QUIBDÓ, CHOCÓ, Colombia — In this part of Colombia, most people don’t want to talk about the fighting between government forces and rebels in what’s been a 40 year long civil war. President Alvaro Uribe Vélez was re-elected in May to a second four-year term and he’s promised to make the long-neglected state of Chocó not only safer, but more of a commercial addition to the nation’s economic prosperity. That first step will mean finding a way to end the fighting between right wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense of Colombia/AUC) soldiers and left-wing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
