Chronology 2000 to the present
2000
Human Genome Project and Celera produce first rough drafts of the human genome (the entire molecular structure which determines cell development).
Astrophysicists estimate that dark or black matter must have a weight seven times that of all stars and seven times that all of baryons (atoms). Dark matter was initially theorized in part to account for the "controlled" spin of galaxies.
Vladimir Putin elected president of Russia.
Two multi-planetary solar systems have been discovered.
10-3-2000: NASDAQ peaks; 21-3-2000: recession in the USA.
Israel evacuates southern Lebanon. The SLA is disbanded.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is offered two thirds of the West Bank, which it rejects.
May: Battle between the Israeli army and the PA police.
September: Palestinians spontaneously begin the Second Intifada. The PA and the PLO have not been accused of fomenting it. Israeli Arabs rioted and were put down with excessive force, as an Israeli enquiry later concluded. The main cause of the Intifada was the spread of settlements in the West Bank but the fuse was the politically motivated visit that Sharon made under armed guard to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
November: George W. Bush is elected president with a minority of popular vote. His opponent, vicepresident Al Gore obtained the highest number of votes of any candidate in history, partly of course due to population growth.
Bush offered Americans and anti-missile shield, considered a breach of the Anati-ballistic missiles Treaty, and huge tax cuts, significantly benefiting higher-income sectors.
In Serbia, Milosevic is defeated at the polls by Vojislav Kostunica.
The USS Cole is attacked by terrorists in Aden harbor.
December: The recession in the USA is officially over, but unemployment is still growing.
2000-2001
In a final stab at peace, lame-duck president Bill Clinton brings together Yasir Arafat and Israeli PM Ehud Barak for peace talks in Camp David. In his memoirs, Clinton stated that Barak offered to grant the Palestinian Authority 91% of the West Bank plus special rights in East Jerusalem and that Arafat rejected the offer. Clinton stated that he might not have made it clear enough to Arafat that it was the most the Palestinians would ever get from Israel. Additionally, even before the talks began, Barak's government had authorized more new West Bank settlements that any previous Israeli government. Israel had not implemented the terms of the Oslo accords and Palestinians might have been expecting concrete guarantees. Both sides distrusted each other and were afraid of the reactions of their respective constituencies. Arafat and Barak never met alone. The argument often used is that for Arafat any deal would have better than nothing.
2000-2002
There is increasing evidence for the "ripples" that after the Big Bang permitted the creation of the universe. Observation plus calculation lead to the conclusion that the universe is flat in the sense that two parallel lines in it will never meet.
2001
American researchers announce that the human genome, duly sequenced, consists of about 30,000 genes. Half the genes have no recognizable function.
International panel concludes that human activity is an important contributing factor to global warming.
Immediately after being inaugurated, Bush begins looking at an invasion of Iraq, according to Paul O'Neill, treasury secretary forced from office in December 2002.
The Bamian Buddhas (built into gigantic mountain niches), invaluable monuments of the spread of Buddhism to central Asia before arriving in China, are destroyed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
President Musharraf reportedly removed Abdul Qadeer Khan as head of Pakistan's bomb-building nuclear laboratory.
Junichiro Koizumi is elected Japanese PM.
March: Ariel Sharon becomes Israeli PM. Suicide bombings begin. Eighteen bombings kill eighty Israelis, the largest one-month toll during the Second Intifada. The worst attack killed 29 persons in Natayah. Sharon fully implements the policy the state assassinations.
Amnesty International denounces the Israeli policy of "state assassinations".
Israeli gunships bombard Arafat's headquarters in Gaza city. The PA moves its offices to Ramallah, north of Jerusalem. Arafat's bodyguard unit, based in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, is decimated.
On 11 September 2001, Islamic terrorists hijacked four airliners: American Airlines flight 11 out of Boston to Los Angeles with with 81 passengers and eleven crew; United Airlines flight 175, also out of Boston to Los Angeles, with 46 passengers and nine crew; American Airlines flight 77 out of Washington to Los Angeles with 58 passengers and six crew; and United Airlines flight 93 out of Newark to San Francisco with 38 passengers and seven crew. The planes out of Boston were flown against the twin towers of the WTC: flight 11 against the north tower; flight 175 against the south tower. The steel structure of the floors struck melted from the intense heat causing the buildings to collapse. The death toll was 2,801. Flight 77 was crashed against one side of the Pentagon causing 184 deaths. Flight 93 crashed over Somerset County, near Pittsburg. In all there were 3,241 victims (a figure which has been slightly revised downwards). Al Qaida, the terrorist organization put together by Osama bin Laden, is immediately identified as the author of the attack
Subsequently, the Patriot Act, which legalizes a considerable increase in public and private surveillance, is passed for a period of time. The Homeland Security department is created and Tom Ridge is named to head it. The new department absorbs the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
War on Afghanistan
Afgfhanistan refuses to hand Osama bin Laden to the USA. September: CIA starts financing Mohammed Fahim of Northern Alliance east of Kunduz. October: CIA identifies ground targets; bombing starts (Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar); Kunduz falls. November: Mazar-i-Sharif falls. Kabul is abandoned by Taliban. December: USA paratroopers land near Kandahar, home of the Taliban, which falls. But the Taliban leader, mullah Mohammed Omar, escapes. A central government is installed in Kabul headed by president Hamid Karzai, but regional warlords prevail. USA offensive in the Tora Bora cave complex fails to find bin Laden. The USA rounds around 680 al Qaida and Taliban fighters that might have been involved in or have knowledge of the 9/11 attack and imprisons them in the Guantanamo naval base, in eastern Cuba, out of the reach of the American legal system. Many of them are non-Afghans. There is an Australian and an American among them. By March 2002, there were indications that the Taliban and Al Qaida were regrouping in the provinces of Paktia and Gardez, south of Kabul.
September-October: Anthrax, a lethal bacteria, is sent in letter to politicians. At a Washington , D.C., post office two workers die and three survive. The case is unsolved.
October: The extremely anti-Palestinian Israeli minister of tourism, Rehavim Ze'evi, is assassinated.
November: In view of the gravity of the attack on America, the government adopts special criteria to apply in the case of prisoners in anti-terrorist war and other operations. The basic norm was that they would not be given Geneva convention treatment but held by executive authority and judged by military commissions rather than normal courts. Vicepresident Dick Cheney was a prime mover of these initiatives, which were approved by president Bush.
Milosevic handed over by Yugoslavia to a tribunal sitting in The Hague.
December: The PA police headquarters in Gaza are destroyed in an Israeli air raid.
end of 2001-early 2003
Twelve major offensives in Afghanistan against Taliban and al Qaida recalcitrants.
2002
January-March
European physicists produce anti-matter, which self-destructs on contact with elements in an experimental chamber.
Fossils in Africa put earliest evidence of human origins at seven million years ago, close to the hominid-ape split
Variable speed of light (VSL) theorists were trying to overturn the general theory of relativity in the interest of an unified field theory, which Einstein had sought but had not achieved. "According to quantum gravity thinking, an elementary particle accelerated to [very high energy] will behave as if space and time themselves are lumpy and discontinuous [quanta-like] and all the forces of nature are unified...The theory also predicts that light should slow down near massive objects and actually come to a stop at the end of a black hole." Dennis Overbye, NYT, 31 December 2002.
North Korea's admits that it is in the process of making nuclear weapons at a secret plant. In November, the USA and allies cut supply of fuel to North Korea.
April
"Operation Defensive Wall": Israel starts building walls to fence off Israeli settlements in the West Bank from Palestinian areas. The Israeli army launches an offensive on Jenin, deep in the northern West Bank.
May
Palestinian insurgents are besieged by Israelis in a Christian church in Bethlehem. Eventually, the Palestinians were allowed to leave the country.
June
The USA and the UK in effect begin war against Iraq (operation Southern Focus), according to an assessment of Gen. Michael Moseley, the chief allied air war commander during the Second Iraqi war. In his statements in July 2003, Gen. Moseley said that 606 bombs had been dropped on 391 selected targets. In all, about 1,800 aircraft conducted 21,736 sorties against southern Iraq. All these attacks, which were justified as aiming to disable illegal anti-aircraft defenses, were approved by secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. By the time the actual war started, Iraq had virtually no means of self-defense.
In a bomb attack against the Gilo settlement, south of Jerusalem, 19 Israeli soldiers and settlers are killed.
Ramallah, where Arafat set up the headquarters of the PA, is besieged.
Gaza is partially fenced in. Sharon dissolves the Knesset and calls for elections in 2003. In the 23 months from November 2000 to August 2002, due mainly to suicide attacks, there had been 1400-1705 Palestinians casualties to 566-610 Israeli casualties.
In Beirut, Elie Hobeika, suspected in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, is killed in an explosion.
July
The African Union is created as the successor of the Organization of African Unity with an economic dimension.
Israel starts banishing Palestinian civilians related to terrorists from the West Bank to Gaza.
WorldCom files for protection from creditors. With assets of $107 billion involved, it was the largest bankruptcy in American history.
August
White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez, who had requested judicial orientation, obtains a Justice Department memorandum with a narrow definition of torture in the sense of pushing out the limits on physical duress applicable to war prisoners.
Second half of 2002: The highest American officials involved in a possible war with Iraq were busy making their case to potential allies and to critics, not only abroad but also at home, because support in Congress was not unanimous. The argument strenuously advanced was that Iraq either had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or was trying to build them (nuclear, gas, chemical). The government of the UK, headed by PM Tony Blair, supported the American position unreservedly. Spain was also in the forefront of the anti-Iraq position. France and Germany were opposed.
September: Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah reduced to a bunker by Israeli attacks.
October: A White House-Congress deal authorizes limited use of force in Iraq contingent upon an UN resolution approving it.
A bomb in a Bali disco kills 202 persons, 88 of them Australian tourists. The perpetrators, militants in Jemaah Islamiyah, were later apprehended and tried. Their presumed leader, Abu Bakr Bashir, was cleared, much to American disgust, but held on other charges.
In the pages of a Toledo, Ohio, newspaper, The Blade, a Vietnam veteran admits that he lost count of the civilians he had killed. In 1967, his elite army unit killed thousands of Vietnamese and the army opened and closed an investigation without indictments. Other members of the same unit confirmed the story of unpunished war atrocities.
In the November congressional election, American voters give the Republicans majorities in both houses of Congress, which is a virtual go for war against Iraq. According to polls, a majority of Americans believed, and still believe, that Saddam Hussein had to do with 9/11.
According to UN Resolution 1441, arms inspectors were to go to to Iraq. War would ensue only if it was reported that Iraq either possessed or was concealing a WMD-program or programs. The deadline for the report was set for 17 March 2003. On 7 November, the UN inspectors arrived in Iraq and in general found no obstructions to their task.
21 November: Suicide attack kills eleven on Jerusalem bus, 48 wounded. Arafat condemns attacks on civilians.
The physical Euro (the name finally adopted for the ECU) in the form of bills and coins began circulating in late 2002 as the sole currency of the members of the EMU (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain). Sweden and Britain did not adopt the new currency.
December: As the rule of indefinite detainment of combatants excluded from the protection of the Geneva convention is not producing any concrete results, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorizes a harsher treatment of Afghanistan-war prisoners and terrorism suspects, very close to outright torture. Attorney general John Ashcroft expressed scepticism about the rules for military detainees, citing the case of Timothy McVeigh "one of the worst killers in US history", yet even for whom there had been "fair procedure".
2003
The UN International Criminal Court, empowered to try individuals for atrocious crimes, is set up. The USA refuses to recognize it unless its soldiers are given immunity.
January
An Al Aqsa suicider leaves 23 dead in Tel Aviv.
February
Operation Anaconda follows upon twelve major offensives in Afghanistan since end of Afghan war, usually involving 800-1000 USA troops and presumed Pakistani attacks on the other side of the frontier (hammer-and-anvil operations). The objective was to capture Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri.
Shuttle Columbia burns on re-entry.
Labor suffers a crushing defeat and Sharon's Likud gains seats.
The Commission on terrorist attacks on the United States (better known as the 9/11 panel) is formed to investigate the events leading to 9/11.
March
In Pakistan, Al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, possible planner of 9/11, is arrested. Pakistan intensifies search for bin Laden.
Russia will veto Iraq war.
Secretary general Kofi Annan declares that war on Iraq without UN consent would violate the charter of the world organization.
Bush states that Iraq is a direct threat to America.
Given an ultimatum to leave Iraq, Hussein refuses. UN weapons inspectors withdraw.
Under international pressure but mainly because he has no access to the Israeli government, Arafat approves the office of Palestinian prime minister for which he names Mahmoud Abbas.
Budget forecast puts US fiscal deficits at one trillion dollars over five years.
SECOND IRAQI WAR
The Second Iraqi War started on March 19. The estimates were of 300,000 coalition troops, of which 250,000 American, against 290,000 Iraqi soldiers and militias. In all, the war lasted 23 days. MOAB (900 kgs bombs) and Tomahawks were aimed at Hussein in Baghdad (also at Saddams's sons Qusay and Uday), but did not achieve their objective. Gen. Tommy Franks led the American forces. The American-British coalition took its time about its operations, probably in part to avoid causing undue civilian casualties. The oilfields in southern Iraq, a number one objective, were immediately secured. The Iraqis had not set the wells ablaze as they had done in the Kuwaiti oilfields during the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi TV on 24 March. At that point, USA troops were 150 kms from Baghdad. Within six days, after fighting in Najav, the Americans had secured bridges over the Euphrates river, which the Iraqis had not destroyed either. By 7 April, the British had occupied Basra. The battle for Baghdad lasted about five days. Mosul fell without a fight on 11 April. President Bush declared the war officially over on 1 May, when the fatal casualties of the coalition forces stood at 190. Marines plan to leave Iraq by end of August. In fact, in terms of casualties, the war was barely starting. L. Paul Bremer 3rd was named civilian overlord with Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as military commander. An Iraqi governing council was subsequently formed. On the legal front, it was assumed that the rules devised in 2001 and 2002 for Afghan-war prisoners and terrorism suspects would apply equally in Iraq. Thus, some prisoners were held under unaccountable military detention and the treatment of prisoners inclined to harshness.
April
North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. It announces that it was "successfully going forward" to reprocess spent nuclear rods to produce plutonium at Yongbyon, a five-megawatt reactor.
Israeli raid in Gaza involves more than 30 heavy Merhava tanks and armored personnel carriers. Suicider kills three in Tel Aviv. Hamas aide is killed along with twelve Palestinians in Gaza.
May
In a practical scrapping of the US-centered anti-missile shield, president Bush issues a directive urging allies to join in creating an "extortion shield".
The "roadmap", the American plan for peace in Israel/Palestine, is delivered. Purposefully snubbing Arafat, Powell urges Palestinians to disarm militants. Sharon rules out restraining Israeli settlements, of which, as per the roadmap, those built starting in March 2001, when Sharon was elected PM, would have to be dismantled. Nevertheless, Israel announces that it accepts the roadmap with many reservations.
Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas meet. Israel releases a few Palestinians and Abbas is under fire among Palestinians.
At least ninety die from blast in Riyadh foreign compounds. Five militants arrested by Saudis.
54 die from blast in government offices in Znamenskoye, northern Chechnya.
Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee offers Pakistan "hand of friendship". Between India and Pakistan, a formal ceasefire is accorded in Kashmir to undeclared hostilities (constant artillery salvos) since 1989. Pakistan offers to end demand for UN-supervised plebiscite in Kashmir.
The American House of Representatives and the Senate approve a $350 billion tax cut over ten years, which was less than half of what Bush had proposed.
June
The American searchers did not find WMD in Iraq.
Hans Blix, the UN arms inspector, expresses bafflement at American expectations of finding WMD in Iraq after his team searched for them in vain.
Six British military are killed north of Basra. US arrests Iraqis as ambushes of GIs start.
Hamas rejects the Abbas negotiations. Hamas had taken the most Israeli lives (243), according to Israeli army sources. Powell demands that Hamas be neutralized. The Israeli wall goes up, says Sharon, though Bush called it "a problem".
Belgium scraps universal human rights law under which Sharon had been accused for the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982.
July
Three GIs die in Baghdad as resistance increases, especially in central Iraq, where the population is majority Sunni.
US-appointed governing council for Iraq meets. It includes Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, and Iraqi exiles.
Uday and Qusay, sons of Hussein, are killed in missile barrage. A $30 million reward is paid to the Iraqi who betrayed them.
An independent report faults US government for 9/11.
August
UN headquarters in Iraq are bombed, killing at least 20 dead, including the head of mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Annan declares that security in Iraq is a responsibility of the US.
US military arrest Gen. Ali Hassan al Majeed (or Majid), known as "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas to repress Kurdish rebelliousness.
Bomb that targeted top Shiite cleric kills three guards in Najaf, Iraq. Also in Najaf, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim is assassinated in a car bomb attack. 95 others also die.
France urges creation of international military force for Iraq.
During one week of violence in Afghanistan, there were five incidents that left 60 dead.
North Korea gives approval to multilateral talks about its nuclear program (the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, USA, China). The talks start in Beijing.
Iran possesses bomb-grade uranium.
Marriott hotel blasted in Jakarta (10 dead). Amrozi of Jemaah Islamiyah gets death sentence for Bali blast. Cleric Abu Bakr Bashir cleared of terrorism in Jakarta: not proven that he was head of Jemaah Islamiyah, whose existence itself is not demonstrated. But still he is not released.
Fifty-one killed by two bombs in Mumbai.
Terrorist bomb carried by truck-suicider targets a military hospital in Mozdok, Russia, near Chechnya, killing at least 49 dead. There had been eight suicide attacks since mid-May--four in Chechnya; two in Mozdok; two in Moscow--causing more than 150 dead. Three bombs kill three persons in Krasnodar, Russia. Dozens die in a terror north of Chechnya. Woman suicider kills five in a hotel near Red Square Moscow.
September
Suiciders kill two Israelis. Sharon blasts the roadmap. Suicider in central Jerusalem kills twenty, many children. Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed the attack. Israelis kill a senior Hamas leader. Powell calls on Arafat to use force on militants. Attack by Israel kills four members of Hamas in Gaza. Suiciders kill fifteen Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Sharon cuts short trip to India. Abbas resigns and is replaced by Ahmed Qurei, who names a cabinet.
Bush accepts idea of an UN Iraqi force, but insists on over-all US command, rejected by France and Germany. UN envoys in Iraq urge the US to yield power. Bush requests $87.5 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; approved by the House the following month. It is estimated that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, including reconstruction expenses, will have cost the US $166 billion to the end of 2004. There were 127,000 US troops in Iraq; 9,800 in Afghanistan.
A woman member of Iraq's governing council, Akila al-Hashemi, is killed.
US soldier killed in Afghanistan. US kills hundreds of Taliban guerrillas in various operations. A Tape is shown in the Al Jazeera TV channel in Qatar in which bin Laden and an aide appear.
October
UN Security Council authorizes US occupation of Iraq.
Suicide blast kills eight at Iraqi police post. In different incidents, an US soldier and the Spanish military attaché are killed. In another attack, two GIs are killed in Baghdad. Mine kills US soldier north of Baghdad. Two American soldiers die in Iraqi ambush north of Baghdad. Iraqis' attacks grow in sophistication. US struggles to hold key crossing to Syria (Husaybah). Baghdad hotel at which deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying is hit by barrage of rocket fire. A colonel is killed. Bombing wave kills 34 in Baghdad. In the bloodiest day in Iraq since the "end" of war, Red Cross personnel (two employees and ten others) are killed. Four police stations attacked (eight police, one US GI dead). Earlier clashes killed three US soldiers overnight. US officials see Saddam's hand in attacks on GIs in coordination with general Izzat Ibrahim (second-ranking member in Hussein's government).
Hanadi Jaradat, a young woman from Jenin, explodes herself in Haifa killing fifteen Israelis, including four Israeli Arabs. Israel strikes at Syria after blast in Haifa. Bush backs Israel over "defense of homeland". He signals to Sharon that air raid on Syria won't be condemned. In the House of Representatives sanctions against Syria are approved. Another suicider killed two Israelis in West Bank. US vetoes Syrian-sponsored UN resolution at security council condemning Israeli walls. Britain, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Germany abstained. Gaza road bomb hits US diplomatic convoy. Eight Palestinians killed in Israeli attack on Rafah in Gaza against arm-smuggling tunnels. Israel vows not to ease pressure as raids kill ten in Gaza. Three Israeli soldiers killed in West Bank. Rockets are fired from the Gaza strip; Israeli counter-measures kill a dozen Palestinians. Three Israeli soldiers (one a woman) killed at Gaza settlements.
UN assembly asks Israel to raze West Bank wall.
North Korea is proceeding with the processing 8,000 nuclear-fuel rods, enough for six atomic bombs. North Korea lays out conditions for nuclear halt: it wants fuel and removal from terrorist list. Japan, South Korea, and USA had offered through China safety guarantees against dismantling atomic weapons program.
Iran admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it had also produced plutonium and that it would suspend uranium-enrichment and allow more inspection.
The USA intercepts the ship BBC China carrying uranium-enrichment centrifuge parts to Libya. The shipment was traced to Malaysia, but further back to Pakistan
China lifts astronaut Yang Liwei to orbit on a Senzhou 5 rocket. It becomes the third country to do so and is making plans for a space station. China posts its biggest surplus ever in trade.
According to the Census Bureau, 25% of USA blacks live below the poverty line.
Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is arrested on charges of tax fraud and other derelictions, none of which, according to observers, could not have been attributed to any Russian tycoon.
November
Guerrillas down US copter in Iraq near Fallujah; fifteen aboard die in deadliest single attack on coalition forces in six months of occupation. Polish officer and two GIs killed in Iraqi attacks in Baghdad and near Syrian border. The headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a military body, is attacked with mortars during two consecutive nights. US copter crashes killing six GIs near Tikrit. A rocket hit is suspected. Other American soldiers die in attacks in Mosul. Bombs kill three US troops in Fallujah and Baghdad. Italian unit targeted by fatal Iraqi car bomb; 31 are killed overall (18 Italians) in Nasiriya. Two mortars fired at Green Area in central Baghdad where Sanchez operates. In Mosul copters crash killing seventeen: worst single GI toll. USA occupation offers $10 million for Saddam-loyalist Gen Izzat Ibrahim; $30 million is the price on Hussein. Two US soldiers killed in Mosul; one in Baghdad. Reportedly the throats of the soldiers in Mosul were slit while they waited in traffic. Army plans to have 100,000 troops in Iraq until 2006.
US speeds up timetable for self-rule by Iraqis. The date for transfer is set for 30 June.
Israel continues building security wall and more housing deep in West Bank. US rescinds 289.5 million in loan guarantees for Israeli settlements, out of a total commitment of $3 billion in 2003.
A draft constitution for Afghanistan contemplates an Islamic republic under a strong presidential system. Islamic Sharia law is not included.
Car bomb in Riyadh razes foreign housing (mainly of Arabs); at least five killed; Al Qaeda link seen.
Twelve suiciders kill 29 people in Casablanca, Morocco (hotel, Jewish center, Spanish club, Belgian consulate).
Bomb attacks are carried out on HSBC bank and the British consulate in Istanbul; at least 25 dead.
US Supreme Court agrees to hear case of Guantanamo detainees who want civilian trial but are in indefinite military detention.
Judges of appeals court in NY rule against the government's argument that a terrorist suspect can be held without access to defense for security reasons.
December
The American government announced that companies from the countries that had opposed the war would not be considered for the task of reconstructing Iraq. The biggest contactor was Halliburton, the company of which vicepresident Dick Cheney had been CEO.
Saddam Hussein is captured by US troops in a crawl-into hiding place. He was later confronted by Ahmad Chalabi, Adnan Pachachi, and Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, all of the governing council. Hussein denies role in guerrilla attacks.
GIs killed in attack on vehicle patrol in Baghdad. Baghdad hotel hit as part of series of attacks killing four GIs in various parts of Iraq, including Erbil.
Four GIs killed over two days in Iraq. Roadside bomb blast in Baghdad kills US soldier. In attacks, two Thais and four Bulgarians are killed.
Libya gives up nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. Hands over Pakistani blueprints for nuclear warheads.
Two attempts are made on Musharraf's life in Rawalpindi on different days.
Israel kills seven Palestinians in invasion with tanks of the Rafah camp on Gaza-Egypt border after two Israeli officers were killed in the area. In a month, at least 25 Palestinians had been killed. Four Israelis killed in suicide bombing near Tel Aviv. There had been over sixty bombings since the Intifada began.
Avalanche, the biggest offensive against Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, begins with 2,000 US troops and air cover from Bagram air base in Kabul.
"Material support" provision of a 1996 law used against terrorism suspects is found unconstitutional because of its vagueness by the Court of Appeals for the 9th district in San Francisco.
Elections in Russia give Vladimir Putin's party (United Russia) and its allies a two thirds majority in the Duma.
2004
January
Resistance to the American occupation becomes intense in the Sunnni areas of Iraq with Fallujah, west of Baghdad, as the center. Iraqi use of SAMs forces US Helicopters flying low to take evasive measures. Scores die in two blasts aimed at Iraqi Kurds. Iraqis collaborating with the occupation authorities either in the police or in training for the army are also targeted. Roadside bombs are the weapon of preference of Iraqi insurgents. A suicide bomber attacks a Polish army base. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all US forces in the Middle East, is object of attack at US post in Fallujah. Since US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, 513 US soldiers have died, at least 355 from hostile fire.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, military commander in Iraq: "I really believe that the only way we are going to lose here is if we walk away from it like we did in Vietnam. If the political will fails, and the support of the American public fails, that's the only way we can lose."
Debate goes on sponsored by the occupation administration headed by Bremer on the character of a charter and elections. The moderate Shiite leader, elderly ayatollah Mohamed Husseini Ali al-Sistani, insists that Iraqi elections be direct and not through caucuses of notables as the US wants.
Suicider blasts in Kabul area kill a British and a Canadian soldier.
Sharon closes two settlements in West Bank. Seven families were living in Havat Maon and Tal Binyamin was empty. Young mother stages suicide attack in Gaza killing four Israelis. Bus bombing near Sharon's official residence kills ten Israelis. Al Aqsa Martyrs claims the action. Israel bombs Hizbullah "training camps" in Lebanon after a missile attack that killed an Israeli. In fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops kill at least eight Palestinians.
A Muslim insurgency commences in the province of Narathiwat, in southern Thailand, with an attack on an army camp in which four soldiers are killed and weapons are taken.
February
The American deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, said in Baghdad that most American troops in the capital would be withdrawn to bases just outside of it. He said that Iraqi police would take up the slack.
Sharon announces plan to evacuate 9,000 Israeli settlers in seventeen settlements in Gaza. In all there were around 230,000 Israeli settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. US urges talks on the Israeli pullout.
Israeli army kills thirteen Palestinians in Gaza strip. Bus bomb in Jerusalem kills seven.
Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee visits Islamabad for Asian leaders conference and meets with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.
After the theocratic Guardian Council barred secular and reform-minded candidates, conservatives gained control of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran was not telling all about its nuclear-energy program.
March
Governing council in Iraq approves provisional charter.
Suicide bombers killed at least 169 people in a series of attacks on Shia Muslims marking the religious festival of Ashoura in Karbala and in Baghdad. The chief suspect of the US occupation authorities was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian admirer of Al Qaida, known to be active in Iraq, with a $10 million price on his head.
US military releases 23 Afghan detainees from Guantánamo.
Pakistan intensifies search for Bin Laden and heavy fighting erupts in Waziristan (northwestern Pakistan).
Train bombs terrorize Madrid with over 200 dead. The government rushes to blame the Basque separatists of ETA. Prime minister Jose Maria Aznar is defeated in national elections. The newly elected Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero reproaches Bush and Blair over Iraq war. He vows that Spanish troops in Iraq will come home, which they begin to do the following month.
Intense fighting breaks out in Gaza. Israeli raids usually include helicopter-fired missiles. Israeli missile kills Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the paraplegic leader and founder of Hamas, as he left a mosque in Gaza. He is substituted by Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
Richard Clarke, ex-antiterrorism government adviser, faults Bush's response to warnings about Al Qaida threat. The 9/11 panel cites further unheeded warnings to Bush. The White House admits that it initially sought to link 9/11 to Iraq without any evidence.
In Russia, Putin gets 71% of vote for a second term.
John Kerry is practically assured of the Democratic candidacy for president.
US raises Pakistan's standing to "major" ally.
April
The young Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, leader of a resistance force called the Mahdi army, launches an insurrection against the American occupation. The Shiites' centers of resistance are the huge Baghdad sector known as Sadr City (2.2 million of Baghdad's total population of 5.5 million) and the cities of Najaf and Kufa, south of Baghdad. In Kufa, clashes between Spanish troops and the Mahdi army leave nineteen dead.
The first inconclusive battle for Fallujah occurs when four American contract workers are killed and their bodies are mutilated and hung from a bridge.
A car-bombing in Basra aimed at Iraqi police kills 68.
US makes contingency plans to increase the force of 134,000 troops already in Iraq. Occupation authorities also accelerated a program under Gen. Paul Eaton for training an Iraqi army. Eaton was substituted by Gen. David Petraeus in June.
Hostage taking begins. An Italian hostage is shot; other hostages are released.
UN approves the plan to substitute the US-appointed Iraqi governing council with a caretaker body to be installed on 1 July. An UN representative, the Algerian Lakhdar Brahimi, arrives in Iraq. The transitional authority or interim government would have a president and a prime minister. The new body would be advised by a large "national conference". The Bush administration stipulated that the interim government would have no significant military command and could not enact laws or change those laid down by the Bremer occupation administration.
After a bombing in the port of Ashdod which caused ten fatalities, the Israeli military assassinate Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the new leader of Hamas, with a helicopter-fired missile.
Israeli PM Sharon visits president Bush, who expresses total support for Israel's policy on Palestine: evacuation of Gaza, recognition of West Bank settlements, and definite exclusion of Palestinians' "right of return".
The bipartisan 9/11 panel finds that when the intelligence agencies did not turn up a connection between 9/11 and Iraq, the Bush administration, and the Pentagon specifically, turned to a team headed by Douglas Feith, which by the end of 2001 had prepared reports vaguely linking Iraq with all Arab terrorist groups.
A presidential brief of 16 August 2001 is disclosed by the administration in which mention is made of a possible airplane hijacking by Muslim extremists who might have been linked to Al Qaida.
The FBI comes under scrutiny by the bipartisan panel on events before 9/11. An agent in Phoenix advised that suspected Islamic extremists were training in flight schools. A French Muslim, Zacarias Moussaoui, was charged with immigration violations after he registered for flight training in Minneapolis. Moussaoui is the only who has been tried so far for links with 9/11. The CIA also knew in August that Muslim extremists were taking flight lessons in the US. George Tenet, the head of the CIA, reveals that that he was presented a briefing paper titled "Islamic extremists learn to fly". Both the CIA and the FBI knew of two men associated with the bombing of the USS Cole who flew to America and later participated in the attack on the Twin Towers. The lead was not pursued. The panel finds that attorney general John Ashcroft rejected an expansion of counter-terrorism activities in August 2001.
In a show of authority, president Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan sent national troops to intervene in a warlordist feud in the Uzbek north of the country. Afghan troops also camped in Herat where internecine conflict was brewing.
The Pakistani scientist Abdul Kadeer Khan, the architect of a nuclear proliferation network, claimed that he was shown three nuclear devices by the North Koreans.
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia are inducted into NATO.
In southern Thailand, Muslims rebels and police and soldiers clash resulting in over 100 dead, most of them rebels.
A suicide bomber blows himself up in the police headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
May
The military prison of Abu Ghraib, in Baghdad, becomes a major scandal through photographs taken in January in which American soldiers appear mistreating Iraqi prisoners.
An US strike in the Iraq-Syria border kills over forty. Iraqis claim it was a wedding. The American military spokesman showed photographs of crude rocket launchers and some syringes as proof that it was a terrorist gathering. A bomb kills the rotative president of the Iraqi governing council.
In a twist, Osama bin Laden, whose head is valued at $50 million by the US government, offers 10,000 grams of gold for the assassination of Bremer.
The USA breaks with its former protege in Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, who had become critical of the occupation.
The US-named governing council dissolves itself as the prelude for the handover to the interim government on June 30.
By a majority of a minority of potential delegates, the Likud party rejects Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza.
The Ezzedin al-Qassam brigades, dependent on Hamas, fought a large Israeli incursion into Gaza destroying two armored vehicles and killing eleven Israeli soldiers. Israeli fire killed 26 Palestinians. The purpose of the Israeli raid was to close tunnels to Egypt and destroy arms workshops. Subsequently, Israel attacked Rafah with tanks and helicopters, demolished over 100 houses, and killed more than forty Palestinians. Rafah grew out of a Palestinian refugee camp on the border with Egypt. Bush expressed support for Israel. Marwan Barghouti, one of the leaders of the Second Intifada, sometimes mentioned as an Arafat successor, was declared guilty of murder by an Israeli tribunal.
In India, which had shown a sensational rate of economic growth in 2003, it was expected that the ruling Baratiya Janata party would win easily. Elections in India are a three tier process. By its middle, it was seeming that prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpajee's government was in trouble. At the end of the polling, Indian voters had turned it out of office and had given instead a plurality to the Congress party led by the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, widow of former PM Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi. The markets in India fell precipitously, especially as in order to form a government the Congress party might have to seek a coalition with the political left in the national parliament. Sonia Gandhi ceded the post of prime minister to Manmohan Singh, a reformist economics minister in the previous Congress-party government (1991-1996). Towards the end of the year, the Mumbai stock market was booming.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta, and Greek Cyprus become full members of the EU. Previous negotiations between the Greeks and the Turks of Cyprus to unify the island had broken down significantly because of Greek opposition.
Terrorists kill five foreign oil workers--two Americans, two Britons, and an Australian--and a local policeman in the Saudi Arabian oil port of Yabu on the Red Sea, immediately producing the departure of other foreigners, mainly Americans, in the industry. Some of the perpetrators, who were all captured, had been local oil workers. Late in May, an attack, again in eastern Saudi Arabia, caused the death of 22 foreigners, mostly westerners, while the perpetrators escaped and rescue forces arrived after the mayhem was over. Al Qaida was the natural suspect. There were other reports of violence against foreigners in Saudi Arabia, where over 60,000 American and British oil workers (about even in numbers), work in mostly technical jobs, some with many years residence; but it was speculated that even if there was a mass exodus among them, Saudi oil production would not be affected as the technicians could be replaced with Asians. Nevertheless, oil prices began trending upwards.
After much controversy over the election, Chen Shui-bian, who had on occasions expressed support for de-linking Taiwan and China, was sworn in for another term in Taiwan. Subsequently, China increased the pressure on Taiwan on all fronts, although it is the destination of a majority of Taiwanese foreign investment.
A bomb kills the Russian-backed president of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, at a celebration in a stadium; 29 others also die.
A bomb (possibly detonated by a suicider) kills ten at a Shia mosque in Karachi, Pakistan.
A car blast kills three Chinese engineers in port facilities in Gwandar, 300 miles west of Karachi.
June
Paul Wolfowitz, American deputy defense secretary, admits US troops might be in Iraq for a "good number of years". An American inventory of official Iraqi forces includes 92,000 police officers, 74,000 security guards, 25,000 civil defense soldiers, 17,000 border guards, and 7,000 regular army soldiers. The USA is also aggressively hiring security contractors for Iraq.
The UN envoy in Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, chooses Iyad Allawi as future prime minister of the provisional government of Iraq after consultations with the occupation authorities and its civilian leader L. Paul Bremer 3rd. The ceremonial office of president goes to Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni. Unanimously the Security Council of the UN approves the transfer of power from the American occupation authorities in Iraq to a provisional government. The UN resolution also approves the presence of a 160,000 multinational troops force, mainly American (140,000), in Iraq, with a mandate until the end of 2005. The top Shiite cleric in Iraq, grand ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, gives his approval to the plans for the provisional government.
Iraqi insurgents start sabotage of oil pipelines and other installations hampering production and delivery. Fighting in the Shiite area of Najaf between the occupation police and a radical militia continues. It is reported that Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, a Hussein loyalist, is leading the insurgency against the occupation and its surrogates.
As the date of the handover to the provisional government approaches, insurgents carry out coordinated attacks in the Baghdad-Fallujah axis. Car bombs kill over 60 in Mosul. In Baquba, north east of Baghdad, fighters dressed in black and proclaiming their alliegance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi kill two US soldiers. US airplanes attack the Jubail district of Fallujah. Fighting in Kufa leaves eleven dead. Two US soldiers are killed in clash with Shiite militia. A truce is arranged in Najaf.
The insurgents undertake a campaign of kidnappings and beheadings of citizens of countries with troops in Iraq. Later this grisly tactic was used against nationals of countries with companies providing services in the country. Terrorist insurgents assassinate a South Korean hostage in the Fallujah area. But Korea announces it will go on with the deployment of 3,000 troops, in addition to 600 already in Iraq.
In contradiction of president Bush and vicepresident Cheney, the commission or panel investigating the events leading to 9/11 and their background concludes that there was no collusion between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The bipartisan panel states that 9/11 was an operation conducted by Osama bin Laden even against the opposition of mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of Taliban. As originally conceived it was to be on a scale involving many more plane hijackings. The hijacked plane that went down in Pennsylvania was intended to crash against the capitol. Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the attack and the pilot of the plane that first crashed against one of the towers, chose the date of the attack taking into account that congress would then be in session.
The bipartisan 9/11 panel uncovered that the CIA did not inform the White House of specific authoritative information that Iraq did not possess WMD. But it did repeatedly tell president Bush that, contrary to his belief, there was not an Iraq-Al Qaida link. But basically the panel's conclusions tend to ease the burden of responsibility for the Second Iraqi war on president Bush. Its report details the events to 9/11 and points out clues that the security agencies missed or did not act upon. Its basic recommendation is that the American intelligence agencies should be re-structured to make them more cooperative. Those agencies are principally the CIA, attached to the presidency; the Defence Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, attached to the Pentagon; and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, attached to the Department of State. The report also suggests that the USA has not used "all elements of national power" to prevent the rise of terrorism in areas where it is prone or likely to do so.
A revised Israeli "roadmap" is approved by the cabinet: the withdrawal of settlers and troops from Gaza is postponed for nine months and then it will be done in phases each one requiring cabinet approval. Later it transpires the evacuation will not occur until 2005.
The government of Israel points out that no terrorist attacks by Palestinians has succeeded since the last suicide bombing in February.
The expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank goes on at the rate of 10,000 new residents a year. It is reported that there have been sixty new settlements in the West Bank since March 2001, when Sharon was elected prime minister.
The Supreme Court rules in relation to the Guantánamo prisoners that the executive does not have the right to detain persons without giving cause or allowing them access to legal defense. Some of the justices speak of oppression and of an assault on fundamental democratic values. Although not referring to Iraq, the court's decision had evident implications for the status of prisoners there. The administration responded with the adoption of a process of review of the cases of the remaining 595 detainees in Guantánamo to determine whether they were prisoners of war, hence subject to Geneva convention rules, or unlawful combatants.
The director of the CIA, George Tenet, resigns.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rebukes Iran for lack of cooperation.
The US plans to transfer one third of its 37,000 troops in Korea to Iraq.
Four American GIs are killed by Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
China demands that the USA show for proof that North Korea has developed atomic weapons through uranium-enrichment. Subsequently, the American government announced a more conciliatory stance in the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
The EU presents a constitution for the approval of its members. One of the main architects of the new charter, French ex-president Valery Guiscard D'Estaing, later admitted that rules linking population and voting rights more closely would make it more difficult for Turkey to be admitted in the future because of its demographic size, today less than Germany's but in some years probably the largest of any existing EU member.
Chechens make a surprise night time attack on Ingushetia, neighboring Chechnya on the west, resulting in 92 dead, 67 of them on the government side.
After the beheading by militants of an American oil engineer, Saudi Arabia claims to have killed the local head of Al Qaida in a shoot out. There were also reports of successful actions against extremists in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt.
There was a round up of suspects in the Madrid bombings in Italy, Belgium, and Spain itself, where already some suspects had been arrested or killed.
The provisional Iraqi government starts operating. Bremer resigns and returns home.
July
A media campaign is launched accusing Yasir Arafat of the social disintegration of Gaza.
Still physically in American custody, Saddam Hussein is indicted by an Iraqi tribunal for charges which he rejects.
Gen. George Casey Jr., former vice chief of staff, takes over the US military command in Iraq from Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
The Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is said to be prepared to assume a strong pro-Israel stance. He chooses Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina as his running mate.
A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that a 2002 intelligence report on Iraq's armaments was completely wrong. In a quote in the 2002 report, a CIA officer responds to doubts about the veracity of an Iraqi source: "Let's keep in mind that this war's going to happen".
American planes bomb Fallujah, where it is reported that Abu Musab al Zarqawi has bases. Earlier, a "senior official" of the dissolved American occupation authority said that it was "hard-core Saddamists" that led the Sunni insurrection. He speculated that Iran might have been financing the Shiite resistance leader Moktada al-Sadr.
One of the biggest firefights since the American occupation began takes place in Baghdad when Iraqi troops, later re-enforced by GIs, are attacked in an attempt by insurgents to assassinate prime minister Allawi. The provisional government allows an oppositionist Shiite newspaper to re-open.
Insurgents in Iraq were using hostages to force other nations to cease cooperating with the American occupation. The kidnapping of a Filipino driver led to the withdrawal of the tiny Philippine contingent in Iraq. Two Pakistani hostages are killed as the wave of kidnappings continue. Other countries that decided to call it quits were the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
New attack by USA forces against Fallujah. Two US soldiers killed near Samarra. Suicide bombing in Mosul kills three and wounds American soldiers. In Baghdad, a huge bomb kills 68.
The total of fatal American casualties in Iraq reaches 900.
The Israeli supreme courts rules that changes should be made to the West Bank wall taking into consideration undue hardships for Palestinians. The barrier, eventually to extend for 685 kilometers, had been built in only one quarter of its length.
The International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague, Netherlands, considers that the Israeli walls are illegal and that the UN should try to have them removed. Israel answers it will only heed its own supreme court. The UN General Assembly votes by 150 to 6 in favor of the international court's decision. The lopsided majority included all members of the EU. Poland, an EU member, has a contingent in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, there is an increase in violence by Taliban insurgents against American and Afghan troops in the Kandahar region.
August
By a deal worked out in the WTO, the European Union agrees to dismantle its system of agricultural subsidies in response to insistent demands of developing countries through the Group of 20 led by Brazil. The USA agrees also with some limitations. No time frame is reported.
In Japan negotiations are on for the creation by 2005 of the world's largest bank through the acquisition by by the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group of the Osaka-based UFJ Holdings. The latter institution is plagued by bad loans.
In Iraq, a Turkish hostage is killed. Christian churches in Baghdad and Mosul are the object of bombings which leave twelve dead. Iraqi insurgents kidnap two French newsmen alleging the ban in France against the wearing of religious symbols by students, specifically head scarves by Muslim girls.
The truce in Najaf with the Mahdi army of Moktada al-Sadr breaks down as US bombs the city and fighting resumes. Care is taken to avoid damage to the city's Imam Ali mosque, holy to Shiites, although the insurgents resist from the huge cemetery next to it. An US chopper is downed. American armored vehicles advance inside Najaf to within 800 meters of the Imam Ali mosque. The respected Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani brokers a deal by which the insurgents cede the custody of the mosque to Iraqi police.
While Kabul is exerting some authority in Herat, a bomb in Kabul itself is aimed at an American private security company leaving more than eleven dead. In Afghanistan, the USA has suffered 23 fatal casualties during 2004.
"A high-level outside panel reviewing American detention operations has concluded that leadership failures at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military command in Iraq command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which detainees were abused at Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities, according to defense officials." In the same report, Gen. Sanchez is said to have approved interrogation practices "intended to be limited to captives held in Guantanamo and in Afghanistan". Erich Schmitt in the IHT, 25 August
Iran announces that it will start operating a nuclear reactor in 2006.
Russia organizes another election in Chechnya, won by its candidate Gen. Alu Alkhanov.
September
Twelve Nepalese workers are executed by Iraqi terrorists. The beheading of one of them is shown on television. The perpetrators call themselves the Ansar al-Sunna army. Three Turkish contract workers taken as hostages are killed.
Some thirty Chechen terrorists seized around 1,200 hostages in a school in Beslan, North Ossetia. In the assault on the school 338 die, half of them children.
President Putin recommended constitutional changes towards greater centralization of power but also for the strengthening of political parties through proportional representation.
A Palestinian terrorist suicider kills sixteen Israelis in Beersheba. In retaliation, Israel attacks by helicopter a Hamas "training camp" killing fourteen "militants".
In the worst fighting since April, US troops attack the Baghdad Shiite stronghold of Sadr city. The toll of US fatal casualties mounts to 1002. Reported attacks on American forces increase from 650 in March to 2700 in August. Insurgents control Fallujah. The USA retaliates with airplane attacks. The avowed target is Zarqawi, who is blamed for many of the kidnappings of foreigners and for the beheadings of hostages during 2004. The insurrection continues unabated in central and northern Iraq, except in Kurdistan (northwestern Iraq). Car bombs and suiciders cause additional American military fatal casualties. American counter-attacks usually leave scores of dead civilians. Two British soldiers were killed in an ambush.
South Korea admits that a government-run laboratory had illegally extracted a tiny amount of plutonium in 1982 and had enriched uranium in 2000, also in a token quantity.
A probable action by the Jamaah Ismailiyah, a bomb explodes in front of Australian embassy in Jakarta. Many wounded, mostly Indonesians.
An attack on Nablus, West Bank, leaves seven Palestinians dead. The Israeli military usually call them "militants" and American press reports usually echo the Israeli body counts, which nevertheless sometimes also include ordinary civilians. It is believed that Israel is using armed "drones". In Gaza the battle continues and Palestinian gunmen died killing three Israeli soldiers.
Because of possible disruptions in Nigeria due to strikes in the Niger delta the barrel of oil breaks $50, which in 1984 would have been $80. In October, when a settlement was arranged the price edged below $50.
Bush lifts the trade embargo on Libya, although relations are still not fully normalized.
Yemen condemns to death two accused of planning the USS Cole bombing in 2000.
Blair admits that he erred on Iraq but insists that the world is well rid of Saddam Hussein.
October
In October, the British medical journal The Lancet, put the number of civilian dead in Iraq after the American attack and occupation at over 100,000.
Some 50 Iraqi-government soldiers were waylaid in a road east of Baghdad and executed by insurgents. Their killers, who apparently were posing as fellow soldiers, might have had inside information.
1 October: A car bomb in Baghdad against a convoy leaves 40 dead. Two GI fatal casualties are reported in another attack.
2 October: A massive attack involving 200 tanks is launched by Israel on the Jabaliya refugee camp producing the death of 33 Gazans. Previously rocket attacks had killed five Israelis, including two children. In the following days the Palestinian toll reached 64.
4 October: US and Iraqi forces occupy Samarra.
Moktada al-Sadr lets it be known that he will probably enter politics.
Margaret Hassan, a kidnapped humanitarian worker from Ireland married to an Iraqi, is executed by Iraqi terrorists.
6-7 October: Bremer airs publicly the criticism that the original invasion and occupation of Iraq was undermanned. Rumsfeld admits that there is no solid evidence for a Hussein-bin Laden linkage. The CIA also raises doubts on this presumed connection.
8 October: American arms inspector Charles Duelfer reports that Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons facilities between 1991 and 1996.
9 October: The document "U.S. National Strategy for Supporting Iraq" is made public.
10 October: A terrorist attack on a resort in the Sinai kills 33 Israelis.
Hamid Karzai wins the elections for president of Afghanistan. The elections were celebrated in an orderly and non-violent manner.
Two bombings kill dozens at a Sunni rally in Pakistan.
Some 80 Muslim protesters in Tak Bai, in southern Thailand, suffocate after being packed in police vans.
Pakistani president Musharraf suggests a condominium arrangement with India for Kashmir.
The Qatari TV network Al Jazeera receives and partially airs a tape in which Osama bin Laden threatens the USA with more terrorist attacks. Bin Laden says in it that the idea to attack the WTC towers came to him in 1982 after the invasion of Lebanon by Israel.
11 October: Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army agrees to lay down its arms.
13 October: USA and Iraqi forces occupy Ramadi.
14 October: A mass grave of 156 Kurds is unearthed near Hatra.
According to The Economist, between 29 September and 14 October 96 Palestinian and three Israelis had been killed.
16 October: The Israeli offensive on Gaza eases up.
20 October: A mortar attack on the headquarters of the Iraqi National Guard causes 100 casualties.
Towards the end of October it was estimated that over 150 foreigners had been abducted in Iraq and more than 30 killed since the campaign of kidnappings had begun at the beginning of the year. In October and November, there was a decrease in abductions.
American and Iraqi troops were massing for an assault on Fallujah, which had been under constant air bombardment. Simultaneously, however, the nearby city of Ramadi was virtually in the hands of insurgents who were in contact with the rebels in Fallujah. Ramadi is larger than Fallujah. The Marines suffered heavy casualties in Ramadi when in April they attempted subduing Fallujah.
Ayatollah Mohamed Ali Husseini al-Sistani was promoting a Shiite political coalition.
Adnan al-Ghoul, a prominent Hamas leader, is killed in an Israeli air strike.
The Knesset approves Sharon's plan to pull Israeli settlers out of Gaza.
1 November: A Japanese tourist is executed by Iraqis. Previously, a suicide car bomb rammed an US convoy west of Baghdad killing eight US Marines. There were bombings also inside Baghdad. The provisional government claimed it had arrested many foreigners as terrorism suspects.
2 November: A suicider killed himself and three people in a Tel Aviv open-air market. The Marxist PFLP claims the attack.
US forces take casualties in Ramadi, which was encircled in preparation for a battle to kill or capture insurgents. The violence in Baghdad continues while civilians flee leaving Fallujah deserted.
3 November: President George W. Bush defeats his Democratic opponent John Kerry by a clear popular-vote majority of 3,500,000 in the highest electoral turnout for a presidential election in American history. The Republican party increased considerably its majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Referendums in eleven states rejected allowing gay marriages.
5 November: British troops from Basra that had moved to Baghdad on request from the coalition command, basically to free American troops for the assault on Fallujah, come under fire and suffer three fatal casualties. The toll of American soldiers since the war in Iraq began reaches 1112; the British figure is 73.
8 November: A division-size force of GIs and Marines operating with about a quarter of that size of the best available Iraqi troops starts the battle for Fallujah, where an estimated 5,000 insurgent fighters are entrenched. The scenario presented by the press was that Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi had given the municipal authorities in Fallujah an ultimatum for handing over the resistance fighters and he had ordered the attack when they failed to respond. The same day it was reported that the vicemayor of Fallujah had been killed by the guerrillas. One of the principal immediate objectives of the attack was a hospital, for two reasons: fighters had been reported inside it and it was giving out high civilian casualty figures. No fighters were found in the hospital. Resistance elsewhere in Fallujah was reported to be intense.
An US court orders halt of military tribunals for the Guantanamo detainees.
10 November: Mosul stages its own insurgency in support of Fallujah. The Mosul police fail to cope with the insurgents.
Iran announces that it is capable of mass producing a missile with a range to reach Israel.
11 November: Yasir Arafat dies.
15 November: Occupation forces declare Fallujah occupied, although some sporadic resistance remains. The city is without electricity or running water and is strewn with debris.
17 November: A brigade of occupation troops is rushed to Mosul to quell growing anarchy. Dozens of police officers were found executed.
Mahmoud Abbas is chosen leader of Al Fatah to succeed Arafat as president of the PA. He favors participation in elections to be held in 9 January for the PA, whose incumbent PM was Ahmed Qurei. The Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade implicitly accuses Abbas and Qurei of being corrupt.
18 November: Sunni rebels intensify their attacks in areas around Baghdad, especially in a dense Sunni area south of the capital.
It is estimated that US forces have taken 1198 fatal casualties in Iraq.
Between 1991 and 2003, Iraq received $64 billion in oil revenues, of which only some $21 billion were obtained through the UN-supervised oil-for-food program.
23 November: Large arms caches as well as evidence of sites where hostages were held are discovered in Fallujah.
25 November: In Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, a candidate for PM whom Russian president Putin had actively backed, wins fraudulently over Viktor Yushchenko, who by then had been showing the deforming signs of dioxin poisoning.
28 November: A bomb kills two civilians and two Marines in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Two marines were killed by a road bomb in Latafiya, south of Baghdad.
Kurdish leadership expresses doubts about the feasibility of Iraqi elections in January. They fear the emergence of a Shiite-dominated government. A Kurd, Barham Salih, is the deputy prime minister in the interim government.
There are significant indications that the personality cult of Kim Jong Il is being downgraded in North Korea.
29 November: A carefully planned anti-insurgency campaign in the Sunni towns south of Baghdad was underway. It was expected to be as tough as Fallujah.
30 November: Separately Sharon and Abbas express willingness to engage in peace talks within the framework of Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan.
1 December: An estimated 134 American soldiers were killed in November, the highest monthly number since the previous April, when it was 135. Around 50 servicemen were killed in the battle for Fallujah. If all the estimated 5000 insurgents in Fallujah had been killed, the ratio would be of 100 to 1.
2 December: A report commissioned by secretary general of the UN Kofi Annan proposes changes in the constitution of the Security Council to expand its permanent membership. Modifications to the Security Council would require a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly and no vetoes by the five permanent members. Japan, Germany, India, and Brazil were actively aspiring to permanent membership.
Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the PLO jailed by Israel on counts of terrorism, announced that he would compete for the presidency of the PA against Abbas. Sharon, who has offered to allow the voting, said Barghouti would not be released. Barghouti was opposed to Arafat's inner circle. Israeli reactions varied. Yossi Beilin, an Israeli political moderate on the Palestinian issue, manifested his distrust, but some Israeli observers of Palestinian politics considered him as a potentially constructive influence. One of them, Hillel Frisch, a professor at Bar Ilan University, even described Barghouti as "Israelophile".
Sharon's government lost a crucial vote in the knesset and was in danger of collapse.
The IAEA did no refer the case of the Iranian nuclear program to the Security Council, as the USA wanted. Iran is in the process of negotiating with Britain, France, and Germany. Iran has barred inspectors from the military bases where it is reported that it might be working on the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
The USA will increase its troop strength in Iraq to 150,000.
3 December: 27 Iraqis are killed by insurgents in one day in Mosul during attacks on a Shiite mosque and Iraqi police stations.
4 December: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak urges Palestinians to take part in the January elections for the PA and to collaborate with Sharon's plan for an Israeli withdrawal in Gaza. He urges Barghouti to cede to Abbas.
The US military claim to have found in Fallujah valuable information on the participation of Baath in the insurgency.
Insurgents attack a Shiite mosque and a police station in Baghdad.
6 December: In Mosul Iraqi insurgents are fighting Kurdish Peshmerga fighters brought in by the USA. Over the previous three days there had been six American fatal casualties.
7 December: The director of the IAEA, Mohamed el-Baradei, estimates that North Korea probably has six nuclear bombs.
USA forces occupy Mahmudiya. In Haditha, north west of Bagdad, five US soldiers are killed. The Iraq war and occupation total of American dead is 1276. The death toll was not considered high in part because all USA soldiers wear bulletproof Kevlar vests. However, the total of casualties exceeds 11,000 for a force of 135,000.
10 December: Congress approves Bush's intelligence services bill creating a central office for coordinating fifteen intelligence agencies and branches with an aggregate budget of $40 billion and 200,000 employees. The major part of the money is managed by the Pentagon and spent in satellites. The new post is called the national intelligence director.
In the wake of the Ukrainian electoral controversy, the constitution is reformed to give the Rada (parliament) greater power. New elections are to be held.
14 December
Seven Marines killed in the area of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Five Israeli soldiers are killed by bombs in Gaza.
The jailed PLO leader Marwan Barghouti withdraws his candidacy to the presidency of the PA, leaving the way open for Mahmoud Abbas, de facto successor of Arafat.
16 December: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric with Iranian ties, heads the candidates' list of an influential Shiite party.
17 December: Iraqi insurgents target USA supply lines. The occupation military authorities increasingly recur to air-lifting supplies.
18 December: The EU offers Turkey negotiations for entry beginning on 2 October 2005, but Turkey balks at recognition of Cyprus, which had opposed merging with Turkish northern Cyprus before it acceded to the EU.
20 December: Iraqi insurgents are specifically targeting preparations and activities leading to the elections in January.
China accepts the principle of religious freedom.
21 December: Russian authorities "auction" Yuganksneftegaz, the core of Yukos, the biggest Russian oil producer, to collect back taxes for more than $20 billions. The winning bid for Yuganksneftegaz was $9.35. Yukos, whose owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, remains in prison for unpaid taxes of his own, was put together for much less. However, the fair value of the auctioned company was estimated by foreign bankers much higher.
Mahmoud Abbas calls for an end to the Second Intifada. It is reported that the West Bank branch of Hamas, whose leader, Sheikh Hassan Yussef, favors an indefinite hudna (pause) in the struggle with Israel, was instrumental in persuading Barghouti to withdraw his candidacy. The Gaza leadership is opposed to a truce. But Gazans in general seem to be showing signs of war-weariness.
21 December: A car blast kills 54 at least in Najaf. Also, 13 died in a suicide bombing in Karbala. Both Najaf and Karbala are in Shiite country.
22 December: A suicide bomber manages to penetrate a mess tent in an American military base north of Mosul and kills 22, including 18 Americans. The highest toll of fatal military casualties on a single day was on 23 March 2003, during the Second Iraqi war itself, when 29 troopers were killed. On 15 November 2003, two USA helicopters avoiding ground fire crashed into each other killing 18.
The USA government has spent $97 million in "social and political projects" in Ukraine, including $28 million in "democracy projects".
23 December: Two French journalists being held by Iraqis are released.
24 December: The Russian government oil company Rosneft was the buyer of Yuganskneftegaz, the main asset of Yukos, for $9.35 billion. Rosneft is planning a merger with Gazprom, the official Russian gas monopoly.
26 December: Huge tsunamis are produced by a 9 magnitude earthquake off the northwestern tip of Sumatra. The earthquake is immediately classified as the fifth largest since 1900. The previous largest was an earthquake in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1964. But the tsunamis of this earthquake spread across of the Indian Ocean and thousands of casualties are reported initially in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu state, India. By 29 December, the figures of fatalities from Indonesia overhauled those of Sri Lanka and India. By 31 December, the total of dead was estimated at around 90,000 and Thailand was included as one of the countries most affected. A vast international rescue effort was underway.
29 December: The tsunamis toll reaches 40,000 with Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and India topping the list.
In an electoral re-match, Viktor Yushchenko wins the presidency of Ukraine.
In Iraq bombing attacks are reported in Tikrit, Baquba, Samarra, and other places, mostly targeting police. The largest Sunni political group withdraws from elections.
30 December: With 70,000 victims and rising, it becomes clear that the Aceh region of northern Sumatra is the most devastated of all by the tsunamis. Hundreds of foreign tourists were killed in Thailand.
2005
January
The Justice Department formally rescinds previous narrow definition of torture.
3 January: A bomb targets Iraqi guardsmen near USA base in Baghdad killing 19. An execution of five guardsmen in Ramadi is televised.
5 January: The deadly toll of the tsunamis stands at upwards of 160,000, more than 100,000 in northern Sumatra, with millions homeless. In Sri Lanka, it is estimated that over 30% of fatalities were children.
The Asian catastrophe stimulates the largest outpouring of aid in history. In absolute terms, the largest contributors (in millions of $) are Japan (500), the USA (350), France (103), Britain (94), Sweden (74), Canada (67), China (63), Denmark (55), Australia (47) and Netherlands (32). As percentages of GDP, they are: Denmark, Sweden, and Japan.
The Iraqi governor of Baghdad is assassinated in plain daylight in the center of the city.
6 January: The UN is preparing camps for half a million refugees in Sumatra.
Germany becomes the largest aid donor with $674 million, followed by Japan with $500 million.
The carnage continues in Iraq. Six American soldiers die in a roadside blast near Baghdad. Blair says that the elections on 30 January will be held.
Iraqi intelligence estimates insurgents at some 200,000.
The IAEA believes that Egypt has carried on nuclear work.
9 January: Mahmoud Abbas is elected president of the PA by a large majority but of only about half of the 1.8 million eligible voters in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Abbas calls for the violence to end.
12 January: The Knesset narrowly approves a coalition government formed by Likud, the Labor party, and the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party. The Shinui party of Yosef Lapid leads the opposition, although it offered support for the Gaza withdrawal, which also was approved by the Yahad party of Yossi Beilin.
14 January: A well-planned Palestinian attack at a border crossing in Gaza kills six Israeli civilians and three Palestinian assailants.
19 January: The total fatalities from the tsunami hovers near 230,000, but the real figure is considered nearly impossible to calculate. Of the reported total, 167,000 occurred in northern Sumatra.
21 January: President George W. Bush is inaugurated for his second term.
The army non-com Charles Graner, the most visible of the enlisted men involved in the Abu Ghraib abuses, is sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.
Mahmoud Abbas orders Palestinian security forces to border areas with Israel. Hamas announces that it will suspend terrorist operations provisionally.
28 January: The global fertility-rate falls to an average of 3.9 per woman, down from 5.9 in the 1970s.
29 January: Hamas obtains an overwhelming electoral backing in local elections in Gaza.
30 January: Despite the highest number of insurgent attacks since the start of the Second Iraqi war, are held in Iraq. Numerous suicide bombings take place in voting places. However, extraordinary security measures applied by the USA occupation forces allowed most Iraqis who wanted to vote to do so, which they did in large numbers in Shiite areas and in Kurdistan. Muqhtada al-Sadr, leader of the clandestine Shiite Mahdi army, did not participate in the election, which had the backing of grand ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Ali al-Sistani and the political organization he fomented, the United Iraqi Alliance.
A British C-130 is downed and ten are killed.
4 February: Evidence surfaces that North Korea had supplied Libya with uranium hexafluoride for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
8 February: Deadly terrorist attacks occur almost daily in Mosul. But attacks against Iraqi police are also reported from south of Baghdad. Kidnapping of foreign workers continue. Also, there are sporadic fatal casualties among USA troops.
9 February: Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon meet at Sharm el-Sheik, in Egypt, and agree to a truce in the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian king Abdullah II were present. In a later interview, Abbas said that his hopes were that Israel would release Palestinian prisoners, of whom it holds about 8000, and that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would evolve into political parties. He asserted the Palestinians' rights to compensation for lost property now in Israel.
The USA has pledged $40 million in immediate aid for reconstruction and an additional $350 million for Palestine.
10 February: North Korea announces it is withdrawing indefinitely from multilateral talks about its nuclear program.
11 February: After a mortar attack on an Israeli settlement in Gaza, Abbas shakes down the Palestinian security body.
An ETA bomb goes off in Madrid wounding over 40.
14 February: Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese anti-Syria prime minister, is assassinated in a bomb attack. Syria denies involvement but all eyes look to Damascus.
Israel starts releasing Palestinian detainees. Hamas and Islamic Jihad tentatively agree to a truce.
The death toll in Iraq during the previous week is 104 victims. Shiites are being targetted.
17 February: Rafik Hariri, a former anti-Syrian Lebanese prime minister, is killed by a massive car bomb. Syria is immediately suspected and the USA recalled its ambassador to that country.
Provisional results in the Iraqi elections give Shiite parties 48% and a Kurdish alliance 26% of votes. Sunni participation in the election was virtually nil.
Israeli soldiers kill two armed Palestinians in Nablus, in the West Bank.
18 February: Revised dates of paleontological finds place the appearance of humans at 195,000 years ago.
Israel will generously compensate the Gaza settlers
19 February: President Bush names John Negroponte as director of national intelligence.
Israel announces that it is suspending the practicing of demolishing the homes of Palestinians related to terrorists.
21 February: The Kyoto protocol on the curtailing of the emission of greenhouse gases comes into effect. China and India are exempted. The USA has not subscribed it.
On the occassion of Ashura, the Shiites holiest day, Sunni Iraqis unleash a wave of attacks which leaves 55 people dead in two days.
February 22: Sharon obtains cabinet approval for the Gaza withdrawal, scheduled to begin in July 20, and for modifications in the West Bank walls. Netanyahu voted against.
American officials recognize that the Iraqi insurgency has become a well-coordinated offensive to disrupt the economy and basic services in Iraq. The crippling of Baghdad is a main target.
24 February: The World Council of Churches, an organization grouping Protestant and Orthodox denominations, urges its faithful to divest themselves of holdings in companies that contribute, directly or indirectly, to Israel's policy of demolishing homes of Palestinians.
Shiite politicians agree on Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister of Iraq. Sunni attacks in Mosul intensify. The Associated Press estimates that 1488 American military have died since the start of the Second Iraqi war.
25 February: A suicider kills four Israelis in a Tel Aviv disco. The act is claimed by Islamic Jihad. The Israeli government blames Syria but also sends a word of warning to Abbas.
Russia agrees to supply fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.
26 February: Presidents Bush and Putin meet in Bratislava, Slovakia, where the two presidents toned down differences and emphasized their common concern on security against terrorism.
The Israeli security walls in the West Bank are two-thirds built and enclose 7% of the West Bank.
An Islamic Jihad bomber kills four in a Tel Aviv nightclub. Sharon attributes the attack to Syrian terrorist leaders but warns the PA that it has to take care of the problem.
The WHO warns that bird flu, which has killed 16 persons in Vietnam, could become a pandemia.
Four British soldiers are tried and convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners.
In Tikrit, a suicider kills at least 15 in police headquarters. Two USA soldiers were killed elsewhere in Iraq.
28 February: President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt offers to amend constitution to allow multi-party presidential elections.
Canada refuses to participate in the American project for an anti-missile shield.
1 March: In the deadliest attack during the occupation, 106 die from a car bomb detonated by a suicider aimed at Iraqi National Guard and police recruits outside a clinic in Baghdad.
3 March: One of the judges scheduled to try Saddam Hussein is assassinated.
4 March: The radical Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir is exonerated of most charges in connection with the Bali bombing.
5 March: Steve Fossett does a solo non-stop flight around the world in a plane built so that 82% of its weight would be the contents of its fuel tanks.
8 March: Hizbollah draws hundred of thousands to a political rally in central Lebanon in which its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, gave support to Syria, under pressure to remove its troops from Lebanon after the Hariri assassination.
Hamas announces that it will participate in the Palestinian parliamentary elections planned for July.
Syria lets it be known that it will evacuate its troops from Lebanon.
The American command in Iraq informs that "improvised explosive devices" (home-made bombs) account for half of the 1,500 fatal casualties suffered by its troops.
10 March: Russian forces kill the Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov.
Bush names UN-basher John Bolton as American ambassador to the UN. His nomination instantly awakens stiff opposition because of evidence that Bolton was authoritative and vindictive as a high State Department bureaucrat. He was also known for his antagonistic attitude to the UN itself.
12 March: Bomb aimed at Shiites kills 47 persons in Mosul.
16 March: Israel plans to expand the Maaleh Adumim settlement, east of Jerusalem, the largest of the settlements in the West Bank (30,000 inhabitants), by urbanizing with 3,500 new housing units a corridor from Jerusalem to the settlement, actually an Israeli city for all intents and purposes. The expansion would divide the West Bank along a short but strategic east-west axis. It would also complete the encirclement of East Jerusalem, where elsewhere Israel controls all accesses, thus making unrealistic Palestinian aspirations to make East Jerusalem the capital of a real Palestinian state, itself only so far a distant possibility.
22 March: The USA is planning multi-millionaire improvements in its air force bases in Afghanistan: Bagram (near Kabul) and Kandahar.
25 March: An outbreak of Marburg virus (similar to Ebola) has already killed 95 in Angola.
29 March: A delegation of the the Nationalist party of Taiwan, the one founded by Chiang Kai-shek, visits China. Previously, the Beijing government had re-iterated in strong terms its One-China policy, which was as much a position of Chiang as of Mao Zedong. The Nationalists are presently in the opposition.
31 March: Of 558 detainees in Guantanamo, down from the original 680 captured or so in Afghanistan in 2001, 38 are released as not being "enemy combatants". The rendition of thirteen to Yemen was blocked through the appeal of their lawyers before an American court.
Taliban claims wave of violence in Afghanistan.
April: A Japanese historical textbook describing the Rape of Nanjing in 1937 as part of military operations provokes anti-Japanese riots in China, which refuses a Japanese demand for apologies.
1 April: One Marine and Shiites killed in Iraq.
2 April: Pope John Paul II dies.
7 April: Even though Pakistan has admitted that its top scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed to nuclear proliferation, American functionaries launch the idea that it was North Korea doing the nuclear proliferation.
8 April: The Iraqi government is formed with the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president and the Shiite Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister.
11 April: Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao visits India, after being in Pakistan. Chinese recognizes Indian sovereignty in Sikkim.
12 April: Sharon visits Bush and is invited to the president's Texas ranch and explains that the expansion in Maaleh Adumim is not imminent. Israel asks the USA to do something about Iran, like invading it as it did in Iraq.
18 April: Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and Indian PM Manmohan Singh declare the peace process between their countries "irreversible", although so far it concretely consists in land-travel links, recently in Kashmir.
19 April: The Vatican conclave chooses Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a close collaborator of pope John Paul II, as new pope Benedict XVI.
Despite the European embargo on arms sales to China, Chinese companies are participating in the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system, which has multiple, sophisticated military applications.
Sharon delays Gaza pull-out.
21 April: After over three years of detainment in Guantanamo, seventeen Afghans are released as untainted by al Qaida or Taliban connections.
South Korea warns the USA not to involve the UN in the issue of North Korea's nuclear program.
23 April: At a meeting of over 100 African and Asian leaders in Jakarta, Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for Japan's "colonial rule and aggression" during World War II. The Chinese government clamps down on anti-Japanese protests.
An American presidential commission on intelligence gathering concludes that the Iraq fiasco was unrelated to Bush and his war-mongering advisors.
Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the foremost American commander in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004, is cleared of any responsibility for the tortures at Abu Ghraib.
27 April: Some 250 remaining Syrian troops evacuate Lebanon. At the height of its intervention (1990), Syria had 40,000 troops in Lebanon.
1 May: Lien Chan, leader of Taiwan's Nationalist party, visits China and is received by president Hu Jintao.
Putin visits Israel and Palestine. He offers to sell weapons to Palestinians.
3 May: Israeli forces raid Sida, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, resulting in the death of an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian militant. The PA protested continued Israeli incursions.
Deadly terrorist outbursts against the Iraqi government leave over 100 dead.
7 May: Labor wins the British national elections, but sees its previous parliamentary majority reduced by 55 seats. The Conservatives gain 35 seats and the Liberal Democrats 5. The popular vote was 37 for Labor and 33 for the Conservatives. PM Tony Blair is ratified, but he is challenged by leaders of his own party for having eroded its electoral base because of his support for the Second Iraqi war.
In the vote in Ulster, opinion went to extremes: for fanatical unionism represented by Ian Paisley and for Irish nationalist Sinn Fein. The moderate unionist David Trimble lost his parliamentary seat, which he had held for fifteen years.
8 May-4 June: USA forces launch an offensive in western Iraq on the Syrian border. The Iraqi insurrection strikes back with bombing attacks in northern Iraq and in Baghdad. The USA command announced the discovery of a large underground military base stocked with large weapons and ammunition.
9 May: Sharon announces that there will be no further release of Palestinian prisoners, one of the cornerstones of the policy of cooperation with the PA.
13 May The Uzbek government kills hundreds of Muslim insurgents in the town of Andijon, in the Ferghana province. Opponents of the dictatorial regime of Islam Karimov claim that the number of dead is 745.
14 May-5 June: A report in Newsweek that guards at Guantanamo had desecrated the Koran by flushing it down a toilet in front of Afghan detainees triggers riots in Afghanistan that leave seventeen dead. Similar protests occur in Pakistan. The Bush administration blames the magazine. An USA army investigation admits that some guards urinated on the Koran, but finds no evidence that it was flushed in a toilet.
17 June: The USA is willing to support the Japanese bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council. Japan is a member of the so-called G-4, the four states that aspire to that condition, which are, besides Japan, Germany, India, and Brazil. Japan signals that it doesn't want to be singled out for American support.
19 May: Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi visits Iraq.
21 May: Details emerge of death by torture during 2002 of Afghans detained in the American Bagram concentration near Kabul.
21-30 May: In a skirmish in a potential trade war, China imposes tariffs on its own exports of textile and apparel exports. The USA and the EU intend to restrict Chinese textile imports, which have been increasing exponentially. Beijing announces it will revoke its own export duties,
25 May: More than 50 dead from a bomb near a Shiite mosque in Iraq.
Syria halts military and intelligence cooperation with the USA.
28 May: An attack on a Shiite shrine leaves 20 dead in Pakistan.
29 May: France votes against the EU constitution. Subsequently, president Chirac substituted Dominique de Villepin for prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
31 May: Religious factionalism is apparently behind the killing of 21 in an Iraqi Shiite town.
June: As the process of normalization between India and Pakistan continues, Muslim separatist terrorists perpetrate bomb attacks in Kashmir.
1 June: Khodorkovsky is sentenced to a prison term of nine years minus detainment time.
2 June: The Dutch reject the EU constitution.
During the funeral of an anti-Taliban cleric, Taliban detonate a bomb in a mosque in Kandahar killing 20.
7 June: The USA contributes less than any economically advanced country to aid to poor countries. It's contribution is only 0.18% of gross national income. The aim agreed on by the EU is 0.7%.
13 June: The group of G-8 agrees to the cancellation of $40 billion in debts by the world's 18 poorest countries.
20 June: The US Senate apologizes for all the lynchings of blacks in American history.
Uzbek units who participated in the massacre in Andijon, Uzbekistan, were trained in the USA.
23 June: Violence between Palestinians and Israelis continue, although in a lesser scale as during the height of the Second Intifada. No suicide attacks have been reported. Israel only reluctantly turned over Jericho and Tulkarm to the Palestinians. It offered to return also Bethlehem, Qalqiya, and Ramallah, but has not done so. Israel let it be known that it was resuming its policy of political assassinations, especially against Islamic Jihad militants.
American military officials both in Iraq and in Washington admit that the US forces in Iraq are taking more casualties than ever since the invasion and that the Iraq rebels, rather than giving in, are "building their military skills".
In Mississippi, an 80-years old ex-Klansman, Edgar Ray Killen, gets 60 years for atrocious murders perpetrated on civil right workers in 1964. The eight or more other killers had been let off many years before by white juries.
The CIA reports that Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorism.
25 June: Gen John Abizaid, the top USA military commander in the Middle East, admits to Congress that the Iraqi insurgency is as strong as it was six months before. In another context, Gen. George Casey Jr., the American military commander in Iraq, says: "Things in Iraq are hard".
27 June: Islamic hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wins the election for president of Iran. Some Americans recognize him as one of the young Islamic guards who seized the American embassy in 1979.
30 June: India and the USA sign a wide military cooperation agreement.
In eastern Afghanistan, Taliban guerrillas down an American helicopter killing the 17 people on board.
July: The price of oil holds steady at around $60 the barrel. This is till below the 1981 price which inflation-adjusted is $86. In 1973, during the fist oil crisis, America imported one third of its energy consumption. Today America imports two thirds of the oil it uses.
The dismantling of the Israeli settlements in Gaza is proceeding.
2 July: American forces in Iraq are subjected to some 60 attacks daily. The official fatal casualties count is 1,735. The comparison of Iraq to Vietnam is being increasingly expressed in America.
4 July: The Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand, which began in January 2004, has claimed more than 700 fatalities, of which 200 were mass killings by Thai soldiers.
6 July: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which comprises China, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, called on the USA to set a limit to its military presence in Central Asia.
7 July: The recently named Egyptian ambassador in Iraq, Ihab al Sharif, is executed by the insurgents who had kidnapped him.
In a case surrounded by ambiguities, the NYT reporter Judith Miller is ordered jailed by a judge for refusing to identify a source for an article she didn't publish. The case involves the illegal uncovering of a secret operative of the CIA, which was actually done in 2003 by the columnist Robert Novack. The presidential aide, Karl Rove, indirectly admitted that he was the source of the leak.
8 July: London is struck by four terrorists bombs in a bus and subway stations leaving 53 dead. British PM Tony Blair identified conflict in the Middle East, including between Israelis and Palestinians, as one of the roots of terrorism. As the investigation proceeded, it was determined that the timed bombs were detonated by British Muslim suiciders.
12 July: A Palestinian suicider kills two Israelis in Netanya. Abbas ordered a crackdown in Gaza by the Palestinian police, which resulted in two deaths. There were also Israeli reprisals.
14 July: An Israeli couple is killed by gunmen in Gaza.
15 July: Iraqi government declares that from August 2004 and May 2005, an average of over 800 Iraqi civilians and police a month had been killed by insurgents and terrorists.
16 July: An US court determines that the military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees can proceed.
18 July: Suicide bombers kill around 90 Iraqis in Baghdad and neighboring areas. Police and US forces were targeted.
A minibus is bombed in Kusadasi, Turkey, killing five.
22 July: China abandons the exchange system that keeps the Yuan at a fixed rate to the dollar.
Five more detainees in Guantanamo are sent to other countries.
24 July: There are over 90 dead in various terrorist attacks in the beach resort of Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. A so-called brigade of al Qaida claims responsibility.
28 July: The IRA formally announces that it is renouncing violence.
29 July: Two Algerian diplomats are kidnapped and assassinated in Iraq.
31 July: John Garang, leader of southern Sudan and Sudanese vicepresident, dies in helicopter crash. He is succeeded in the vice-presidency by the also southern Sudan leader Salva Kiir Mayardit.
3 August: South Korean scientists clone a dog.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is iangurated as new president of Iran.
Negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs fail.
11 August: Iran starts activating uranium-enrichment facilities in Isfahan. EU mediators react with a highly critical attitude.
22 August: Sixty-five American soldiers have been killed in operations in Afghanistan during 2004.
24 August: Israel shuts down all the settlements in Gaza, but insists it will need more land in the West Bank.
26 August: Chinese and Russian troops engage in joint military training maneuvers somewhere along the coast of China.
30 August: Powerful hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans and some levees break inundating especially lower-income, low-lying areas, in effect forcing the evacuation of the city.
September
With the Gulf of Mexico are paralyzed, crude oil prices hover near $70 the barel.
The death toll of the New Orleans disaster is estimated in the hundreds.
Chief justice William Rehnquist dies and president Bush names judge John G. Roberts as substitute. Congress makes little fuss about approving him.
In Japan Junichiro Koizumi wins by a landslide.
The Gaza withdrawal is completed.
Bomb in Bahgdad kills over 75 as the constitution is approved. The following day various terrorist attacks leave over 150 dead. Sunni Iraqis consider that the constitution in unfavorable to them. However, the bombings could also be in retaliation for the American offensive in Tal Afar near the Syrian border.
Elections in Germany give the Christian Democrat Angela Merkel barely one percent of the vote over the incumbent Gerhard Schroeder.
Afghans vote for the national assembly.
Finance ministers of highly developed countries close a deal forgive $55 billion in debts of the eighteen poorest countries. Involved in the negotiations were the World Bank and the IMF.
The UN International Atomic Agency votes for a future, indeterminate reference of possible Iranian violations of nuclear non-proliferation to the UN Security Council.
The IRA destroys its stockpiles of weapons.
October
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren receive the Nobel prize for medicine for having suspected in the 1980s, a later shown, that stomach ulcers were the product of bacterial infection and not of stress.
The Nobel peace prize is awarded to the UN International Atomic Agency and its head Mohammed ElBaradei.
Six Marines are killed during the military offensive in western Iraq. Sectarian violence in the rest of the country continues. In Basra, the British occupation contingent is facing Shiite antagonism against which a local limping police force is ineffectual.
After Palestinian gunmen kill three Israelis, the Israeli government breaks contacts with Palestinian functionaries.
Saddam Hussein is brought to court charged with the killing of around 140 men in the Shiite town Dujail, where he had been the object of an assassination attempt. Husseing refuses to collaborate with the tribunal.
Chchen rebels attack Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, in the same norther Caucasus region as Chechnya. In engagement with Russian forces over 100 die.
In the Afghan elections Islamists and former guerrilla fighters win half the assembly seats.
Iraqi voters approve a new constitution, which contemplates the possibility of secession from central authority.
A suicider of Islamic Jihad kills five Israelis and Israel unleashes a major offensive against Gaza and a wave of arrests in the West Bank. Sharon does not discard the possibility of a re-occupation of Gaza.
Officially, the count of USA soldiers dead since the start of the Second Iraqi war surpassed two thousand in October.
October was the third deadliest month for American troops since the beginning of the Second Iraqi war. There were in all 92 fatal casualties, a figure only surpassed in April and November 2004, with 126 and 125 deaths respectively. The battle for Najaf was in April and the battle for Fallujah in November.
November
A suicide bomber kills four USA soldiers at a checkpoint in Baghdad. The military offensive in western Iraq is directed at the town of Husayba.
NASA is short by $5 billion to maintain adequately the shuttle program.
Three Iraqi suicide terrorists kill 56 persons in three hotels in Amman, Jordan. The Jordanian terrorist active in the Iraqi insurrection, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, assumed responsibility as head of a so-called Mesopotamian Al Qaida.
After prolonged haggling, Germany’s two major parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party, agree to form a disparate coalition headed by Christian Democratic Angela Merkel, the winner by a bare minimum in the previous national election.
Five Marines are killed in the continuing American operation in the Syrian border region of northwestern Iraq.
According to the Associated Press, the American government has detained over 83,000 foreigners since the start of the “war on terror” in 2001.
Ariel Sharon calls for new elections and announces plan to form his own party, to which Shimon Peres declares he will join.
Republicans in Congress oppose some of Bush’s projected budget cuts which will affect social services while sticking to his tax breaks for upper-incomes tax payers.
December
The Iraqi insurgency is recurring more frequently to suicide bombers.
Chinese militiamen fire on protesting villagers killing over 20. The commanding officer was arrested, but Chinese authorities clamped on further reporting of the incident.
French surgeons perform a partial face transplant on a disfigured woman and provoke an outcry over the ethics of the operation.
Iraqis, including many from Sunni areas, who had abstained in the previous referendum on the country’s constitution, participate in the election for the national assembly. The elections were characterized by an almost total absence of violence. Shiites and Kurds voted massively.
In Israel/Palestine there is noticeable de-escalation of violence. In Palestine political infighting is reported in Al Fatah, the ruling party founded by Arafat and now headed by Mahmous Abbas.
The NYT reveals that immediately after 9/11 the Bush administration initiated a program of wire-tapping and eavesdropping of doubtful legality.
2006
January
In the elections for the Palestinian assembly, Hamas obtains a likely 35% of the votes to 42% for the ruling Fatah party and prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. The fear of a government including the hardline anti-Israel Hamas, prompts the Israeli government to halt payment of import duties due to the Palestine Authority. Also, Israel obstructs transit from Gaza, where Hamas won overwhelmingly, to the West Bank, where the Palestinian government functions. The Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah was elected prime minister.
During 2005, the USA military suffered 844 fatal casualties, adding to a total since the Second Iraqi war began of 2,178 and 7,989 wounded. January, when conditions were being established for the election to the constitutional assembly, was the bloodiest month with 107 US soldiers dead.
In the course of the same year, the US occupation, through the constituted Shiite dominated provisional government, had recruited over 200,000 Iraqis to oppose the insurgency. However, even as the mostly Sunni insurgency continued, there was a tendency for the Iraqi government forces to fragment along sectarian and tribal lines. The American-sponsored Shiite forces had been unleashing sporadic, but sometimes extremely brutal persecutions of Sunnis. The Mahdi army of the recalcitrant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr was active in Baghdad, Basra, and elsewhere. Al-Sadr tended to place the root of the violence on the American occupation, constituted by 160,000 troops. It was believed that the Sunni had placemen in the oil industry, from which funds were being diverted to stoke the insurgency. There were also reports that there was friction between Al Qaida in Mesopotamia and secularist Iraqi insurgents.
Ariel Sharon suffers a massive stroke that puts him in a comatose state. He is succeeded provisionally by Ehud Olmert, who offers to carry on his predecessor’s policies and to continue building the walls around Israeli settlements, of which 300 kms., or roughly half, had already been built.
In Canada, the Conservative party, which had collapsed in the elections of 1993, makes a comeback under Stephen Harper and garners 36% of the popular vote.
In Bolivia, the leftist, Amerindian Evo Morales, who favors the legalization of coca- growing, is sworn in as president.
The IAEA votes to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council but, at the insistence of Russia and China, within lapse of at least a month and including a stricture about Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
In devastated Liberia, the first female head of state in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is sworn in as president.
Insurgents kill eleven American servicemen and some 130 Iraqis.
The IAEA announces that Iran has resumed its nuclear program.
Ibrahim Rugova, the informal president of Kosovo and main advocate of its independence from Serbia, dies.
Avian flu, a disease that kills birds and can be transmitted to humans, usually fatally, has been spreading from the Far East to Europe. There have been few human fatalities, but the fear of a pandemia led to an international meeting in Beijing where $1.9 were pledged to fight the disease.
China announces a trebling of its trade surplus with the rest of the world.
An American missile targets a town in northwestern Pakistan to kill Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaida’s reputed number two, but succeeds only in killing 18 civilians.
February
In Haiti, through troubled but generally fair elections, René Préval, a protégé of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is elected president.
The US reports four dead Marines amidst attacks mainly aimed at Shiites.
The Shiite alliance, with the largest bloc of voters in the Iraqi assembly, decides to retain Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister, but there were no immediate perspectives for the formation of a cabinet.
The golden dome of a mosque in Samarra sacred to Shiites is blown up.
In Afghanistan, a record crop of the heroin-producing poppy is expected. The auhthorities admit that 40% of the cultivable land is devoted to poppy-growing.
March
Sectarian violence kills 75 Iraqis, mostly in Baghdad.
In what amounts to a contemporary diplomatic revolution, Bush, on a visit to India, sanctions a wide-ranging military cooperation and particularly a nuclear deal by which India’s fast-breeder or weapons reactors will remain off-limits to inspections but civilian facilities will be monitored in exchange for technology and fuel supplies. In the following visit to Pakistan, Bush offers only encouragement and help in its fight against terrorism.
The US Congress renews with minor changes the anti-terrorist Patriot Act.
Saddam Hussein is formally charged by a tribunal headed with the killing of 148 people from the Shiite village of Dujail, where an attempt on his life was made in 1982.
It is estimated that 200,000 have died and 2,000,000 made homeless in Darfur, principally by the Sudan-backed Janjaweed militia.
Bush rejects the permanence of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is considered to close to the Shiite militiaqs, as Iraqi prime minister. Subsequently, the Iraqi parliament elected the Shiite Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as prime minister.
The USA and the EU halt direct aid payments to the Palestinian government because of the Hamas electoral victory. However, most subsidies continue channeled through the office of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel gives a majority to the Kadima party, founded by Ariel Sharon and headed by his successor, Ehud Olmert.
The former dictator of Liberia, Charles Taylor, is handed over to the International Criminal court in The Hague by Nigeria via Sierra Loene, where he was accused of genocide.
April
Israeli warplanes attack Rafah, in southern Gaza.
A former Cheney aide affirms that Bush authorized the leakage of misleading information on Iraq in 2003.
US forces are heavily engaged in Anbar province, which contains Fallujah. The main target now is the city of Ramadi.
A suicider kills nine in Tel Aviv and Hamas approves.
Oil futures prices went over $70 a barrel.
Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff authorizes crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Former CIA agent Tyler Drumheller accuses the Bush administration of having deliberately ignored reports that belied its claims about the existence of Iraqi WMD.
30 are dead by a bomb set off in an Egyptian resort city at the height of the tourist season.
Nepal’s king Gyanendra restores parliament and gives up dictatorial powers after months of protests in Katmandu. Girisa Prasad Koirala is named prime minister. Subsequently, negotiations with the Maoist insurgents lead to an understanding on the celebration of national elections.
May
Montenegro breaks away from its loose federation with Serbia. A parliamentary republic, in 2003 it had elected Filip Vujanovic president and, in October 2006, Zeljko Sturanovic was chosen prime minister. In Serbia, also a parliamentary republic, Boris Tadic was president and Vojislav Kostunica prime minister since 2004.
In Italy, Romano Prodi replaces Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister.
Olmert declares that Israel will unilaterally set its own borders in the West Bank in the coming four years.
June
With informants help, US forces track down and kill the Jordan-born Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, head of Mesopotamian Al Qaida and one of the chief insurgents in Iraq.
Four US soldiers killed by Talibans in northeastern Afghanistan.
Palestinians use a tunnel from Gaza to attack and kill two Israeli soldiers and take one captive.
Islamists headed by Hassan Dahir Aweys, accused of terrorism by Washington, drive away warlords and take over in Mogadishu, Somalia. The Islamists have tried unsuccessfully to capture the inland city of Baidoa, where a provisional government has the backing of Ethiopia.
Israel invades southern Gaza to rescue captured soldier.
The US Supreme Court declares that the Guantánamo military trials are illegal and contravene the Geneva conventions.
A bomb kills over 60 people in a market in a Baghdad Shiite neighborhood.
July
The USA is still holding without trial over 500 Afghans in the Bagram concentration camp.
North Korea fires off six missiles, including an ICBM that failed.
The conservative Felipe Calderón wins elections in México by small margin.
The one sided battle in Gaza continues with 21 dead Palestinians and one Israeli soldier killed.
Tax revenues in the US increase considerably reducing size of prospective deficit for the current year.
Russian security forces kill the Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel responsible for the Beslan massacre.
Hizbollah, led by Damascus-based Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, launches hundreds of missile attacks on Safed and Haifa killing various civilians and forcing an evacuation of northern areas of Israel. Israel vowed to destroy Hizbollah, one of whose rockets damaged an Israeli navy vessel. Israeli planes hit mostly Shiite southern Beirut. The Israelis evacuated Gaza after having destroyed government offices. Hizbollah raids Israel, kills seven soldiers, and takes two captive. Israeli forces enter Lebanon.
US military admit that Baghdad is virtually engulfed by sectarian civil war and that more troops are needed there. In three days, over one hundred had been killed.
Bombs in rush-hour Mumbai (Bombay) trains kill over 200. Indian officials blame the Muslim Kashmir-based terrorist group Lashkar i-Taiba.
The Pentagon admits that the article of the Geneva conventions relating to the right to trial and humane treatment of prisoners of war applies to al Qaida detainees, which president Bush in February 2002 had said was not applicable in the war on terror. However, the concession was accompanied by a statement that the US had always been in compliance.
After 53 people were killed in the Shiite city of Kufa, the UN announced that over 100 Iraqi civilians has been killed every day during the previous month. The figures came from Iraqi government bodies.
The Shiite cleric Mokhtada al-Sadr, head of the largest Shiite militia, condemned the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The Israeli air force pounds Lebanon in various places, including the Bekaa valley and bridges north of Beirut.
Suicide bomber in Afghanistan kill eight including two Canadian soldiers.
Hizbollah rockets continue to fall on Israel and kill two in Haifa.
The head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, declares that hopes are dim for the elimination of farm subsidies in industrialized nations. European negotiators accused the USA of failing to make concessions.
The fighting between Israel and Hizbollah escalates around villages in southern Lebanon, whose prime minister, Fouad Siniora, complained to the US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, that 380 Lebanese had been killed and 750,000 displaced from their homes. Hizbollah rocket attacks are still going despite Israeli search for militants.
The Iraqi government unofficially informs that during prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s forthcoming visit to Washington he will complain about the frequent indiscriminate killing of civilians by US troops.
Israeli planes destroy an UN post killing four peacekeepers. As fighting continues in Lebanon and Gaza, Israel announces that it intends to create a “security strip” in southern Lebanon. In the war with Hizbollah, there have been, according to Reuters, 433 dead in Lebanon and 51 in Israel. Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in one day.
The USA continues to take losses in the Ramadi area in Anbar province. Forty servicemen have died in July. The total of troops in Iraq will rise from 127,000 to 130,000.
Israeli airstrike kills 50 people in southern Lebanon, more than half of them children.
In the space of a week, the US manages to speed up delivery of precision bombs to Israel, obtain a 48-hour suspension of Israeli aerial attacks, and block all international efforts to obtain a ceasefire.
August
NATO takes command of coalition forces, including 12,000 American troops, in Afghanistan. In a major offensive in Kandahar province, Taliban militias suffer large losses.
The civil war in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which had been in abeyance, starts again in the eastern coast port of Trincomalee.
Israel continues its air-land offensive in Lebanon. Israeli soldiers and civilians are killed by Hizbollah rockets and in ground combat. In Gaza, Israeli tanks and missiles killed eight. The Gazans were firing rockets into Israel, but not with the force or precision of the Hizbollah arsenal. The UN informed that Israeli artillery had been lobbing over 200 shells a day into Gaza and had killed 175 Palestinians since the war had begun in June. Hizbollah rockets killed ten persons in Israel.
The UK uncovers a conspiracy by radical Islamists to board planes from Heathrow to New York and down them with liquid explosives. Eleven are charged.
The UN Security Council backs a ceasefire in the Hizbollah war. European troops, mainly French, are to be stationed in the Lebanon side of the border with Israel. Israeli troops continue their advance into Lebanon. But the ceasefire shortly afterwards comes into effect.
The Mahdi army of Mokhtada al-Sadr confronts Iraqi troops in the city of Diwaniya.
To put an end to the ineffectual Qassam rockets that Palestinians launch, Israel initiates a major offensive into northern Gaza. It lasts until November, leaves scores dead, and culminates with the shelling of Beit Hanun, where 18 civilians are killed, but the Qassam rockets continue flying from the ruins that the Israeli incursion left in its wake.
September
In Japan, Shinzo Abe replaces Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister.
Formally, the US military Iraq hand over to the government the command of the Iraqi army.
President Bush moves to Guantánamo from secret detention camps 14 top-ranking Al Qaida detainees, including Khalid Shaik Mohammed, who are to be subjected to the same legal treatment that the Supreme Court had previously considered unconstitutional.
Sweden votes the Social Democrat Goran Persson out of office in favor of the conservative Fredrik Reinfeld.
Suicide bombers attack Kabul killing 18, including four Canadian soldiers.
In Beirut, the leader of Hizbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, claims victory over Israel.
The American Congress passes legislation that virtually sanctions all the controversial measures taken by the Bush administration against suspected terrorists, including some previously struck down by the Supreme Court.
The Thai military, led by Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, depose the controversial prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was then at the UN in the queue of heads of state to address the General Assembly.
Despite having drastically reduced their patrolling duties, the American occupation troops continue suffering steady casualties.
October
Conservative chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel is defeated by the Social Democrat Alfred Gusenbauer in Austrian elections.
The South Korean Ban Ki-moon is selected by the Security Council to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the UN.
North Korean explodes an underground nuclear device. The Security Council votes for sanctions, although both China and Russia declared that they would not enforce some of them.
A study by Iraqi and American experts on public health estimate that over 600,000 Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Second Iraqi war over what the normal death rate would have been if the war had not taken place. This figure breaks down to an average of 15,000 deaths a month, mainly from violence.
The Iraqi parliament approves a law that would facilitate the division of Iraq into autonomous areas. The session was boycotted by all Sunni and many Shiite legislators.
The civil war in Sri Lanka intensifies. In November, army artillery fire kills 23 civilians. The Tamil rebels engage at sea the Sri Lankan navy.
On the Chad border, Darfur rebels mount attacks on Sudanese government forces. Sudan agrees to a joint African Union-UN operation in Darfur.
According to the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz, Israel is planning a massive increase of settlers in the West Bank.
Pakistani troops attack a madrasa, suspected of being a terrorist center near Afghanistan, and cause around 80 dead. In November, a suicide bomber killed 42 Pakistani army recruits in a training camp.
November
The consensus among astrophysicists is that the universe is expanding.
Joseph Kabila wins elections in the Congo.
With Russian approval, Southern Ossetia votes to separate from Georgia.
South Africa, which had been dragging its feet in the fight against the spread of AIDS, shunts aside its health minister, who claimed garlic was a good antidote, and adopts a more aggressive medical campaign.
Saddam Hussein is sentenced to hang for the killing of 148 men and boys from the Kurdish town of Dujail, where he was the object of an assassination attempt.
The Sandinist and former president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is re-elected after 16 years in the political wilderness.
The Democratic party sweeps the mid-term elections and obtains majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The vote is considered as much for the Democrats as against President Bush. Secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the American strategy in Iraq, immediately resigns.
Coordinated Sunni attacks kill 237 people in Shiite areas of Baghdad and in other cities provoking Shiite reprisals. Moktada al-Sadr blames the government and the American occupation, but calls on the influential Sunni cleric Sheikh Harith al-Dhari to condemn the killing of Shiites.
As of mid-November, the USA military had taken 2872 fatalities and 46,137 wounded in Iraq since the start of the Second Iraqi war. The deadliest months in decreasing order were: 141 (November 204), 140 (April 2004), 127 (January 2005), 110 (November 2003) and 109 (October 2006). The deadliest years were 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2003. Coalition forces (mainly British) had taken 140 fatalities. In Afghanistan, the total coalition fatalities since 2001 were 504, 350 of them Americans. Total non-fatal casualties for the USA was 5729. Coalition forces fatalities were 154, 42 Canadians and 41 British. The over-all totals of War on Terror were: 3192 US fatalities and 51,866 wounded; coalition fatalities: 394; a total of 3586 dead. These figures are from the American Department of Defense.
After six months of nearly continuous fighting, during which 300 Palestinians were killed against three Israeli soldiers and two civilians, the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.
In another setback for American foreign policy, Ecuador elects the anti-globalizer Rafael Correa.
December
Ex-president Jimmy Carter publishes a book titled Palestine: peace not apartheid, in which he castigates the American government for its partiality to Israel and Israel for the fencing of territories in the West Bank.
The Iraq study group headed by James A. Baker urges President Bush to seek a solution for Iraq in a Middle Eastern context including the Israel/Palestine problem.
The Islamists who had tamed Mogadishu attempt to capture Baidoa, the seat of an UN-backed but ineffectual provisional government, but are dispersed by forces from Ethiopia with American support. Mogadishu reverts to clan-based wardlordism.
President Bush orders 20,000 more troops to Iraq.
In Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, self-proclaimed Turkmanbashi (father of Turkmans), dies and is substituted by Gurbaguly Berdymukhammedov.
Saddam Hussein, unbending to the end, is hung amid taunts by his executioners.
2007
January
In Gaza, armed militias of Al Fatah and Hamas fall to fighting each other over political power.
A suicider kills three Israelis in Eilat.
In a test of its missile capability, China destroys in space a weather satellite of its own.
Bombings in Baghdad leave around 80 dead in a Shiite area. The Shiites retaliate by killing Sunni civilians in groups at random. The sequence of events follows the pattern of inter-religious strife in Iraq during the previous year: Sunni militias’ large-scale attacks and Shiite reprisals against the Sunni population. During the same week-end, the US military suffered 27 fatal casualties from both Sunni and Shiite insurgents. The toll is comparable to the worst previous periods of the war and occupation.
Gerry Adam of Sinn Fein and the Protestant leader Ian Paisley agree to joint rule for Ulster.
In one week-end, US troops suffer 27 losses in Iraq. But Baghdad appears to be under a tight lead.
Defying electoral results that repudiated his war policy, Bush announces that 20,000 troops will be sent to Iraq. The measure is called the “surge”.
February
A German court indicts the CIA for illegal kidnappings. Italy emits arrest warrants against American secret agents.
Putin accuses the US of imperialism and of creating an insecure world. He blasts the NATO expansion to East Europe
American strategists in Iraq admit that helicopters are being targeted and downed by insurgents.
The Palestinians reach a political accord to end the internal strife. That Hamas cannot be excluded from the government provokes denunciation in Israel and misgivings in western powers.
The Taliban overrun one entire district in southwestern Afghanistan.
A coordinated attack on an American military outpost north of Baghdad, an infrequent action even at the worst times of the insurgency, is reported.
In one day, terrorist acts are perpetrated in St. Petersburg, southern Thailand, an Indian train, and Baghdad. The Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand has produced over 2,000 dead.
The UK will start withdrawing its contingent from Iraq.
81 American and 3 UK soldiers killed this month.
March
Indian Maoists kill over 40 policemen in Chchatisgarh.
China passes legislation on private-property rights.
American Supreme Court bans an abortion technique called “intact dilation and extraction.”
Civil war rages in Gaza between Hamas and Al Fatah.
81 American and 1 British soldiers are killed in Iraq during this month.
April
In questionable Nigerian elections, the government candidate, Umaru Yar’adua wins the presidency.
In Somalia the forces of the Baidoa government and Ethiopian troops occupy Mogadishu.
In Baghdad bombs kill 171 in Shiite areas of Baghdad.
A suicider bomb-truck rams USA base near Fallujah killing 11 US soldiers.
104 American and 12 British soldiers are killed in Iraq.
May
Lebanese forces begin siege of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, near Tripoli, to dislodge the Islamic fundamentalist Fatah al-Islam. It lasts until August.
The “surge” begins in Iraq.
Nikolas Sarkozy is elected president of France.
Seven NATO soldiers die in helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
126 American and 3 British soldiers are killed in Iraq.
June
The American Supreme Court judges that color should not be taken into account in public school systems, undermining Brown v. Board of Education, which brought down the color barrier.
An alternative to the American-sponsored anti-missiles “shield” to be installed in the Czech Republic and Poland, is proposed by Russia, which offers that the detecting system be located in Azerbaijan.
The “surge” completed, the USA had nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq.
Hamas controls all of Gaza. The USA and the EU funnel aid to Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
An immigration bill to deal with mostly Latin American illegals in the USA dies in the Senate. States and communities start applying anti-illegals statutes.
Eleven Colombian legislators in the hands of FARC die.
Sudan accepts an UN-African Union force for Darfur, where ethnic conflict has produced over 200,000 deaths and 2,500,000 refugees.
American Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham denounces the procedures of the review process applied to the some 350 detainees still in Guantánamo.
101 USA and 7 British soldiers killed in Iraq.
July
CIA director, Michael Hayden, asserts that the Iraqi government of Maliki is powerless.
British soldiers evacuate Basra to their barracks.
American troops are concentrating in Diyala province.
The NATO British contingent is active combating the Afghan insurgency in Helmand province.
North Korea agrees to stop processing plutonium at the Yongbyon plant and immediately receives shipload of heavy fuel from South Korea.
Blair steps down and Gordon Brown becomes prime minister.
Russia withdraws from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty of 1990.
Raul Castro is the effective ruler of Cuba. Fidel is immobilized as a consequence of colon operations.
Gaza is cut off by Israel.
Multiple bombs in Hyderabad, India, caused 44 dead.
Islamists take a the Red Mosque in Islamabad and dislodged by the Pakistani army after 100 deaths.
NGO’s estimated that 8,000,000 Iraqis are without water, sanitation, food, and shelter.
79 American and 8 British soldiers killed in Iraq.
August
The shuttle Endeavour lifts off and lands safely despite some damage to an area near its undercarriage.
The USA gives full backing to Mahmoud Abbas.
A British commander in Helmand declares that American air cover is hurting operations by killing civilians. Shortly after, three British soldier by American friendly air fire.
American planes target Sadr City in Baghdad itself.
It is estimated that Afghanistan is producing 92% of the world’s opium poppies.
Pakistan commits strong forces on the border areas with Afghanistan.
In the worst attack by Iraqi insurgents against civilians, over 500 people are killed in villages in northeastern Iraq, near the Syrian border.
Dubious parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan return 100% pro-government candidates. |