The irony did not go unnoticed last week when President Bush said of the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, “The Turks need to move, move quickly, achieve their objectives and get out.” Do as I say, in other words, not as I do. Well, the Turks did just that, and I thought their handling of the PKK crisis over the course of the past year and culminating in last week’s incursion deserved a brief wrap-up. (So did the Jamestown Foundation.) Last spring, when the PKK mounted an attack on Turkish forces that resulted in a skirmish and a dozen or [...]
GROUP SLAMS SCANDALOUS NIGERIA JUSTICE SYSTEM — The state of Nigeria’s criminal justice system represents a complete failure of the Nigerian government to address the needs of its people and is a national disgrace, Amnesty International said in a report released Feb. 26. Amnesty investigations found that only 35 percent of those serving time in Nigerian prisons are there as a result of any semblance of due process. Mentally ill patients handed over to police by family members unable to care for them, accused individuals who have not formally been charged and relatives arrested in place of suspects police were [...]
To get a sense of what’s going on in Gaza right now, just go read Laura Rozen. She’s got all the essential links and analysis. One thing, though, that I haven’t seen mentioned yet among all the talk of possible local brushfires (Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, etc.) is the impact Hamas-Israel and Hezbollah-Israel conflicts might have on Iran’s activity in Iraq. The Iranians have already demonstrated how much they can contribute to improving the security situation there. A three-front war between Israel, Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah would seem like the kind of scenario they would use to demonstrate how [...]
