War & Conflict Archive

In a land that never lacks for intense emotions, a moment will come in just a few days when the two extremes of joy and sadness will overflow at precisely the same time. Through the dramatizing magic of modern technology, we will watch those scenes from our living rooms: From Lebanon, boisterous celebrations of triumph will fill the screen as a freed prisoner comes home. From south of the border, in Israel, we will witness heartsick parents welcoming the bodies of their murdered children, with the entire country embracing the grieving families, but sickened at the thought that in Lebanon, […]

IRIBA, Chad — Four years after some quarter-million people fled ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur province for the relative safety of eastern Chad, one of the world’s most persistent humanitarian crises shows no signs of letting up. Indeed, there are signs that Darfuri refugees are in Chad to stay, despite acute shortages of water, firewood and food. Today the Darfuri refugees are housed in a dozen U.N.-administered camps that, over time, have become more like permanent towns and less like the squalid tent cities of popular conception. But appearances can be deceiving: Despite seeming self-sufficient on the surface, the camps […]

Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga is accused of committing some truly awful crimes. Forcibly conscripting children as young as 10 into the brutal, tribal combat of eastern Congo tops the list, which is why he was turned over to the International Criminal Court at The Hague in 2006. Lubanga’s trial was supposed to be the ICC’s first case and its first test. But with the trial now indefinitely delayed due to prosecutorial misconduct, the ICC has failed the test. No one should be surprised by this. The problems with the ICC’s ability to try the Lubanga case stem from the prosecution’s […]