On May 9, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands officially unveiled a Memorial in The Hague for all those who have perished from chemical weapons. The International Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Weapons falls annually on April 29. This year’s date was also the 10th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Governments and security experts used the occasion to laud the CWC as well as suggest ways to improve it. The CWC bans the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons (CW). Its provisions are of indefinite duration and apply to all [...]
WARRI, Nigeria — It takes two hours by boat to get to Deibu, an isolated outpost of about 17,000 people in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The town is cut off from civilization by the River Nun and a thick mangrove forest, and first-time visitors who make the journey are struck by the poverty they find — a stretch of rickety mud houses, with canoes lying by the riverside. Deibu is trapped in another age. Children and adults bath naked in the Nun. There is no electricity service or plumbing. The village’s only sign of modernity is a battered health center, a [...]
If you had never looked at the Middle East, you might find it strange that a bank robbery spiraled into a raging battle between Lebanese government forces and a radical Islamic band of fighters based in a Palestinian refugee camp, leaving at least 100 dead and countless injured. The fighting, of course, has very little to do with the robbery that spawned the furious clashes. The battle between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army offers a look at the deadly kaleidoscope of Middle Eastern conflicts, some of them local on the surface, but all deeply interrelated. Among the many pieces [...]
