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Millions of immigrants on May 1 poured out on American streets in over 60 cities to protest against the US congressional efforts that threaten to put at stake their living in the States. The recent deliberations on 'Bill 4437' by the US policy makers are very much likely to bring a sharp twist in the way the country treats enlisted and undocumented immigrants. United States, a dreamland for countless people around the world, is on the verge of narrowing its passage to them who wish to turn the wheels of their luck by settling down there.
   Dread and mistrust over immigrants dawned in the minds of the American legislators, especially in the wake of 9/11 catastrophe. Since that tragedy, Muslim settlers have been under constant watch of the US law enforcing agencies which has posed stringent obstructions to their liberty of movement. Now the sceptic focus seems to have taken the Hispanic and Asian non-Muslim residents into account who have been there for years pursuing the wild goose of changing their fate. Hunting down illegal settlers is underway in many American cities where they are rounded up and chained by immigration personnel and cops and put on flights that carry them to countries they left in quest of better lives.
   The discontentment prevailing among non-native American dwellers as well as the suspicion about their activities held by the US government are no recent developments. Both originated back in the 1990s following the state of animosity that gradually emerged between America and the Muslim world. The US invasion of Iraq added fuel to the rage of radical Muslim groups. The same can be said with reference to the US combat aircrafts pounding Afghan villages in vain bids to nab bin Laden.
   The traumatic 9/11 incident aggravated the plight of Muslim immigrants in America where they have been regular victims of extreme surveillance for the last couple of years. The US administration is now quite reluctant to take any chance by leaving such a huge number of immigrants to live and work there freely.
   Both the legal and illegal immigrants are more or less essential to the US industrial and manpower sectors. Employers can hire south American and Asian workers for a peanut pay, lots of shops, factories, bars and restaurants have non-native employees who work there for nominal wages, whereas giving a job like this to a Yankee would be a very expensive deal. So, the US drive to deport or corner immigrants will certainly have a big impact on the employment and social aspects.
   People who migrate from countries like ours are not in all cases less educated or totally destitute. Many qualified Bangladeshi citizens make ends meet by delivering pizza, driving taxis or cleaning up lawns in wealthy countries, forgetting all about their occupations as doctors, lawyers and designers at home. My short experience in a part of Europe got me in close contact with several Indian and African nationals who survive there with jobs they would have hardly intended to do in their own countries. Nevertheless, the illusions they run after remain out of their reach. On top of that, if other prosperous countries like Australia, Canada or France follow the US measures, the immigrants there may also have hard days looming ahead.
   One thing the Americans should keep in mind is that squeezing the egg too hard may break it and spoil their hands. They may not get off with the scale of austerity they are planning to impose without untoward reaction from the victims of their schemes. Let the US not forget the terrible clashes that broke out all over Paris when two African illegal settlers were chased and killed by French police last year. Thousands of shops and vehicles were burnt by furious migrants who came out on the roads to let their resentment blow out in most turbulent ways.
   Who is not an immigrant in America? Wasn't America a vast landscape discovered by Christopher Columbus and later populated by migrants who left their roots in several European countries wherefrom they departed in the 16th century seeking equality and opportunity for all? An immense, almost bare country turned out to be a global top dog and its people became a resourceful, booming nation with the passage of time and now they regard the word 'immigrant' a bad terminology. Enactment of hostile laws is definitely not the only way to ensure American's inland security.
   Rubbing the immigrant issue on its wrong side may not entail auspicious outcomes for the US politicians and above all, for its people either.

Till now, what has prevented the crisis in Iraq from becoming a total debacle for the United States has been the open collaboration of the Iranian clerics. Iranian foreign policy -- fragmentary and opportunist -- has always been determined by the needs and interests of the clerical state rather than any principled anti-imperialist strategy. In the past, this has led to a de facto collaboration with Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war, the clerics had no hesitation in buying arms from the Israeli regime to fight Iraq, then backed by Britain and the US. In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq -- hoping, no doubt, that clearing the path for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar might have won them a respite -- the regime took a tougher stance on the nuclear question.
   The Bush administration appears to be psyching itself up for a safe strike against Iran either by itself or via the Israelis, whose new leaders have referred to the Iranian president as a psychopath and a new Hitler. Why has Washington manufactured this crisis? The hypocrisy of Bush, Blair, Chirac or Olmert -- their own states armed with thousands of nuclear weapons -- making a casus belli of what are, by all accounts, primitive gropings on Iran's part towards the technology necessary for the lowest grade of nuclear self-defence, hardly needs to be spelled out. So long as these powers are allowed to enlarge their nuclear armouries unimpeded, why should Tehran not?
   The country is not only ringed by atomic states (India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel), it also faces a string of American bases with potential or actual nuclear stockpiles in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Nuclear-armed US aircraft carriers and submarines patrol the waters off its southern coast. Historically, Iran has every reason to fear outside threats. Its elected government was overthrown with covert Anglo-American aid in 1953, and the secular opposition destroyed. From 1980 to 1988, the western powers abetted Saddam Hussein's onslaught, in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians died. More than 300 Iraqi missiles were launched at Iranian cities and economic targets, especially the oil industry. In the war's final stages, the US destroyed nearly half the Iranian navy in the Gulf and, for good measure, shot down a crowded civilian passenger plane.
   For the clerical state, the war on terror has been the best and the worst of times. Oil prices have soared. Enemy regimes on both sides, Baghdad and Kabul, have been overthrown. The Iraqi Shia parties that they have been fostering for years are now in office. Washington has been reliant on their help to sustain its occupations both there and in Afghanistan. Yet social tensions in Iran are high. In this context, the nuclear issue is one of the regime's few unifying projects. It is worth recalling that the Iranian nuclear programme began under the Shah with technology offered by the Americans. Khomeini put the project on hold, considering it un-Islamic. Operations were restarted, with Russians later taking over construction of the light-water reactors at Bushehr begun by the West Germans in the 1970s. From the start, Iran, like Germany, the Netherlands or Japan, has wanted its programme to take in the full nuclear cycle, including uranium enrichment; Russia has several times threatened to impose conditions on fuel deliveries. Enrichment centrifuges were surreptitiously imported from neighbouring Pakistan; not the process, but the failure to report it, was in contravention of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreements.
   There is no evidence that Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons now than was Iraq in September 2002, when Blair and Cheney assured the world that Baghdad represented a 'genuine nuclear threat'. Reports in 2003 by a somewhat demented sect, the Mojahedin e-Khalq, of preliminary nuclear research at the Natanz installation were no such proof. But in the competitive scramble by European powers to enhance their standing with Washington after the invasion of Iraq, France, Germany and Britain were keen to prove their mettle by forcing extra agreements on Tehran. The Khatami regime immediately capitulated. In December 2003, they signed the 'Additional Protocol' demanded by the EU3, agreeing to a 'voluntary suspension' of the right to enrichment guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
   Within three months, the IAEA was condemning them for having failed to ratify it; in June 2004, its inspectors produced examples of Iranian enrichment work, perfectly legal under the NPT, but ruled out by the Additional Protocol. Israel has boasted of its intention to 'destroy Natanz' -- the contrast to its stealth bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981-- a measure of the new balance of forces. In the summer of 2004, a large bi-partisan majority in the US Congress passed a resolution for 'all appropriate measures' to prevent an Iranian weapons programme and there was speculation about an 'October surprise' before the 2004 presidential poll. Plans were thus well advanced before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in the June 2005 Iranian presidential election.
   Ahmadinejad reaped the vote against Khatami's miserable record between 1997 and 2005. Economic conditions had worsened and Khatami was prepared to defend the rights of foreign investors, but not those of independent newspapers or protesting students. Manoeuvring ineffectually between contradictory pressures, he exhausted his moral credit. Contrary to some reports, Ahmadinejad has not so far imposed any new puritanical clampdown on social mores. Instead, the most likely constituency to be disappointed is Ahmadinejad's own: the millions of young, working-class jobless, crammed into overcrowded living conditions, in desperate need of a national development policy that neither neoliberalism nor Islamist voluntarism will provide.
   Nor is fundamentalist backwardness exhibited in the denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews and the threat to obliterate Israel, a basis for any foreign policy. To face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy -- not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics.
   Clearing the way for the overthrow of the Iraqi Ba'ath and Afghan Taliban regimes and backing the US occupations has bought no respite. The US undersecretary of state has spoken of 'ratcheting up the pressure'. Israeli defence minister Shaul Mofaz has said that 'Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability, and it must have the capability to defend itself with all that this implies, and we are preparing.' Hillary Clinton accused the Bush administration of 'downplaying the Iranian threat' and called for pressure on Russia and China to impose sanctions on Tehran. Chirac has spoken of using French nuclear weapons against such a 'rogue state'. Perhaps it is simply high-octane rocket-rattling, the aim being to frighten Tehran into submission. Bullying is unlikely to succeed. Will the West then embark on a new war? If so, the battlefield might stretch from the Tigris to the Oxus and without any guarantee of success.
   The Guardian, London, May 3, 2006

It was around the later half of 2002 that I first saw Nasreen. In fact it was during a consultation process when she was selected for the position of Country Director for ActionAid, Bangladesh. The first impression she created during our first meet was the flow of her long dark hair with strands of silver shone here and there, rolling down her back slipping gradually from a casually rolled up bun. The smile she gave all of us on entering that room made it apparent that she would be a very accessible line manager and leader for all of us at ActionAid.
   The past one week since that fatal morning on April 24th at 9:15 a.m. when I received that phone call about her sudden accident in my office room, little did I ever think that I will never see Nasreen swirling through that door of hers which was just opposite to my room.
   As I stood standing at both the Pongu Hospital and Combined Military Hospital where she lay helplessly for about 10 hours fighting her own battle, I reminisced about all those battles she fought relentlessly for the poor and down-trodden communities in Bangladesh.
   She was a woman who was always active and churning out new creative ideas and was always full of good humour and bubbling with life. Seeing her grave condition I just prayed that a miracle would happen!! Little did any of us there that evening at CMH think that her time was up in this world.
   Nasreen was not only full of ideas. She felt intensely for the various communities who are deprived not only in Bangladesh but all over the less developed world. Her strong conviction to bring forth justice in the world can clearly be identified though her work with excluded communities on HIV/Aids, disability and gender and many more. She always believed that dreams can be made into realities given the right strategies. Her strong dedication and commitment to fight the battle of poverty led her to mingle and become friends with grassroots people as well as national and international personalities. The mannerisms in which she approached a colleague, an acid attacked victim, a disabled person, someone who had no identity in the community did not vary with how she communicated with someone in public office. Nasreen had the courage to tackle crucial situations - she sat with me so many a times discussing the issues like the situation in Kansat to changing the gender attitudes within the adolescent in society. Her inspiring method of communicating made issues so much more interesting and crucial. Yet at the same instance she was a mother and like so many other mothers, after having her daughter Jamila she could think of nothing else but how to raise Jamila in the proper manner. She would take Jamila on every official field trip, even to the most remote of areas and all over the globe. Jamila became an ActionAid international baby. Although her motherhood was short lived, she glowed with enjoyment from it. She was coping with office commitments and needs, and at the same time spending as much time as possible with her baby daughter of 18 months.
   The three years and four months I had known Nasreen and worked with her closely, I felt lucky and fortunate than most others. We shared a bond of friendship that will remain in my heart forever. The little personal touches she would always give even during the toughest moment, helped to address issues and crisis in realms of the office. We chatted about household matters and shared trivial things like any other woman would and laughed over them. No one would ever imagine having a line manager- subordinate relationship with her. She always knew the right solution and had the sensitivity to handle difficult matters. Many a times we had our disagreements on various issues and yet at the end with logic we would come to the same conclusion.
   Nasreen was unique -- she was a beacon of light for those of us women who struggle everyday to balance home and office life. Even the last time I spoke to her she wanted to drive me further into thinking of my future and not hers. At the same time her soft and comforting nature would be so convincing that no one could but agree with her advice and reasoning. Nasreen was my role model and my mentor for all these years that I had known her. Yet on that fatal day when she left us and the days that followed, I realised that I was not the only individual in her life whom she looked after so intently. But thousands of individuals from all walks of life, from both home and abroad, were touched by her sincerity and humility which we can never forget.
   A warm personality was Nasreen's characteristic - whatever she felt she dealt from the heart. She was so engrossed in her commitment to causes and others that at times she would be totally exhausted physically and seek my support. Only this year with a lot of compulsion I convinced Nasreen to take some break and time off from her busy work schedule and take a family holiday to Kunming in Yunnan province in China. That was the last family holiday Nasreen's fate had in store for her and little Jamila and husband Choton. She came back serene, full of renewed vigour and challenges. She thanked me as if I had done her a great favour. That was the kind of person Nasreen was -- always happy and contented with whatever little help she got. Though her giving and helpfulness was more than words can ever describe.
   Those of us who knew her during her short life, Nasreen's affectionate and warm hug will be greatly missed by all.
   The writer is the acting country director, ActionAid Bangladesh