WPR Blog Archive

With important elections upcoming later this month in the German states of Hesse and Lower Saxony and next month in Hamburg, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has returned to the public eye: campaigning for his Social Democratic Party (SDP) and leading the charge against the rival Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The incumbent CDU Governor of Hesse, Roland Koch, has come in for particularly severe criticism from the former chancellor. Following a brutal attack on a senior citizen in a Munich subway station last month, the themes of “youth crime” and “foreigner crime” [Ausländerkriminalität] have come to dominate the headlines in Germany. […]

As part of the ongoing propaganda battle between the United States and Iran over a Jan. 6 incident in which two alleged Iranian speed boats approached some U.S. Navy ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the U.S. military held a press conference Jan. 13 in Bahrain. The commanders of the two U.S. ships involved in the incident, the U.S.S. Port Royal and U.S.S. Hopper, explained their versions of the incident. Here’s video of that press conference: And here’s the complete Defense Department’s video of the incident (all 45 minutes of it): Meanwhile, on Sunday, a new theory emerged about the […]

In “Why Al-Qaeda is Losing,” published in the Washington Post on Jan. 13, Gary Anderson seizes on the simple insight that al-Qaida’s methods are abhorrent to most Muslims as the logical basis for recommending a new U.S. public diplomacy strategy. Forget feel-good “listening tours” of Muslim nations focusing on rehabilitating the U.S. image, he counsels. Instead, focus on the actions of Islamist extremists to degrade their reputation in the Muslim world: . . . Our message isn’t selling. We can’t change what we are, nor would we want to. No matter how much the government may disapprove, the government’s official […]

A Wednesday report in the German economic daily Handelsblatt makes clear that German-Iranian trade continued to boom in 2007 despite existing U.N. sanctions and international calls to isolate Iran economically. According to statistics cited in a report by Germany’s Federal Trade Agency (BFAI), German exports to Iran are supposed to have declined by 15 percent to around €3.5 billion. However, in what the paper calls a “surprising development,” German imports from Iran actually increased by 50 percent to some €580 million. It should be noted, moreover, that both figures are said to be based on statistical data running only through […]

Fresh off his come-from-behind victory in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, Sen. John McCain co-authored an op-ed published in today’s Wall Street Journal (the online opinion section of which, is now totally free) with Sen. Joe Lieberman. Their message: The surge has worked, but it’s unclear whether its gains can be sustained after the United States completes a planned drawdown to the pre-surge level of 15 brigades. Thus, they write, a hasty further drawdown would be risky: Gen. Petraeus has already announced that five “surge” brigades will be withdrawn by mid-July. The process is now underway. The Pentagon has also announced […]

On closer inspection, the story of Saddam’s Hussein’s financial holdings in France is full of perverse twists and interconnections that cast many aspects of the run-up and aftermath of the Iraq War in a new light. The fact that a front company of the late Iraqi dictator should own a major stake in the publisher of the sneeringly titled “I am America (And So Can You!)” by Stephen Colbert — a comic who made his name, after all, by mocking President Bush and, notably, the latter’s decision to invade Iraq — is only the most glaring of them. As noted […]

One story that appears to have largely fallen through the cracks of international news coverage during the holidays is the mysterious expulsion of two European officials from Afghanistan in late December. The Irishman Michael Semple and the Briton Melvyn Patterson are reported to have left Afghanistan in compliance with the expulsion order shortly after Christmas. Semple has been widely identified as the acting head of the European Union delegation in Afghanistan — although the site of the EU delegation, officially headed by German diplomat Hansjörg Kretschmer, makes no mention of him in this capacity. Patterson is an official of the […]

As WPR Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini pointed out in a commentary piece last week, the initial reaction of the Bush administration to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto did not inspire confidence that the administration had a Plan B if their effort to broker a power-sharing between Bhutto and Musharraf did not pan out. This week, however, several news reports make it clear that there is a lot of administration activity surrounding Pakistan, even if the reports don’t paint a clear picture of a unified plan. If anything, the administration appears to be moving on several different fronts at once to try […]

In an article that appeared last month (Dec. 21) in the daily Le Figaro, French journalist George Malbrunot reports that the French government is continuing to resist Iraqi efforts to recover the financial assets of Saddam Hussein in France. According to Malbrunot’s report, some €23.48 million of Saddam’s money remains blocked in French banks. (The original report placed the money in the Banque de France: a claim that has since been denied by the French national bank.) France would thus be in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483 of May 22, 2003, which requires that the financial assets of […]

The least desirable — but certainly not unlikely — short-term outcome of Pakistan’s post-Bhutto turmoil is the emergence of another military strongman to replace President Pervez Musharraf. In which case, the name most frequently mentioned in Washington is Musharraf’s recent successor as chief of the country’s powerful army, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani. Unlike the blustering Musharraf, the general waiting in the wings is reclusive and at the same time popular with the army, but the apparent contradictions in his background make him hard to read. Before taking over as army chief from Musharraf, he was director of the murky Inter-Services Intelligence […]

In the past week, the case of Saudi Arabian blogger Fouad al-Farhan has become a cause célèbre among the international network of bloggers, NGOs and activists that now routinely respond when states attempt to repress freedom of expression online. Op-ed writers are on the case, Fouad’s fellow bloggers have continued to update his blog and launched a letter-writing campaign to Saudi officials to demand his release, and yesterday the Committee to Protect Journalists sent a letter (via fax) to King Abdullah. The campaign appears to be working: The New York Times quotes a Saudi interior ministry spokesman, in what looks […]