Word: algerias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Western diplomat in Cairo insists that both estimates are too high. He says 2,500 Arabs went to Afghanistan and that only about 200 Egyptians received combat training and returned to fight their government. Even so, says the diplomat, "it only takes a few to create the myth." In Algeria several hundred Arab veterans, known locally as "el-Afghanis," are fighting in the ranks of the Islamic Salvation Front. In Tunisia returnees from the battles against the Soviet army are supporting An-Nahda...
...whose secular government is under assault by fundamentalists. For months President Hosni Mubarak has been publicly accusing neighboring Sudan of backing his enemies. "The Sudanese deny it," says Mubarak, "but the camps are there. They are farms. They take people not only from Egypt but also from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and even from Uganda. They act as if they are workers on these farms. But under this umbrella they teach them about explosives and about firearms...
...moment, the government does not recognize any political parties based on religion. Mubarak has hardened his suspicions about such self-styled moderate Islamic groups as the Muslim Brotherhood. And both sides have learned lessons from the military coup that followed the 1992 legislative election victory of fundamentalists in Algeria. Islamists have concluded that attempts to achieve political reform through democratic processes are meaningless; the government fears that political recognition of religious-based parties will further polarize the situation...
Despite the movement's anti-Western rhetoric, fundamentalists are more concerned about instigating change in their own countries than in the outside world. In nations from Algeria to Pakistan, the desire for an Islamic society stems largely from the failures of corrupt and ineffectual secular governments to give burgeoning urban populations the jobs, housing and basic services they need. Most of the faithful are looking for justice at home, not war abroad. Yet many who decry the ills of the modern world would flinch at imposing religious rule by violent means. "The most important thing to remember is that...
...consolation, may harden, by perverse miracle, into a sword -- or anyway into a club or a torch or an assault rifle. Religious hatreds tend to be merciless and absolute. The mystery is now on view among the Hindus and Muslims of India, among the Islamic fundamentalists of Egypt or Algeria, and among Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims and Catholic Croats...