It’s a “bloody litany”, the spate of atrocities that “now punctuates daily life not only in Iraq, but also” in Afghanistan. “Eight soldiers of NATO killed on 8 April, the execution of the Afghan interpreter” of the Italian journalist Mastrogiacomo, and the kidnapping of two French aid-workers of “Terre d’enfance”, are just some of the recent cases listed in the editorial of the French daily LE MONDE (10/04). “It’s a chronicle reminiscent of Baghdad” but, warns the editorialist, “we must beware of vague comparisons” because the “two theatres are quite distinct”, both “as regards the legitimacy of the mandate of the foreign troops operating” in Afghanistan and “due to the absence there of a bloody civil war like that between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq”. “Nonetheless – asks the editorialist – how can we fail not to be disturbed by the ‘iraquization’ of Afghanistan? The hostility to Western troops perceived as occupiers, the impotence of a corrupt State, and the importation of ever more sophisticated guerrilla techniques, are fuelling the Taleban insurrection that is now imposing its demands. Will post-September 11 be beset by a new fiasco?” “It is up to the international community to prevent that by mobilizing its forces in support of Afghanistan”, concludes the editorial. “But was not Morocco one of the countries of the Maghreb that, in recent years, had registered most progress in coming to terms with modernity?” That’s one of the questions posed by Gerolamo Fazzini in his editorial in the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (11/04) immediately following the episode of terrorist violence that exploded in a quarter of Casablanca, and that came a month after the bomb blast in an Internet café in the same city. Investigators speak of “a very dangerous and active network” observes the journalist, pointing out that “the majority of those charged for and the terrorists killed during the Madrid bomb blasts (191 dead) were of Moroccan origin”. According to Fazzini, “the political future of Rabat and neighbouring countries closely impinges on the old continent”. That’s why “we need to analyse with the utmost attention what is happening in that area”, a “transition that is far from linear, and whose outcome will be decisive for the years to come”. Apart from the “changes in response to the challenge of modernity”, the editorialist also looks at the “other side of the coin”. “The country’s third political force is a party of clear Islamic inspiration” which “now holds 42 seats in Parliament (tripled at the last general elections)” and which denounces corruption, “growing westernisation and the loss of identity of Muslims in Morocco”. There are many comments in the German press about the Iranian atomic programme. “The reports on the jubilation of Teheran about presumed advances in the Iranian nuclear programme do not mean that the country is close to the realization of its first atomic bomb”, observes the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (11/4). “But the process demonstrates how rapidly the Mullahs are working on a dangerous key technology”. “So it is advisable that more severe sanctions be imposed. The coercive measures so far promoted by the UN Security Council have had an effect, giving rise to the first serious debate in Teheran on atomic policy. The power of Ahmadinejad is no longer so firm as his grandiloquent speeches might suggest. The offer of the EU to resolve the crisis is generous and fair: it would seem advantageous if the price that Iran would have to pay for its stubbornness were to rise”. Writing in the FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU , Brigitte Kols writes: “The Iranian President’s speech is cause for fear not only for its outward aspect, but also for its contents”[…] “And the provocation will reverberate from New York to Washington, from London to Brussels to Berlin”. […] “It’s a war of nerves that ought to wrest ‘negotiations without preconditions’. It doesn’t matter if the consequence is fear: the deafening strategy of Teheran cannot be allowed to continue in this way”. The Polish weekly POLITYKA (n°.14/2007 dedicates ample coverage to the problems of the Church. “The greater the distance that separates us from the death of the Polish Pope, the better we see the problems of Catholicism in Poland” argues Adam Szostkiewicz. “Two years after the death of Karol Wojtyla, the Polish Church is riven by a crisis consequent on the vetting of presumed cases of collusion with the Communist secret services. What would John Paul II have said about the problem of the secret service files? I haven’t the faintest idea. Considering the authority of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz (commonly regarded as the heir and spiritual executor of the will of the Polish Pope) Wojtyla would have been concerned for the fate of the Church as an institution under the attacks of a group of journalists, politicians, historians and priests”. Szostkiewicz says he “does not have the courage to predict” what might be the outcome of the divisions in the Church caused by this vetting of Catholic priests.
