Q & A Archive

Fighting between Muslim and Buddhist mobs broke out in Myanmar’s coastal state of Rakhine over the weekend, with the violence between minority Rohingya Muslims and majority Rakhine Buddhists set off by the rape and murder of an ethnic Rakhine woman and the revenge attacks that followed. The unrest, which included arson, rioting and the killing of about 25 people, reveals some of the deep-rooted ethnic and religious tensions in the country, which has only recently begun to open up after decades of isolation and military rule. Jason Abbott, Aung San Suu Kyi Endowed Chair at the University of Louisville’s Center […]

Egypt and Libya are working to establish a joint venture to allow fishing in Libyan waters following a bilateral meeting in Cairo last month. In an email interview, Izzat Feidi, a fisheries consultant, discussed regional cooperation on fishing issues in North Africa. WPR: How strong is intraregional cooperation within North Africa on fisheries issues, and what are the main points of conflict? Izzat Feidi: Before the Arab Spring, intraregional cooperation among the six countries of North Africa faced several political and economic problems, mostly on a bilateral basis. Fisheries did not comprise a major point of conflict, though, beyond mainly […]

On Sunday, Mexico tuned in to the second and final debate between the four candidates who will compete in the country’s upcoming presidential election, scheduled for July 1. The election’s outcome will determine to a large degree how the country, currently at a crossroads in its battle against organized crime, will reduce violence within its own borders while working with its neighbors to the north and south. “The impact of this election will depend on whether the next president is willing to put enough emphasis on the deep transformation that Mexico needs,” said Maureen Meyer, senior associate for Mexico and […]

After the International Criminal Court sent a team to Libya over the weekend to negotiate the release for four court employees arrested last week, the relationship between the Hague-based court and Libya’s new authorities seems to be as rocky as ever. But even as the court’s chances of securing the trial it wants in Libya appear to be vanishing, the arrests go to show that the ICC still has an important role to play in the transitioning country. The ICC has been involved in Libya’s transition since the U.N. Security Council referred the situation to the court in a prelude […]

The debate over whether or not to intervene militarily in Syria is hardly a new one. In fact, it is one that resurfaces every time a humanitarian crisis pushes the boundaries of our collective moral conscience. And because we have yet to decisively resolve the question of when to use American military force in such cases, the outcome of each recurring instance of this debate hinges on an ad hoc combination of factors, including the public’s mood, media coverage of the crisis and, at times, elements as haphazard as the vocal support of a celebrity spokesperson. In the case of […]

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which concluded its annual summit in Beijing, China, today, announced that it had granted observer status to Afghanistan as part of the group’s effort to play a larger role in the stabilization of the war-torn country after the U.S. military leaves in 2014. The organization, which is made up of six nations — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — was founded in 2001 to promote regional economic integration and security cooperation. But the two experts who spoke with Trend Lines said the organization has traditionally been better at ceremony than substance, and closer coordination […]

Armenia and Azerbaijan, former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus, have been at war for two decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist ethnic-Armenian province internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but occupied since 1994 by Armenia. Over the past week, renewed fighting has left eight soldiers dead. The outbreak of violence along the border, which comes as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits the region, underscores the difficulty in resolving this not quite frozen conflict. Amanda Paul, a policy analyst and expert on the South Caucasus at the European Policy Center, talked to Trend Lines about […]

Hosni Mubarak, the ousted Egyptian president who turned power over to the military in the face of a popular uprising last year, was sentenced to life in prison over the weekend for failing to stop the killing of demonstrators during the protests that ultimately led to his downfall. But while Mubarak and his former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, were convicted of being “accessory to murder,” they and their codefendants were acquitted of more serious charges of having ordered the killings of nearly 1,000 protesters last year. Mubarak and his sons were further acquitted of corruption charges. The verdict brought tens […]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani met in Pakistan two weeks ago under the auspices of the bilateral High-Level Cooperation Council. In an email interview, Ishtiaq Ahmad, Quaid-i-Azam Fellow at St. Antony’s College and senior research associate at the Center for International Studies at Oxford University, discussed relations between Turkey and Pakistan. WPR: How would you characterize modern Turkish-Pakistani relations, and how have they evolved over the past decade? Ishtiaq Ahmad: The Turkish-Pakistani relationship is rooted in history and defined by the existence of deep ethno-religious affinity between the people of both countries. […]

In May, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff formally inaugurated a truth commission to examine human rights abuses that occurred during Brazil’s period of military rule. In an email interview, Par Engstrom, a lecturer at the University College of London Institute of the Americas, discussed Brazil’s process of transitional justice. WPR: What are the major steps Brazil has taken to account for the abuses of the dictatorship era? Par Engstrom: Brazil remains a regional laggard in South America in terms of transitional justice. This is largely due to the 1979 Amnesty Law, adopted as a measure to facilitate a political opening in […]

As unveiled in a recent Washington Post article, the Defense Advanced Research Protection Agency, or DARPA, is working to improve U.S. military operations in cyberspace with a project known as Plan X. The Defense Department agency is seeking proposals this summer for the effort, which aims to create an advanced cyberspace map as well as a system capable of launching cyberattacks and withstanding counterattacks. Chris Bronk, a fellow in information technology policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, told Trend Lines that Plan X reveals how DARPA is moving toward a more agile form of research […]