KATMANDU, Nepal — This week, ponies and porters are making their way to Nepal’s most remote regions with boxes of election materials taken from trucks and helicopters in district headquarters. The thousands of boxes contain voter education posters, election rules and the indelible ink that will hopefully mark the fingers of 17.6 million voters on April 10. It’s a huge logistical challenge but, after two false starts, Election Commission spokesman Laxman Bhattarai is confident. “It is easier than previously because many things we have prepared for the last election but it didn’t happen.” said Laxman with a chuckle. While the […]

Pentagon Planning to Shoot Down Rogue Satellite

Wired’s Danger Room has the scoop and links galore. As Danger Room notes, a key question is: Will China view this as a response to their January 2007 anti-satellite test? A related question: How might this affect recent joint Russian and Chinese efforts to restrict the deployment of weapons in space. WPR contributor Richard Weitz recently examined those Russian-Chinese initiatives. Here’s an excerpt: The publication of an unclassified version of the new U.S. National Space Policy in October 2006 evoked deep concern in Moscow and Beijing. Although the policy acknowledges the value of international cooperation in space and the right […]

With Pakistan’s much-anticipated Feb. 18 elections fast approaching against the backdrop of mounting jihadist activity in the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), questions about the stability of the region and the strategic implications of the activity there for U.S. interests seem to be growing more urgent by the day. While Pakistan has been considered a “key ally” in the war on terror for many years now, receiving at least $10 billion since 9/11 for its support in hunting down top al-Qaida operatives, this partnership has become dramatically more complex of late, and American decision makers are now facing difficult […]

For months, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has had only limited success in generating greater contributions for NATO’s military operations in Afghanistan by appealing directly to European governments. As a result, Gates has now decided to pursue the risky strategy of appealing directly to their skeptical publics for support. The Afghan war dominated the two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in Vilnius, Lithuania. The government of Canada had provoked a mini crisis by warning beforehand that that it would withdraw its forces from the insurgent-prone province of Kandahar next January unless other NATO countries agreed to send at least […]

KAMPALA, Uganda — Patricia Kyazze sits at her desk amid the hanging oriental rugs, plush leather couches and sleek, glass-topped coffee tables of Nina Interiors, one of the Ugandan capital’s most upscale furniture outlets. Faraway from the political turmoil in neighboring Kenya, the bedroom and dining room displays bespeak calm and money — fitting for a city that’s seen two decades of political stability and economic growth. But with 90 percent of Uganda’s imports coming through Kenya’s Mombasa port, maintaining this growth and stability is becoming increasingly difficult. For about a month now, three of the furniture company’s containers, carrying […]

What looked like another bad day Feb. 7 for NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan ended with a hopeful development. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed his fellow defense ministers in Vilnius, Lithuania, with a request he had made many times over the past six months. He again asked allies to increase the number of troops in the country’s south in preparation for the expected spring Taliban offensive and to shore up beleaguered forces from Canada, Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Once again, it appeared NATO allies would demur. Some even had the […]

January turned out to be an eventful month for Ukraine, as the country became embroiled in a heated debate about its prospects for joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While NATO has its supporters and critics in Ukrainian society, partisan divisions in the Ukrainian government have made political dialogue between these groups especially difficult. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko represents the fiercely pro-Western forces which push for the country’s speedy admission to NATO. The national parliament, Verkhovna Rada, is dominated by the Party of Regions and the Communist Party, which advocate for strengthening Ukraine’s economic and political ties with neighboring Russia. […]

Earlier this year, the Republic of the Congo became the 183rd state party to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which forbids the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons (CW). In addition, the Indian media recently reported that the Indian government had eliminated over 90 percent of its chemical weapons, suggesting the country should fulfill its requirement to eliminate all its CW by April 2009. While welcome, these developments should not obscure the continuing difficulties facing the CWC as its April 2008 review conference approaches. Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of […]

WASHINGTON – Despite little evidence that a massive program of aerial coca crop fumigation has worked in Colombia, and despite serious reservations by the Pentagon and by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the U.S. State Department, backed by the White House, is quietly pushing the expansion of aerial poppy eradication into Afghanistan as a way to fight the Taliban. Soon Afghanistan, which produces 92 percent of the world’s opium and 80 percent of the world’s heroin, may be the target of a program of Plan Colombia-style aerial crop eradication. With the Afghan war entering a tenuous new phase, the stakes are […]

The disintegration of historic American alliances, particularly U.S.-Europe relations in the wake of the Iraq war, has been much analyzed in recent years. But the untold story of U.S. alliance disintegration is the Asia-Pacific region, where America’s strategic preoccupation in Iraq and China’s rapid ascension are gradually altering and degrading America’s influence. Unfortunately, the U.S.-South Korea (ROK) alliance has followed this trend. Over the past five years, President Bush and South Korea President Roh Moo-hyun have together undermined bilateral cooperation. To be fair, the Bush administration has made major overtures to South Korea, including transferring control of wartime operations from […]

Valery Loshchinin, Russia’s ambassador to the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, recently revealed that on Feb. 12, Russia and China will present a joint draft treaty to restrict the deployment of weapons in outer space. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to address the 65-member, U.N.-affiliated forum on that day. Neither Russian nor Chinese government representatives have publicly indicated what provisions are included in the draft treaty. Nevertheless, both governments have long been concerned by U.S. military programs in this realm. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits countries from basing weapons of mass destruction in space, but its application to […]

WASHINGTON — Indonesia’s strongman Suharto was many things to many people. As the debate rages over Suharto’s mixed legacy, he was ultimately an enigma to his protégé, vice president and successor Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie. When Suharto was forced to resign on May 21, 1998, after 32 years at the helm, he did not say a word to Habibie. They had once been close. Habibie had nicknamed his mentor “SGS” — “super genius Suharto” — to gain his favor. Suharto, a devotee of mysticism, was drawn to Habibie’s preacher-seer father whom he met quite by chance as a young military officer […]

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