Briefing Archive

After nearly six years, Rio de Janeiro’s Police Pacification Units (UPPs) appear to be faltering. Since the beginning of the year, multiple categories of violent crime have risen across the city, and with the spotlight on Brazil due to the upcoming World Cup soccer tournament, the program is now facing unprecedented levels of criticism and scrutiny. Many pundits and journalists are arguing that the pacification program is no longer effective. Meanwhile, public security officials are calling the recent escalation in crime a temporary setback in an otherwise successful effort to combat powerful drug trafficking gangs. In truth, neither of these […]

The much-publicized kiss the new Saudi ambassador to Iran, Abdulrahman bin Garman Al Shahri, bestowed on former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani on April 22, and the recent Saudi diplomatic outreach to Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have set off speculation about a potential thaw in the two countries’ icy relations. But the gestures should not be viewed as a Saudi policy reorientation toward what Riyadh still views as a revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. The Saudis appear to be changing their tactics, probably at the behest of the U.S., but not their regional objectives of rolling back Iranian involvement […]

A serious crisis played out during the past month over the future of France’s defense budget, pitting the pared-down and overstretched Defense Ministry against the cost-cutters of the Budget Ministry. Though the Defense Ministry has been spared for now, the fallout may leave lasting marks on the French military leadership’s morale, and on the country’s reputation as a European defense leader. In the first 18 months of Francois Hollande’s presidency, France underwent a full defense review. The financial crisis and geopolitical changes, it was believed, warranted a revision of the country’s 2008 Defense White Paper. Moreover, a new Military Program […]

With some Southeast Asian Muslims raising funds and recruiting fighters for Syria, concerns are growing that these activities will eventually raise the risk of terrorism in the region. The numbers are still low, but some governments—Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore in particular—are beginning to wonder what the impact will be a few years hence if some of their extremist nationals or neighbors come back with new skills. The past decade has seen a steady decline in the extremist threat from the region, which was once seen as a possible “second front” for al-Qaida. Enhanced vigilance, good law enforcement, reasonably cooperative interstate […]

When Mohammed Amir Waheed Sirkar, a migrant Bangladeshi electrician employed to help build New York University’s new campus in Abu Dhabi, joined a strike to protest working conditions there, he ended up in prison and was subsequently deported. According to the New York Times, other workers at the site reported paying recruitment fees of up to a year’s wages just to get their jobs; working 11- or 12-hour days, 6-7 days a week; and living with 15 men in rooms meant for four. The international labor migration system is rife with this type of exploitation and abuse—not just in the […]

Yesterday, Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) succeeded Mauricio Funes as president of El Salvador. While Funes has received overall high marks from the Salvadoran public, in particular in the area of education, he leaves a public security mess for the incoming Sanchez Ceren administration. Funes assumed the presidency in June 2009 amid growing public insecurity due to MS-13 and 18th Street gang violence, organized crime and drug trafficking. During his first year in office, Funes ordered 2,500 additional troops to the 1,500 already patrolling the country’s most violent neighborhoods and streets. The vast majority […]