rights record as propaganda ammo in the service of this effort)! The irony is starting to make us a little dizzy these days... From the Canadian Press, Feb. 17: