Briefing Archive

MOSCOW — Under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, Turkey has been drifting eastward in recent years — but not toward the Islamic world. Instead, disputes with European countries over Cyprus and other barriers to Turkey’s entry into the European Union, as well as continuing differences between Ankara and Washington over U.S. policy in Iraq, have helped launch a de facto Ankara-Moscow axis in Eurasia. The last decade has seen a weakening of the factors that have traditionally tied Turkey to the West. Turkish leaders no longer believe they need NATO’s support in an unlikely military confrontation with […]

German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, listened to the statement of his Syrian counterpart with a slight grimace on his face. “Syria has not isolated itself from the world,” Walid Muallem explained at the Damascus airport, “but rather certain states have isolated themselves from Syria.” This response to Steinmeier’s demand that Syria should play a “constructive roll” in the region makes clear that diplomatic involvement with Syria does not in itself represent a way out of the, in Steinmeier’s words, “difficult transitional phase” in the Middle East. The press conference with Muallem in the VIP section of the Damascus […]

WASHINGTON — Developments in Baghdad are not waiting for President Bush to end his elaborate round of consultations on what to do next in Iraq. The White House now says it will reveal its revised Iraq strategy in the new year. But on Saturday, the Iraqis are scheduled to hold an all-party reconciliation conference in an attempt to unravel the skein of crisis and violence that has brought the country to a state of virtual civil war. Sources in Iraq said the much-postponed conference, now brought forward from its tentative date in early January, is not likely to be put […]

MOSCOW — An estimated 20 percent of the Russian population now has access to the Internet. Whereas the Putin administration exerts tight control over the major domestic broadcast and print media, it does not currently restrict the content of Internet sites on a wide scale. Web sites such as Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru provide many of the articles and commentary that would normally otherwise appear in an opposition press. Several wealthy Russians living in political exile, including Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, own Russian-language websites that publicize their anti-Putin views to Russian audiences. In August 2006, Russian right-wing extremists used the […]

TEHRAN, Iran — On the way down from Tehran’s main ski hill a few days ago I hitched a ride with two 22-year old university students and asked them whether they were planning to vote in the coming elections. “What elections?” they asked. Then, after they had phoned a friend to confirm that a nationwide vote is indeed to take place on Dec. 15, they said the same thing I have heard from almost every Iranian I have spoken to over the past month, from millionaires and pop stars to pastoralists and kebab sellers: Of course we won’t vote, we’re […]

Five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor accused of intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV as part of a CIA and Israeli intelligence plot are scheduled to have their fate decided by order of the Libyan high court on Dec. 19. On May 6, 2004, the six defendants were sentenced to death by firing squad in a trial observers say flaunted disrespect for human rights in every respect. Nine Libyan health workers also charged in the case were acquitted the same day. Libya’s Supreme Court threw out the verdict in early 2005 following Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s efforts to […]

Of the 79 recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report that came out recently, the one that got the most attention — even before the report’s release — was the recommendation that the U.S. government talk with Iran and Syria. That recommendation has also met with broad approval in the Arab world, not so much out of affection for the two countries but out of a conviction that dialogue will yield better outcomes than an effort at isolation. Indeed, the Gulf governments’ response to more strident voices in Tehran over the last 18 months has not been a 1980s-style isolation […]

EASTERN SHAN STATE, Myanmar — The divide and conquer tactics employed by Myanmar’s ruling military junta to reign in ethnic insurgent militias on the Sino-Myanmar border have further agitated delicate ceasefire agreements with the formerly China-backed rebel groups. Escalating tensions with the junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), have prompted the largest of these players, the 20,000 strong United Wa State Army (UWSA), to re-supply its forces and bolster defenses in an apparent bid to deter a Myanmar Armed Forces attack on their largely autonomous enclave in Myanmar’s Eastern Shan State, dubbed Special Region 2. Since […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — It was Constitution Day in Thailand on Dec. 10, and because it fell on a Sunday this year, banks, schools and offices stayed shut Monday for a holiday, ostensibly to reflect on the charter’s importance. There’s just one problem: Thailand hasn’t got a constitution any more. The much-lauded 1997 constitution, the 16th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, was torn up and thrown in the trash can when the army staged its coup on Sept. 19. The generals who stepped in to rescue the country from what they claimed was an increasingly despotic, divisive and […]

Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski has a dirty little secret. He was a Soviet military intelligence agent beginning in 1946. History buffs recall that Jaruzelski enjoyed a stellar career in Soviet-occupied Poland. He was once the youngest Communist general in Poland; the Minister of Defense; the Commander in Chief of Poland’s Communist armed forces; the Prime Minister; and the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Jaruzelski occupied most of those posts simultaneously. One usually remembers him simply as the military strongman who, to crush “Solidarity,” imposed martial law in December 1981 and, thus, ended Poland’s bid for freedom. He was greatly vilified […]

Last week’s confirmation hearing for soon-to-be Secretary of Defense Bob Gates was as much political theater as a serious inquiry. Predictably, many of the questions that came Gates’ way involved the war in Iraq. Democrats and Republicans alike expect that he will bring a fresh outlook to the nation’s problems there. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) cut to the root of the issue by asking Gates if he “was going to be an independent” voice of counsel to the President — an obvious reference to the close relationship between President Bush and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Without hesitation Gates responded that […]

CARACAS, Venezuela — “Es-tu-dian-te u-ni-ver-si-ta-rio.” It took a while, but José Bueno finally read out “university student” from a bulletin board at a Caracas primary school, where he is learning to read thanks to a government-sponsored literacy program. “I didn’t know any of that before,” he said. “But if you set a goal, you can achieve it.” Bueno grew up in rural poverty, planting corn and sweet potatoes instead of going to school. It was a time of donkeys and candles, a time of two-party democracy, oil-fueled modernization schemes, and corrupt elites. The system later collapsed and then came change. […]

The United States embassy in Baghdad is a bustling complex with a staff of over a thousand Americans, more than in any other country. Its Iraqi counterpart in Washington is a quiet, shuttered red brick house adjacent to Dupont Circle with maybe a dozen staffers headed by Ambassador Mahmoud Sumaidaie. who has held the post since May. Sumaidaie may be Iraq’s leading voice in the United States, but he speaks in a whisper, and very selectively, steering clear of the high volume public debate about the future of his country. For a diplomat whose country dominates the news, he has […]

ON THE BOUAKE-YAMOUSSOUKRO ROAD, Ivory Coast — For the passengers on this bus, the trip started encroaching upon its fifth hour. Most had abandoned rebel-held Bouake, headquarters of the New Forces, for the bright lights of Abidjan, where they had families and business. But their bus had been stopped before Yamoussoukro, the Ivorian capital. Armed government customs agents ordered the driver and his crew to unload all the baggage from the bus, where it could be opened and inspected for possible infractions. Few, if any, were found. The bus driver, his shirt stained with sweat, somewhat shrugged off the delay. […]

Things just got worse for Halima, a displaced woman I found nursing burns from a militia attack in Darfur six months ago. Security is at a premium for war-scarred Halima and tens of thousands of other refugees hunkering down in squalid camps studded across war-torn Darfur in western Sudan. Just days after the African Union extended its limp mandate in the blood-soaked region unil mid-2007, its poorly equipped troops — deployed to protect Halima and others — are now running scared. They could be attacked anytime by Khartoum-sponsored Arab militias, the “Janjaweed,” or bands of quicksilver rebels, the other side […]

BOUAKE, Ivory Coast — Officially, Ibrahim Ouattara, 32, is a nonentity in his country of birth. He has neither a passport nor an identification card to prove his citizenship. Should the resident of this central rebel-held city wish to change his status, Ouattara said he faces a Kafkaesque struggle because no one can apply for their identity papers outside of their town of residence. That requires all the paperwork to be sent to Abidjan, more than 300 kilometers away. There, he said, the bureaucracy inevitably leaves one item behind before sending it on for processing to another town where the […]

The German government recently completed its first major defense review in twelve years. The “White Paper 2006 on German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr” stresses the German government’s commitment to work with the United States, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other “networked security structures” to promote international peace and stability. In particular, the document highlights Germany’s role in helping solve a “broad” (i.e., predominately non-military) range of security challenges outside the North Atlantic area.<<ad>>Despite its bold vision and comprehensive assessment, the White Paper fails to resolve three major problems that constrain Germany’s […]