Diplomacy & Politics Archive

BANGKOK, Thailand — The curiously named Caravan of the Poor, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s own version of Nazi brownshirts who intimidated anti-government demonstrators on the streets of Bangkok earlier this year, has evaporated in the week following Thailand’s coup. Instead, smiling mothers photograph their plastic gun-toting sons who pester to be lifted onto tanks parked in the capital’s streets. Newly married couples choose a backdrop of the flower-festooned armored vehicles instead of the royal palace or a historic temple to commemorate their special day on film. But the calm and the lack of combatants comes at too high […]

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of six articles by Rhea Wessel on the rights of Muslim women in Europe, particularly Turkish women in Germany, which will appear occasionally on World Politics Review. “When she was in the kitchen again, I went back and slipped the gun into the back of my pants. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen. . . . Gönül kept on saying, ‘Leave me alone. This is none of your business.’ She ranted and raved in Turkish and German. . . . ‘You’re a loser! Failure’. . . I got angry. […]

MOSHAV HANIEL, Israel — On a Friday night in Israel, somewhere along the portion of the country that measures just eight miles across between the West Bank and the sea, an Israeli family gathered to celebrate. In a home a few hundred yards from the Palestinian town of Tulkarm — from where many suicide bombers have made their way into the heart of Israel — three generations sat under the stars, toasting a 12-year-old girl’s coming of age, her Bat Mitzvah. As the girl’s relatives reminisced of her transformation into a sweet, wise teenager, one of her aunts leaned into […]

On June 23, 2006, Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz fired his deputy and the minister of finances Zyta Gilowska after she had been formally charged with perjury. Gilowska allegedly had lied about being an agent of the Communist secret police (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, SB) before 1989. Her codename was “Beata.” Gilowska vehemently denied all charges. The ensuing vetting trial of the politician and the accompanying public debate laid bare serious flaws in Poland’s judicial and legislative process. They also exposed the impact of the nation’s totalitarian past on its democratic present. The Firing The rumor mill churned out stories about Gilowska’s […]

In August, employees of the Singapore Ministry of Education received a memo telling them to guard their computers against miscreants “targeting Singapore government’s web presence . . . in an attempt to discredit the event and embarrass the organizing country.” The event is the annual meeting of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The miscreants are anti-globalization protestors. Yes, the IMF and World Bank are in town, with a total of more than 10,000 delegates, advisors, and hangers-on. This time, the hangers-on will not include the sideshow of civil society and anti-globalization protesters […]

Had they been short on rally slogans, Sudan activists behind last weekend’s Global Darfur Day could have tapped Benjamin Disraeli’s classification of the three kinds of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics. A new study published Sept. 15 in the journal Science says the U.S. State Department’s death toll estimates for Darfur, released last year, underestimated the count by “hundreds of thousands” of lives. The new study is no news flash for Sudan watchers who have tracked the three-year-old conflict between government-backed militia and rebel groups in western Sudan. They’ve been accusing the Bush administration of low-balling the figures […]

HONG KONG — Global leaders — meeting far and wide from the UN General Assembly in New York to the IMF annual summit in Singapore — were quick to condemn the military coup in Thailand that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. But the reality is the coup could actually end months of political uncertainty and benefit the country over the longer run. This was reflected on Asian stock and foreign exchange markets, where benchmarks fell in only a limited fashion in the immediate aftermath of the coup, with investors sensing the end of a difficult and messy era in Thai […]

With the death of a leading human rights activist in prison last week, Turkmenistan has left no doubt that the widely derided personality cult of the country’s President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov and his iron-handed tactics are anything but a laughing matter. Family members identified the body of Ogulspur Muradova, who died only three weeks after being sentenced in a widely condemned trial. Authorities initially denied Muradova’s family access to the body while insisting they sign off on a death certificate. Access was granted only after the family sought out the help of foreign diplomats. After viewing the corpse, family members reported […]

On Tuesday, the Thai military seized Bangkok, ousting controversial leader Thaksin Shinawatra and seizing control of the nation. The lack of details has delayed strong international reaction. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, released a cautious statement. “We think it’s important,” he said, “that we have peace in the streets in Bangkok, and that their constitutional processes be upheld.” The statement is vague for a reason. The United States has interests in both embracing and condemning the coup. In the final analysis, however, it has a greater interest in condemning the coup and returning Thaksin to power. […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — For a time during the dark, stormy night it was feared that rival military factions might clash on the rain-swept streets of Thailand’s sprawling capital for control of the city following a coup during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s absence at the UN General Assembly. But by dawn Wednesday it became apparent that despite calls by Thaksin in New York for the arrest of the coup leaders, no one was riding to his rescue. Pro-Thaksin elements in the military, police and political hierarchy, including the army supreme commander who had talked directly with the mercurial political leader by […]

UNITED NATIONS — U.S. efforts to avert a close encounter between President George Bush and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations seem so far to have been successful, but that did not stop the two leaders from exchanging verbal broadsides from the podium of the General Assembly. Predictably, both leaders used their respective speeches on the opening day of the 61st session of the world body to assert their contrary positions on Tehran’s nuclear development program, which western governments increasingly believe the Iranians will use to develop nuclear weapons. Addressing the Iranian people, the president said Iran’s […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — There are few countries in the world that are in the midst of an armed conflict while also facing a post-conflict situation. Today, Colombia, the third most populous country in Latin America, is confronting such a challenge. Three years ago, Colombia’s President, Alvaro Uribe, initiated a peace process with the Self- Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an umbrella organization of right-wing paramilitary factions. Since then, nearly 32,000 fighters have laid down their arms. In July 2005, the controversial Justice and Peace Law was passed which set out the framework for demobilization, the punishments paramilitaries would receive and […]

DOLORES HIDALGO, Mexico — Perhaps hoping to avoid conflict and a political storm at the Sept. 15 independence celebrations in Mexico City’s Zocalo (main square) — the usual site of such festivities — President Vicente Fox bolted for Dolores Hidalgo in his home state of Guanajuato to deliver the annual grito, a reenactment of parish priest Miguel Hidalgo’s call for independence from Spanish rule. Stormy conditions, though, followed the president. The skies opened less than an hour before the 11 p.m. ceremony began, soaking the revelers gathered in the town center. Later, lightning crashed while Fox delivered the grito from […]

So, what is all the fuss about these Geneva Conventions? Considering that the subject of compliance with these treaties not only led every Sunday morning weekly news program, but also is the cause of the so called “rebellion” by a group of highly influential Republican Senators, many are no doubt asking this question. The answer is in some ways complex, in other ways quite simple, and now central to how the United States will frame the nature of the conflict we are struggling not only to win, but to understand. The Geneva Conventions — yes plural — are four treaties […]

SDEROT, Israel — On the surface, life in this Israeli town of 24,000 looks peaceful. The quiet streets, with intersections marked by neat traffic circles, each decorated with a charming sculpture, seem sedate under the harsh sun of Israel’s Negev desert in the south of the country. Agricultural fields in the distance add to a sense of pastoral peace. Suddenly, the Red Dawn warning system jolts Sderot back into the awful reality of life here: Another Qassam rocket has been fired from nearby Gaza. The entire town has 15 seconds to seek shelter or risk death. A moment later, the […]

BANGOK, Thailand — The shadow of China and India looming over them is propelling ten much smaller nations of Southeast Asia to fast-track their heady dream of creating a European-style union — a single market and, perhaps, some form of political cohesiveness. The prospects are tantalizingly attractive: a region of 530 million people stretching from the Bay of Bengal and the borders of India to the west Pacific, competing against the economic juggernauts of China and India for foreign investment and a place at the global decision-making dinner table, instead of being one of the dishes. But a new target […]

SEVILLE, Spain — “Ridiculous! Nobody takes that seriously,” laughs Santiago, the young Spanish tourism executive, when asked to comment on Osama bin Laden´s references to reclaiming Spain´s once Moorish province of Andalusia. “The city of Seville expelled the Muslims in 1248, even before they were driven out of the rest of Andalusia. The threat is not worth discussing.” Bin Laden has in the past called for an Islamist takeover of what he calls “al-Andaluz” as the center of a restored Caliphate, a single Islamic state, one nation under Allah stretching from Indonesia to southern Spain that would contain 1.5 billion […]