Out of Iraq and into Syria?
Ibrahim Nafie questions America's plans for the Middle East

What is happening to the United States?
What is formidable about Iraq is its rich culture, its complex society, and its long-suffering people, writes Edward Said . These were all made invisible, the better to smash Iraq as if it were only a den of thieves and murderers

An alternative approach to WMD
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed asks whether the elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) cannot be handled otherwise

Not a game
Washington went straight from attacking Iraq to threatening Syria. Azmi Bishara says the world does not work that way

Whose truth?
The war against Iraq was not just fought in harbours, roads, and city streets, but on the airwaves. And truth was the victim, writes Galal Amin

War and the forgotten continent
Peoples in the Middle East are not the only ones facing a mounting humanitarian crisis owing to the war in Iraq, write Rita Abrahamsen and Ray Bush

The moment of truth
Iraq has rid itself of a terrible regime, but at what price? Challenging conventional wisdom, Osama El-Ghazali Harb argues that despotism is worse than occupation

Descent into violence
The US occupation of Iraq will spark a new round of Islamist violence, Amr Elchoubaki predicts

This week: IRAQI MOTHER

Editorial:
Test of wills
US President George W Bush and the entire Bush administration should take heed of the strong anti-US feelings expressed this week by Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims in the city of Karbala, 80km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad...

Close up
Who will save Iraq?
The final communiqué of the emergency gathering by Iraq's neighbours held in Riyadh may have helped dispel a measure of the confusion that has dominated their responses to the fall of the Iraqi regime...
By Salama A Salama

Soapbox
A difficult labour
Minutes after the US-British war on Iraq started, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat gave a mandate to Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu-Mazen) to form the fourth Palestinian government...
By Abdel-Qader Yassin

The Baghdad demonstrations
The huge demonstrations in Baghdad calling for national unity, particularly between Sunni and Shi'ite communities, and the withdrawal of the invading forces were perhaps the first positive development in Iraq following a series of disappointments...
By Naguib Mahfouz