Saturday Morning Links. Including, Of Course, Pirates.

Published August 15, 2009 @ 11:01AM PT

A few links to start the weekend:

- Harry Rud has a great piece on the recent Taliban attack in Kabul. Also, for those with an Afghanistan-fixation, his post on the upcoming Afghan elections is well worth the read.

- William Easterly at Aid Watch has a two part series on the self-interest of NGO officials. (Part two is here.)

- A post by Celeste in N'Djamena about the joys (and not-joys) of trying to drive in Chad.

- Alanna Shaikh on the myth of all powerful expatriate leadership. Amen.

- On a related note, an interesting piece posted by the Hauser Center at Harvard about the relationship between international aid and questions of justice, focusing on some of the disparities between international and national staff.

- From The Onion: Recent Rise in International Disputes Traced Back to Cute U.N. Tour Guide.

And, finally, pirates - from Danger Room at Wired, a fascinating interview with a Somali pirate on when to negotiate, and when to kill hostages.

According to the pirate: "Hostages — especially Westerners — are our only assets, so we try our best to avoid killing them. It only comes to that if they refuse to contact the ship’s owners or agencies. Or if they attack us and we need to defend ourselves." So, ummmm, good news for all those sailing off the Somali coast.

[Photo of Somali pirates from http://stopannoyingme.com]

Share this Post

Add a Comment

For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

Comment

Check Spelling

Email me when there are new posts to this thread
Comment Policy

Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.

Author

Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.