Since the beginning of March terrorism has already claimed more than ten victims, of which four soldiers and a Russian engineer; responsibility was claimed by ‘Al Qaeda in the Maghreb’, the name now used by the reorganised Salafist terrorist group GSPC (Groupe Salafite pour la Prédication et le Combat).

The GSPC was born from the ashes of the Islamic revolt against the military coup that give began in 1992 the Algerian civil war. Exploiting the vastness of the country’s territory, over a period of years the terrorist group conducted a low intensity war against Algiers; the army have never been able to definitively stamp out the phenomenon. Over the last few months the GSPC has declared its loyalty to al-Qaeda, appropriating the “trade mark” for its operations and expanding its range of action throughout the Maghreb. This move was interpreted by many analysts as the prelude to a strategic alliance between the two organisations and the birth of a new terrorist problem of regional dimensions, financed and actively sustained by Osama Bin Laden.

However, the relative weakness of the GSPC, and the particular nature of al-Qaeda itself, appear to make any agreement to reorganise the different local groups and to threaten the stability of the involved countries unlikely. It is probable that in the coming months Algeria will continue to witness a form of low intensity war, as already seen in the past, with only two relevant differences: the threat to foreigners in the Country - over the last few weeks they have entered the Islamic terrorist’s sights - and the use of a trademark that is of certain effect on the imagination of the local population and of the local political authorities.

Riccardo Fabiani

A few days before the beginning of Hugo Chavez’s tour through the sub continent (symmetrical and antithetical to that of G.W. Bush in Latin America), the VTV (Venezuelana Television) transmitted the registration of a telephone conversation of Tomas Guillen (Fuerzas Armadas Nacionales) in which he spoke of a conspiracy to murder the Head of the State.

Tomas Guillen’s accomplice is also his father, Guillen Davila, ex Guardia Nacional and of an ambiguous past: retired in 1993, he started to collaborate with DEA (the branch of the American Justice Department that deals with the fight against drug dealing) to finish in his turn accused of drug dealing in 1997. “Pardoned” by the United States, that never asked for his extradition, he belongs to the “oligarchy” that Chavez accuses of coup intentions in accord with Washington. On the same days the President accused also the CIA of hatching a plot against him. Even the American Undersecretary of State, John Negroponte, and part of the Colombian DAS (Departemento Administrativo de Securidad) were signalled by the Venezuelan leader as instigators of the plan of destabilising his Government. But, while for those don’t exist evidences, for the two Guillen the Court ordered the imprisonment, without excluding that further arrests could take place, given the “collective” nature of the count of indictment (instigation to revolt).

As always over the last years, the events polarised Venezuela: the President’s backers see in this event the confirm that their leader is at risk, his detractors read in it the evidence of a regime that is gradually, without certain proofs, tightening the grip on possible internal opponents.

Lucia Conti

On the 9th of March the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf accused of abuse of power the judge Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhury, Head of the Supreme Court. After the judge’s refusal of resigning, Musharraf addressed to the Supreme Council of Magistracy (CSM) that declared him “not in office”, suspending him from the public office. The judge will have to appear on the next days in front of a special court of CSM to answer to the accuses for which he risks the expulsion from the magistracy. Before formalising the accuses, the Pakistani President would have convened the Head of the Supreme Court for a meeting. The judge would have been questioned, before, for five hours by a team of superior officers of ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) and of FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) and afterwards he would have met Musharraf, that would have asked him to present his resignation. The judge would have been then house arrested (even if not officially) and the telephone line of his house would have been cut off for avoiding him from having contacts with his colleagues or with medias.

The details of the accuses moved to the judge weren’t made public, even if ISI would have let leak out to the journalists the news that the Head of the Supreme Court would have exercised his power to guarantee the recruitment of his son in the police and would have accepted a car as gift by a defendant in a cause presided by him in exchange for a favourable judgement. These indiscretions weren’t accepted, however, by a large part of the public opinion.

The judge Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhury is known for having embarrassed the Pakistani Government heading or ordering investigations on presumed cases of corruption, abuse of power and violation of human rights regarding governmental executives and political leaders. On the last year, in an inquiry on the privatisation of the State company Pakistan Steel Mills, the judge let emerge different cases of corruption that would regard also the Prime Minister Shaukar Aziz as well, but what would have brought Musharraf to interfere so heavily in the magistracy’s activity would have been the investigations on the Head of the Supreme Court concerning the practice of arrest and informal detention by ISI. Over the last years, hundreds of people (among which also citizens from other countries), were in fact taken by ISI as terrorist suspects and given to the US secret services without informing the magistracy of these operations and without communicating in to their families. Recently Chaudhury would have investigated on the presumed payments made by CIA for each person given by ISI. With the approach of the presidential elections, Musharraf seems intentioned in eliminating each obstacle to his re-election, especially those which could push Washington to denying its support.

Warsaw and Kiev’s authorities declared last week their intention of giving rise to a conference about energy that involves besides the two countries also Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia. The objective is the creation of an oil pipeline that would transport Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan’s oil towards Poland through Georgia and Ukraine. The summit, besides reinforcing the relations between the interested countries, would guarantee them the security of energy supplies. This way it would be avoided to Gazprom and other Moscow’s authorities to carry out real energy blackmails, as highlighted by the chronicles of the last years. The objective declared by Yuschenko and Kaczynski is, in fact, to reduce their dependence on Russia. A strategy that should find the consent even of the other countries invited to the summit. Over the last months, in fact, Georgia signed an agreement with Azerbaijan and Turkey in order to find an alternative to the energy resources coming from Moscow. Also Baku, moreover, clashed with the renewed Russian pretensions and it could so be interested in signing the agreement proposed by Warsaw and Kiev. For these ones, moreover, reaching an agreement would represent also an answer to the construction of the gas pipeline of the North Sea that takes away an important strategic role to the two countries. It allows, in fact, Moscow to provide the European countries bypassing the ex allies of the east Europe. Getting to an agreement would assume for all the interested countries a relevant strategic importance, it would guarantee, in fact, more independence from Moscow. At the same time, however, the active participation of Poland to the agreement would make more complicated the possibility for the UE of equipping with a common energy politics. The energy summit could, moreover, be significant under a purely geo-strategic point of view. The different countries could, in fact, find an accord even on the eventuality or less of allowing the United States to set antimissile emplacements on their territory. Increasing this way its capacity of pressure both on Moscow and on Washington. In this sense can be read the declarations coming almost simultaneously from Georgia and Azerbaijan, according to which the two countries wouldn’t have found any agreement with Washington on antimissile defence.

Felice Di Leo

President Bashar al-Assad announced officially that the next parliamentarian elections in Syria, that anticipates of some months the presidential referendum provided for the end of May and the administrative elections of August, will take place on the 22nd of April. The most important novelty of these elections is the financial limit, fixed in a little less than 60.000$, for the expenses of the electoral campaign. This move is a brake against eventual ambitions of some members of the economical and company Syrian world that could try to move autonomously in politics to install Bashar and his group of power. Moreover, but such a law hasn’t been approved yet definitively, the new normative on parties in still under examination, that provides the explicit prohibition of forming parties on religious, ethnic or tribal base and of reconstructing those parties defined outlaw before 1963. moreover, every new party has to demonstrate explicitly its sustain to the Ba’athist Revolution of the 8th of March.

The 250 sets to appoint will go one half to “workers and farmers” while the rest of the sets will be prerogative of the other social categories. These elections come in a moment when Bashar appears reinforced on the long wave of the re found regional desire to be the centre of attention. Even without real domestic elements, like in Syria, the parliamentarian elections are usually able to measure the real force relations within the country. During the last election in 2003, the coalition headed by Ba’ath, the National Progressive Front, got 2/3 of the seats, maximum limit of seats provided by the Syrian Constitution for the winners. The rest went to the so called independents. In case, on the contrary, the NPF wouldn’t get the number of seats of 2003, important scenarios could open. This could mean, for example, that is in progress an attempt by Bashar of leaving more space to determined personalities rooted in the territory, co-opting them in the political mechanisms in order to curb their action more effectively. Otherwise this could mean the existence of some pockets of dominant power, could create backings in order to build a power net to oppose to Bashar.

Dario Cristiani