Most Popular War and Peace Posts
Burkina's Compaore Working to Heal Guinea-Conakry
Published November 03, 2009 @ 12:20PM PT
Let's applaud Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore's effort on behalf of the West African political leadership to jump into the boiling waters of Guinea-Conakry to attempt to prevent civil conflict. Back on September 28th, a group of people rallied to protest the prospect of the new military leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, standing in elections. Security forces broke up the crowd and killed more than 150 people. Since then there have been revenge killings, retaliations against the revenge killings, and every one is worried what will happen next.
Here's one of those situation in which a well-intentioned African leader may either do some good in the political sphere and get no credit for it, a forgotten peace, or be on-hand to witness a tragedy and be blamed for it. It is a case like many across Africa of locally-driven peace efforts which get little press in the West. Sierra Leone, with help, just completed its last war crimes trials. Niger just forged a deal leading to three of four rebel groups putting down their arms. And Liberia has made great progress since its civil war.
Compaore is working, alongside UN envoys, to calm the Guinean junta while encouraging the moderate opposition to quickly form a viable political partner to be included in mediation talks. Let's wish them luck. Follow both peace and humanitarian aid news at ReliewWeb.
[Photo: Guinea refugees in Ivory Coast, Ami Vitale, World Bank.]
Karadzic, Tell Us What Happened in Bosnia
Published November 03, 2009 @ 11:53AM PT
Dear Rado, Would you stop shying away from your war crimes trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia? Just sit down and tell us what happened. The evidence against you is so overwhelming, much of it in your own words, that you're going to be in prison for the rest of your life no matter what you say in your defense. There is nothing left to do but at least clear up for surviving relatives some fuzzy details, many of which aren't going to make you appear any more guilty. In fact, if you could map out where the rest of the missing might be buried, that could earn you some additional cable channels.
Lead Prosecutor Alan Tieger began your trial for war crimes this week by quoting you on tape from 1991. You said: "[Sarajevo] will be a black caldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth." There were also times when you made similar statements in public, in the Bosnian state government, and some of it on video. You were the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serb separatist community. You not only had command control, along with General Ratko Mladic, over tens of thousands of troops conquering territory, but also over detention facilities. Srebrenica and Zepa were best known. But there is plenty of evidence on Foca, Visegrad, Zvornik, Prijedor, Sarajevo, and on and on.
Greece Closes "Dante's Inferno" Refugee Detention Center
Published November 02, 2009 @ 04:28PM PT
An update on one of our stories from last week: Greece has closed the Pagani refugee detention center, the conditions at which Deputy Civil Protection Minister Spyros Vougias described as "Dante's Inferno." Approximately seven hundred mainly Afghan, Iraqi and Somali refugees formerly held at Pagani are being transferred to other detention facilities on several different Greek islands. While the closure of the Pagani center is a welcome --and urgently necessary-- humanitarian decision, Greece's government still needs to do more to protect the rights of thousands of refugees crossing its borders every year.
[Photo: A UNHCR staff member interviews asylum seekers who have just arrived by boat on the Italian island of Lampedusa. UNHCR / A. Di Loreto.]
Iraqi Refugees Sent on Plane Ride to Nowhere
Published November 02, 2009 @ 04:26PM PT
I’ve written before about the disregard European governments have shown for the rights and welfare of Afghan refugees who make it to Europe (see here and here), but Afghans are not the only refugees European countries are sending back to their war-torn homelands. So far this year, Denmark and Sweden have forcibly returned hundreds of Iraqi refugees to Iraq against the recommendations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and, earlier this month, the UK attempted to forcibly return 44 Iraqi refugees to Baghdad. The plan did not go as British immigration officials intended.
Drowning in Myanmar's Shadows
Published November 02, 2009 @ 03:35PM PT
Cherish stories on the Burmese democratic opposition leader, Aung Saan Suu Kyi, but if one plans to get involved in issues related to Myanmar / Burma one needs to dig much, much deeper to understand the complex country. Try reading my colleague KyawMin Htun's reader's rebuttle to Junta-processed news for a detailed tracking of the latest. [If you see some gibberish, don't worry. That just means you need to add Burmese font software.] Or try Yahoo's round up for Western news or MyanmarNewsNet for a slightly more Eastern view, in English.
Myanmar's Junta leader met with US Senator Jim Webb in August as a sign that the militay dictatorship is willing to listen. But a coming visit by Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and team will make it to Suu Kyi's residence, but not to the leader's office. Sadly, the Junta has gotten really good at simply ignoring Western advocacy, even from formal diplomats. In fact, Myanmar's tragedy is not only about a dictatorship. Here's the top of the heap:
1. Violence continues ad infinitum on the Thai border: The Junta versus several rebel groups claiming to represent repressed minorities...
2. Violence on the Chinese border at Kokang, Shan region. The Junta versus a disgruntled former local leader's militia...
3. Serious tension grows on the Bangladesh border, Junta versus Bangladesh as the Junta tries to demarcate with a fence into territory claimed by Bangladesh...
4. Journalists and entertainers arrested partly for calling for Western assistance to survivors of Cyclone Nargis...
5. Recovery from Cyclone Nargis...
6. Repeatedly alleged repression of the Karen, Chin, Shan, Rohingya, and potentially others not traditionally alligned with the leadership...
7. And on and on... The Junta does not do much to defend itself against the repeated, decades long allegations against it... It is fighting and winning against rebels on at least four fronts...
Not that Myanmar's all gloom and doom. It's a gorgeous, rich country, with a resilient people beneath all.
[Photo: Shan, Myanmar, David]
Afghanistan: Averting the Loss of Another Generation
Published November 02, 2009 @ 02:15PM PT
Guest post by Ahmad Shuja
A majority of Afghanistan's population is under age 25 – that’s millions of individuals, young women and men, with the energy and potential to get an education, learn skills and lead Afghanistan into a more stable future. Many young people voted for the first time in the recent August elections. But, if the promises of democracy are not accompanied with a good education and life opportunities, Afghanistan might lose yet another generation to war and extremism.
Kirkuk Nearly Shook by One Word
Published November 02, 2009 @ 09:30AM PT
Political interpreters must have one of the toughest jobs in the world. Even if one is perfectly bi- or tri-cultural, there is always regional nuance, new slang, mumbling, distraction, misquotation, Qaddafi. One particularly uncomfortable, if somehow laughable, recent blunder was when a well-meaning Congolese interpreter may have misinterpreted a French-speaking journalist's question as "What does Mr. [rather than Mrs] Clinton think..." and Secretary Clinton nearly tore his head off. Well, that's nothing.
This weekend in Iraq an interpreter made a slight error in a broadcast about the politically volatile election law in Kirkuk, a governorate shared - and disputed - by Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen and other groups, and nearly started yet another front in the war.
Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdish Regional Government which represents at least half of the city of Kirkuk, said about discussions over the coming election law that he would not accept "special status" for the city. Instead, the interpretation from Kurdish to Arabic had him say the Kurds would "annex" Kirkuk. I'm sure a couple thousand Arabs in the audience choked on their tea. Fortunately, Kirkuk's residents have been much more patient than outsiders expected and the station corrected the error very quickly. But it does show that, paraphrasing from NBC's The West Wing, we're all just one bad falafel away from another crisis in the Middle East.
[Photo: Maurice A Galloway, US Army, Iraq.]
