Editor In Chief

Kuwaitis are going to the polls today for the fourth time in six years to elect their representatives to the National Assembly after the country’s Emir H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah dissolved the House last year following the then prime minister Sheikh Nasser Al Mohammad Al Sabah’s resignation in the face of following allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

Opposition lawmakers and protesters had even stormed the parliament building after a request by a group of MPs to question the former prime minister was blocked by the cabinet.

The Kuwaiti Emir has since named former Defence Minister Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Sabah as prime minister.

Today’s election assumes added significance not only because it is the fourth time the Emir had to dissolve parliament and call for early elections but because it comes in the wake of the bribery and corruption scandal, dubbed as the “Kuwaiti Watergate”.

The Arab League, this week, presented its plan to end the violence in Syria by urging President Bashar Al Assad to step down and “delegate powers to the vice president to liaise with a government of national unity.” The League also said it will take the issue to the United Nations Security Council and hinted at the possibility of imposing more sanctions on Syria.

Syria, not expectedly, answered by rejecting the Arab League plan calling it “a violation of its national sovereignty, a blatant interference in its internal affairs and a flagrant violation of the objectives for which the Arab League was established and a breach of Article VIII of its Charter.”

The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani said that the Syrian plan “resembles the one on Yemen,” which resulted in President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreeing to step down. This similarity indicates that the Arab League initiative for Syria was engineered by Saudi Arabia since at that time of the GCC-brokered Yemen plan, Qatar had backed out. Also, the fact that all Arab countries, except Lebanon and Algeria, agreed to the Arab initiative for Syria goes to show Saudi influence. Moreover, Iraq, which either abstained or vetoed previous resolutions on the Syrian crisis, suddenly changed policy and agreed to the Arab League plan.

Tensions between Iran and the West have risen dangerously once again, with Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, the main oil supply route, in retaliation for sanctions imposed on its oil exports in its ongoing row over the country’s nuclear programme.

Iran has also warned neighbouring Gulf countries not to raise their oil output to make up the shortage due to the Iran embargo. Tehran’s Opec Governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi said, “The consequences of this issue are unpredictable. Therefore our Arab neighbour countries should not cooperate with these adventurers and should adopt wise policies.”

However, Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali bin Ibrahim Al Naimi has already said that his country was “always obliged” to meet demand, indicating it was willing to make up the oil supply shortage caused by the sanctions against Iran. The recent killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, has further heightened the hostility.

Recent news reports about plans for the Taliban to open an office in Qatar, many analysts believe, is the precursor to talks between the United States and the Taliban and possibly a way forward for the Obama administration’s intentions of ending the war in Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan began in October 2001 – three months after the 9/11 attacks in the US by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Since Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan and enjoyed the protection of the Taliban, US launched an invasion of the country with the goal of eliminating Al Qaeda.

Most people, including the US military, thought the war would be over in a few months, but the war in Afghanistan turned out to be the longest in US history surpassing that of Vietnam. The US and Nato troops are still battling widespread Taliban insurgency after more than a decade.

According to the Brookings Institution’s Afghanistan Index, 1,841 US troops have died while 14,969 were wounded in action since the war started in 2001.

Year 2011 has been magnificent for Qatar, both internationally and locally. Events at home and in the region kept the world’s focus riveted on Qatar.

With the Arab Spring uprisings, Qatar emerged prominently as one of the first countries to back popular demand for reforms in various countries and actively support people’s movements as well as advocate joint Arab action. Locally, the announcement of the Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani that parliamentary elections will finally take place in 2013 has been one of the surprising highlights of the year besides the many achievements of the country in terms of economic and social development and progress in the field of science and research.

There, however, remains a lot of things that the country was supposed to do this year that either are in the process of implementation or yet to take off in earnest.

With barely three days left of 2011, here are 12 wishes that we have for Qatar in the coming year:

This week, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta signed the document officially ending the Iraq War after the last US tank rolled out of Iraq and into Kuwait, across the border. There was no indication Iraqis were happy, no shots were fired, no trumpets blown in celebration.

Since the day United States troops entered Iraq in 2003 and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, the cost of the war has reached around $807bn according to costofwar.com that shows the expense up to the latest fraction of a second. Besides, the US has lost 4,484 military personnel since 2003 and an estimated 115,676 Iraqi civilians have been killed and around 2.7 million Iraqis were displaced (based on Iraq Index Report by Brookings, November 30, 2011).

The war in Iraq also put an indelible black mark and brought great disgrace to US because of the torture and abuse that occurred in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This has caused human rights groups such as Amnesty International to call for the arrest of former US president George W Bush for alleged violation of international  laws and former Secretary of  Defence Donald Rumsfeld was indeed charged with war crimes in France and Germany after rights groups filed a criminal complaint about the atrocities committed during the Iraq War.

Circumvention of law is a pretty common phenomenon around the world. It happens when an individual or a group of people purposefully takes advantage of a loophole or a provision therein to bypass a law in self-interest. This, of course, defeats the purpose of having the law, since it benefits certain individuals or groups at the cost of common good.

There are as many ways of circumventing them as there are laws. In the West, the most common is when politicians try to circumvent election laws, especially pertaining to campaign funding.

Nasrallah’s double deal