SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Apparently, this is a year for close referendums in the Balkans. Earlier this year, Montenegrins voted for independence from Serbia with a 0.5 percent margin of victory. The “yes” vote needed to be 55 percent for the tiny republic to become an independent state. The “yes” campaign carried the day with 55.5 percent. On the weekend of Oct. 28-29, the citizens of Serbia voted in a referendum to approve Serbia’s first non-communist constitution in 60 years. It was another close one. For the constitution to be approved, at least 3.3 million people needed to vote [...]
All the sound and fury over Iraq in advance of the American midterm elections signifies nothing. The United States has been reacting to events — not dictating them — since shortly after the U.S. military seized Baghdad three and a half years ago. President Bush’s press conference Oct. 25 was a political gesture designed to convince the electorate that he is not terminally detached from Iraq’s brutal reality. His relatively clear-eyed description of violence and sectarian divisions were a long-form version of his decision to ban “stay the course” from his vocabulary. But Bush did not unveil a new policy [...]
CARTAGENA, Colombia — Every day, around 860 people are internally displaced in Colombia. In the last 10 months, over 11,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, according to The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (Codhes), a Colombian NGO that monitors displacement. There are glaring discrepancies between government and NGO displacement figures. But with an estimated 2 to 3.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), Colombia is home to the highest number of IDPs in the western hemisphere and has the second largest displaced population in the world, after Sudan. The crisis is a forgotten emergency that receives scant [...]
