Recent Columns

Arab fears for region have substance

If truth is the first casualty of war, one has to wonder what that does in the socalled battle over hearts and minds of people, not only in Iraq, but across the Arab world and beyond.
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Is Yemen also on US hit list?

Washington admits that it wants to shape the entire Middle East into a kinder place. Sooner or later, that goal may take the U.S. to Yemen's terrorist haven.
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Don’t expect Arab uprising soon

"We're going to err on the side of caution and stay in the house for a few days," is what I told a friend during a phone chat yesterday morning. Our self-imposed house arrest would mean Jean and I would miss a friend's birthday party and a weekly gathering of friends. Not much of a sacrifice, considering a few hours later four Yemeni protesters, including an 11-year-old boy, lay dead on the streets of this capital city. They were killed by Yemeni police guarding the American embassy.
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Living under the threat of reprisal

If there is a time for everything -- a time to search and a time to give up, a time for love and a time for hate -- it would appear it's time for the Americans to blow Saddam and all that is his to Kingdom Come.
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A colonial occupation will never work in Iraq

The Yanks' war plan sounds solid enough on paper. Capture land in Iraq quickly. Use it to set up bases for further attacks. Bomb Saddam's palaces and cut command centres from the rest of the country to quicken the government's collapse. Then make a seamless transition to military occupation. Don't get caught in ugly street fighting. Deliver food. Get Iraqis involved with a new economic plan. Unfurl the flag of democracy.
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All of us can supply an alternative to war

Listen to the words of a cargo handler at London's airport, spoken while he cleared freight I shipped to Yemen last year: "Those people are backwards and they don't want to change. As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't care less what happens to them."
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When a child screams in Baghdad…

Fear is a funny thing. Along with other Commonwealth citizens, Jean and I were recently informed that most staff members of the British Embassy here are leaving and that we should consider the same.
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In the Arab world there are no lonely singles

It's Valentine's Day. Great fun. Two years ago today, I proposed to Jean. Her ring was presented in a restaurant, with the help of the official town crier, his booming voice, clanging bell and scroll. Moments later, along with thousands of others in London, Ont., we heard about our upcoming "royal wedding" on the radio.
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Tolerance, anyone?

Chalk up a victory for misguided tolerance in the recent flap with Lebanon's ambassador to Canada, Raymond Baaklini.
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Sisters of St. Joseph’s reach out to poor of Yemen

And now, for a change, some good news from the Arabian Peninsula.
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Three died ‘sacrificially’

Jarring images of how an Islamic extremist burst into, of all places, a hospital in the last days of 2002, to fire bullets from his Kalishnikov into the heads of our friends will linger for a while. My wife Jean and I and some colleagues are still laying to rest what has become known across Yemen as 'The Jibla Tragedy.'
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We should emulate the Yemeni Way

SANA'A, YEMEN ✦ The Yanks. We love 'em. We hate 'em. Indeed, Jean and I are still recovering from the news of the brutal slaying of threeU.S.aid workers, including a doctor friend, at Jibla missionary hospital. The killer, apparently an Islamic extremist, reportedly said he killed "to get closer to God." Right. And who better to kill than American Christians? It's killing two birds, innocent as they may be, with one stone. Indeed,U.S.foreign policy really has folks in a huff these days. In fact, many of us would bend over backward to disassociate ourselves from the Yanks. No?
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Giving up life for the foolish notion of love

It didn't take long for what started out like a normal day in our household to turn into the day from hell.
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Yemen terror falls close to home

When you're a humanitarian aid worker in a place like Yemen, the thought of being killed for no good reason is always there. When you talk with colleagues about security threats, sometimes you joke about the false impressions people back home in western countries tend to have about life in the Middle East.
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Santa: help us all find some horse sense

Dear Santa: Thanks for last year's gift, the Gulliver's Travels book. I enjoyed the Houyhnhnms, those horse-like characters. So bright. So noble. And those savage Yahoos. So dim. So lost. Poor Gulliver couldn't see himself in them. But Gulliver really was a traveller. Like you Santa. That's why I'm writing. Distribution problems down here are getting worse.
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