Robert Fisk

What we were actually doing in Basra was to turn a blind eye on abuse, murder and anarchy

One thousand feared dead after Shia pilgrims are caught in stampede

If 'we' had not invaded Iraq, 43 Iraqis would not have been pulverised by three bombs last week

There are now two Baghdads. One is the Green Zone, where US and Iraqi officials live in a protected realm; the other is the danger zone, where everyone else lives. Robert Fisk reports from beyond the Coalition's concrete walls

Sometimes I wonder if there will be a moment when reality and myth, truth and lies, will collide

As usual in Iraq, a grotesque political failure was being dressed up as a semi-victory last night by an Iraqi government that controls little more than a few square miles of Baghdad.

Behind ramparts of concrete and barbed wire, the framers of Iraq's new constitution wrestled yesterday to prevent - or bring about - the federalisation of Iraq while their compatriots in the hot and fetid streets outside showed no interest in their efforts.

They want, I think, to destroy themselves for their feelings of guilt and others for 'corrupting' them

So the old man will be buried this afternoon on the edge of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in a desert graveyard of no memorials.

In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes, never to return. One of them, Mahmoud Dakwar, has made it his mission to preserve a record of this vanished society for its descendants, as Robert Fisk reports from Matchouk, southern Lebanon

"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in a recent videotape, "we will bomb yours."' It was clear Britain would be a target ever since British Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to join President Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq.

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won't come to us?

So we are going to support the myth. As the headless bodies are found along the Tigris, as the mortuaries fill up, as the American dead grow far beyond 1,700 - and, let us remember, the Iraqi dead go into the tens of thousands - Europe and the rest of the world still support the American project.

"Someone else is going to get killed soon," an old Lebanese friend said to me yesterday afternoon. And all the electoral victory of the Lebanese opposition was suddenly shadowed by the realities of this beautiful, dangerous country.

President Emile Lahoud appears to have won Lebanon's first free elections in 30 years. A pro-Syrian, Mr Lahoud, wasn't standing, of course - he's safe, for almost another three years.

Many believe the name Martyrs' Square refers to the victims of the 15-year civil war. Not so

A vast quantity of evidence has now been built up on the system which the Americans have created for mistreating and torturing prisoners. I have interviewed a Palestinian who gave me compelling evidence of anal rape with wooden poles at Bagram - by Americans, not by Afghans.

General Michel Aoun fled in his pyjamas to the French embassy as Syrian aircraft bombed his presidential palace 15 years ago. Yesterday, he flew back to Lebanon from self-imposed exile in Paris, dressed in a suit and tie, travelling in a specially chartered plane of the national airline.

The vast sea of young Lebanese who were educated abroad during the conflict will not, I suspect, tolerate another civil war

Sitting in Saddam Hussein's palace they can stare over the parapets but that is as much as most will ever see of Iraq

So now they have struck in Qatar. Nice, friendly, liberal Doha, with its massive US air base and its spiky, argumentative al-Jazeera television, its modern shops and expatriate compounds and luxury hotels.

In Lebanon, tragedy and farce often go hand in hand.

After the assassination of Rafik Hariri, his vehicles were taken from the scene on the orders of a former aide. And now, reports Robert Fisk, many believe the missing cars may hold the key to the killing

At the larger Syrian intelligence headquarters in Ramlet el-Baida, where those who entered often emerged with bruises on their bodies - although for years now, it had been a listening post rather than an interrogation centre - furniture was piled onto trucks, pictures of Bachar and his father Hafez

Never before have we seen anything like it in Lebanon. Never before have we seen anything like it in the Arab world.

Assad's troops are pulling back, but who will replace them in Lebanon?

As the United Nations' Irish-led special investigation team here prepares to report that the Lebanese authorities have covered up evidence of the murder on 14 February of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, his two sons have fled Lebanon after hearing that they too are in danger of assassination

It was a warning. They came in their tens of thousands, Lebanese Shia Muslim families with babies in arms and children in front, walking past my Beirut home.

The first Syrian units are expected to cross the Lebanese-Syrian border at Masnaa before midday and their military redeployment should be completed by Wednesday.