DAGESTAN, Russia — The newlyweds sat at the front of the dim banquet hall here looking out at their guests. Three hundred people intermittently gathered around the long food-filled tables or hopped around the dance floor, sweating through their fancy clothes as they swished their arms back and forth doing the region’s traditional dance, the lezginka. After three hours of reveling in the southern Russian heat, the flawlessly coiffed bride descended to the floor in her corseted white dress while her groom danced around her holding a fluffy taffeta baton. As he passed it off to various male relatives and [...]
NEW DELHI, India – Amid mixed reports of a rebel withdrawal and relative calm, there continue to be fierce and bloody clashes on the island nation of Sri Lanka between military forces of the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. Some analysts have begun dubbing the ongoing violence the beginning of ‘Eelam War IV’ — a reference to the repeated failure of peace talks in the 20-year-old civil war in the tiny country off India’s southern tip. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa continues to deny such, saying instead [...]
Now that the border between Lebanon and Israel has changed from war zone to twilight zone — an eerie landscape where the potential for renewed fighting hangs heavily in the air — history’s pundits can review their recent pronouncements on the conflict to see just how useful they proved. They can examine what they wrote to see how much it really helped us understand what just transpired in the Middle East and how effectively they guided the peacemakers in their search for a solution. A close look, I’m afraid, will show that history’s lessons have proven confusing, contradictory and even [...]
