Q & A Archive

The U.S. has recently made two high-profile moves to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. has not joined and is barred by domestic law from supporting financially. In an email interview, Harry Rhea, assistant professor of criminal justice at Florida International University and author of the book “The United States and International Criminal Tribunals: An Introduction,” discussed U.S.-ICC cooperation and how the U.S. can bolster the court without joining it. WPR: Do recent U.S. moves to cooperate with the court — transferring Bosco Ntaganda to The Hague and including ICC suspects in the Rewards for Justice program, […]

Leaders from Serbia and Kosovo, who came together in Brussels earlier this week for the last of eight rounds of formal talks mediated by the European Union, failed to come to an agreement on the status of northern Kosovo. Kosovo, a former Serbian province, declared its independence in 2008, but Serbia has never recognized it as an independent state. Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo reject the authority of the government in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. Marko Prelec, director of the International Crisis Group’s Balkans Project, told Trend Lines in an email interview that there is still time to strike a deal […]

On Tuesday, Hamas re-elected Khaled Meshaal as its political leader, extending his nearly decade-long leadership of the Palestinian militant Islamist group. Hard-liners in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls, have been critical of Meshaal and his efforts to bridge divides with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the rival Palestinian group Fatah. Meshaal had previously said he would step down, and there were also reports that Hamas members in Gaza might try to force him aside. But Hamas’ internal political decision-making committee, the Shura Council, gave him another term, reportedly at least in part because of international pressure, including […]

In mid-March, three suspected militants were killed by Russian forces in the North Caucasus, a region that has long been a site of Islamist and separatist violence, beginning with the Chechen wars in the 1990s. In an email interview, Domitilla Sagramoso, a lecturer in security and development at King’s College London who specializes in conflict, security and development in Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, explained the roots of the ongoing violence in the region and the evolution of Russia’s response to it. WPR: What is the immediate background and current extent of the insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus? Domitilla […]

On March 24, Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999 and resigned nine years later to avoid impeachment, ended years of self-imposed exile and returned to Pakistan vowing to contest presidential and parliamentary elections set for May. In an email interview, Colin Cookman, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress specializing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, discussed what’s at stake in the elections. WPR: What are Pakistan’s major political factions and parties as the country heads into the elections? Colin Cookman: Dozens of political parties and hundreds more independent candidates are likely to […]

Last week, Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty, the first international pact to regulate conventional arms sales across borders, citing its failure to ban weapons sales to rebel groups. In the absence of consensus, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to put the treaty to a vote on Tuesday morning. It is considered likely to pass overwhelmingly. “As we like to say, it’s ludicrous that the global trade in bananas is better regulated than the global trade in arms,” Allison Pytlak, campaign manager for the Control Arms Coalition, an international civil society […]