Domestic Politics Archive

KATMANDU, Nepal — After two weeks of counting, Nepal’s election results are official: a solid win for the former rebel Maoists and a humiliating slap in the face for the country’s traditional political parties. Almost nobody predicted the landslide victory, and now Nepal’s political elite and the international community are scrambling to deal with the world’s first ever elected Maoist government. The Maoists, for their part, have been sure to make the right noises on economic and diplomatic issues. They say they will use capitalism and multiparty democracy as stepping stones to achieve their socialist vision. But first they must […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The arrest of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s cousin and political ally, Mario Uribe, on charges of conspiring with the country’s paramilitary groups, brings the country’s so-called “para-politics” scandal closer to the president’s inner circle. Mario Uribe’s arrest on April 22 and the ever-growing domestic scandal that links politicians with outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups is being seen as the most serious crisis facing President Uribe since he first came to power in 2002. A former senator who co-founded the Democratic Colombia Party with the president, Mario Uribe is one of the most prominent politicians engulfed in the scandal […]

This month’s NATO summit in Bucharest failed to produce a consensus in favor of proposals to offer Membership Action Plans (MAPs) to Georgia and Ukraine. The pro-MAP faction within NATO, led by the United States and also including Canada and most Eastern European countries, failed to overcome concerted resistance from most of the Western European member-states, led most vociferously by Germany and France. At the conclusion of the conference on April 3, NATO issued a cryptic joint communiqué stating that it “welcomed Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership and agreed that these countries will become members of NATO,” but […]

When Colombia bombed a guerrilla camp in Ecuador last month, igniting one of Latin America’s worst diplomatic spats in recent history and nearly sparking a regional war, the leaders at the center of the dispute each emerged with a most unexpected political reward: a boost in their domestic support. Recent opinion polls in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela illustrate that the nationalist stands taken by leaders of the three countries paid off for each of them politically. “All three leaders occupied different roles and all of them are satisfied,” said Juan Gabriel Valdés, former minister of foreign relations in Chile. Colombian […]

A German interior ministry proposal to grant Iraqi Christians asylum in Germany as a persecuted minority drew criticism last week from the chair of the Bundestag’s Human Rights Committee, who insisted that the program should be open to other Iraqis as well. “We should also accept Christians, because they are under particular pressure,” Herta Däubler-Gmelin said in remarks reported in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “but not only Christians.” “An appropriately large number of Iraqis should be taken in,” she added, “commensurate to Germany’s capacity and economic power.” Herta Däubler-Gmelin? If the name sounds familiar, that is because this is the […]

As the value of the dollar continues to decline relative to other currencies, some of those most affected don’t even live in the United States. Instead, they are citizens of developing countries who receive remitted dollars from family and friends working abroad. For them, the weakening dollar is particularly crippling because it either converts into less local currency or, for those in countries with pegged currencies, can’t keep up with local inflation. It’s a situation roughly similar to American travelers in Europe discovering that it now costs $4.77 for a Big Mac, whereas a year and a half ago the […]

NEW YORK — The evidence of Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim’s service to the United States is scattered throughout his apartment, which overlooks the East River in Manhattan near his office at the United Nations. Ornate certificates attesting to his counterterrorism training adorn the walls. Pictures of him shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld and chatting with Bernard Kerrick and Paul Bremer are clear reminders of Ibrahim’s close relationship to the United States. It is a relationship that he is afraid soon will lead to his death. Ahmed Ibrahim was born and grew up in Baghdad, and in 1973 graduated from the Baghdad […]

MEXICO CITY — Muckraking journalist Lydia Cacho initially thought hit men working for narcotics trafficking gangs were going to kill her when she was apprehended outside of her Cancún office in December 2005. But the unidentified gunmen were actually police officers, who immediately transported her more than 900 miles to a prison cell in Puebla city, where she was jailed on defamation charges. The cops allegedly taunted and assaulted her during the overnight trip, threatening her life and sticking a gun in her mouth. Their two-car convoy stopped while passing the Campeche Sound, Cacho says, and one of the gunmen […]

TRAVELS WITH JOE — Sen. Joe Lieberman told Italian guests at a recent American Embassy dinner in Rome that Barack Obama would, in his view, be the Democratic presidential candidate, but that John McCain would win the November presidential election. Embassy staffers speculated to one guest that if McCain does get the White House, Lieberman would be his Secretary of Defense. Lieberman made a side trip to Rome while traveling with McCain in Europe and the Middle East. He said he had met Vatican officials and discussed Iraq. Pope Benedict XVI is deeply concerned over the plight of Iraq’s Christians […]

On April 8, Egyptians will go to the polls for the first time in three years. Millions will vote to fill 52,000 seats in 4,500 municipal councils at the village, district, and provincial level. This election season, however, most Egyptians are focused less on political issues and more on matters of daily survival. In Egypt, a country where the president has ruled for more than a quarter of a century, free and fair elections are a rarity. The country held its first multi-candidate presidential elections in 2005. The following year, a stronger than anticipated performance by the Muslim Brotherhood in […]

The initiative of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to repeal the country’s headscarf ban has received a great deal of attention in both the Turkish and international media over the past month. Analysis has been divided on whether this signals a creeping Islamization of the country or rather, quite to the contrary, it is a signal of growing civil liberties — a maturing liberal democracy moving towards Western ideas of decency and freedom. It is unusual that a singular political initiative can be viewed in two such diametrically opposed ways. It’s a perfect illustration of the difficulty of […]