By Robert Fisk, 29 November 2001

'Everything we have believed in since the Second World War goes by the board as we pursue our own exclusive war'

We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies - who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 - move into the city and execute up to 300 Taliban fighters. The report is a footnote on the television satellite channels, a "nib" in journalistic parlance. Perfectly normal, it seems. The Afghans have a "tradition" of revenge. So, with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime is committed.

Behind the jargon about failed states and humanitarian interventions lie thousands of dead

New Statesman 26 November 2001,

Polite society's bombers may not have to wait long for round two. The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned last week that America could take action against '40 to 50 countries'. Somalia, allegedly a 'haven' for al-Qaeda, joins Iraq at the top of a list of potential targets.

Cheered by having replaced Afghanistan's bad terrorists with America's good terrorists, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has asked the Pentagon to 'think the unthinkable', having rejected its 'post-Afghanistan options' as 'not radical enough'.

(Filed: 15/11/2001)

We asked Dr Tahir Abbas, director at the centre for the study of ethnicity and culture, at the University of Birmingham, to answer your questions about the Islamic faith and Muslim beliefs.

Q1. My Muslim friends continually stress that their religion is one of peace. This attitude is certainly reflected in the behaviour of my friends but is totally contrary to the actions of these terrorists who vehemently believe that their actions are justified by Islam. Is there anything within Islamic scripture that provides the catalyst for this extremist viewpoint? Mitul Patel, West London

From the day Khadija asked Muhammad (sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam) to marry her,

To the night she convinced her husband that the revelation was more than mere hallucination,

till the second she became the first believers,

I have been more than you imagined.

From the time A'isha stood firm against slander, from the moment she held her dying husband,

till the time when she was sought after for her knowledge,

I have been more than you imagined.

From the flight to Medina to now, from the triumph at Mecca to the triumph of more than a billion,

in fourteen hundred and twenty years,

Kamal Ahmed, Antony Barnett and Martin Bright, Sunday 11 November 2001, The Observer

Britain is to be placed under a state of 'public emergency' as part of an unprecedented government move to allow internment without trial of suspected terrorists.

In a historic initiative that will incense civil liberties groups, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will lay the order before the House of Commons in the next 48 hours, to be followed by anti-terrorist legislation which will be rushed through in the next four weeks.

They are arrested in bulk, abused, physically and mentally, and denied rights which are taken for granted by even convicted criminals

November 03, 2001

By Ramzy Baroud

- In the midst of mounting fear, confusion, chaos and anger, individuals with stories that would once appall us are now forgotten or neglected. In the United States, following the attack of September 11, hundreds of Arabs and Muslims were dragged to jail, with alleged connections to terrorism. Many of them, clearly innocent, were not charged, were not released and were not deported.

The Mecklenburg county jail of Charlotte, North Carolina is one of these facilities where many Arabs and Muslims await justice or deportation.

Majority want bombing pause. Exclusive poll shows support for war cooling 54% say halt attacks and allow aid convoys into Afghanistan.

Alan Travis, Tuesday 30 October 2001, The Guardian

British public support for the war against the Taliban has dropped by 12 points in the past fortnight and a majority now believe there should be a pause in the bombing to allow aid convoys into Afghanistan. The sharp drop in support revealed by today's Guardian/ICM poll confirms Tony Blair's fears that the reality of modern warfare and reports of mounting civilian casualties have already led to a wobble in British support.

The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it

George Monbiot, Tuesday 30 October 2001, The Guardian

"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Richard Lloyd Parry in Islamabad and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

29 October 2001

The US government insisted yesterday that its Afghan campaign was going according to plan, despite repeated bombing errors including the killing of seven children at their home in the capital, Kabul.

It was also a bloody Sunday in Pakistan, where 16 Christians and a policeman were murdered in an attack on a church service, and in Israel, where Palestinian gunmen killed five people in drive-by shootings.

Terror and tyranny : What powerful states call terrorism may be an inevitable response to injustice

Seumas Milne, Thursday October 25, 2001, The Guardian

For a war that, in the words of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, "may never end", the enemy is proving embarrassingly hard to define. Of course, we know all about Osama bin Laden, supposed mastermind of the twin towers attacks, and his Taliban protectors, and we have become ominously aware of the demands from within the US administration that Iraq be brought into the frame. But this campaign is intended to be something grander still. The bombs and missiles now raining down on