MOMBASA, Kenya — In November, the port of Merka in southern Somalia, previously held by the U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) alliance, was captured without a fight by soldiers of the rival Islamic Courts Union (ICU). In the aftermath of Merka’s fall, the U.N. worried that the ICU might halt aid shipments to the starving country. Those fears proved premature, but ultimately accurate. Last week, further advances by the Islamic Courts threatened to disrupt incoming food convoys. Merka’s fall was a watershed event for this nation of 8 million that hasn’t had a functional central government since a brutal civil [...]
GLOBAL EFFORT ON BEHALF OF DETAINED CHINESE DISSIDENT — Over 160 Nobel laureates, writers and academics sent an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao via the internet last week urging him to release intellectual Liu Xiaobo, who was taken from his home by security officers Dec. 8 and has not been heard from since. Liu, a literary critic and head of the Independent Chinese PEN Center that advocates for free speech, was a leading signatory and mover behind the document, “Charter 08.” The charter was a public call for greater reform and accountability of the Chinese Communist Party, including [...]
I think it’s safe to say that when a Nobel Peace Prize winner calls for the threat of force to remove you from power, you’re on the proverbial “wrong side of history.” Hopefully it also means that Robert Mugabe’s days as president of Zimbabwe are numbered. I had the honor and privilege of meeting and interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, just following his Nobel Prize, as part of a PBS student panel TV program. (One of the fellow panelists that morning was Rachel Swarns, now the Washington correspondent for the NY Times.) I’ll never forget how, even in discussing the plight [...]
