WPR Blog Archive

The international rights community is pressuring Russian authorities to end a bloody campaign against journalists, activists and aid workers in Chechnya, following the grisly discovery of activists Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov shot dead in the trunk of a car Tuesday morning in Grozny. “The international community must wake up to the fact that the systematic and continuing failure of the authorities in the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic to investigate effectively the murders of human rights activists or indeed any other human rights violations that have taken place over the past years is a strong indication […]

In September, UNESCO, the Paris-based educational, scientific and cultural subsidiary of the United Nations, will elect a new director general for the next four years; but what started as almost a foregone conclusion has become another typical battle over a hotly contested senior U.N. post. The original front runner to succeed outgoing UNESCO head Koichiro Matsuura was Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s culture minister. According to informal U.N. rules of regional power sharing, the new director should come from the Arab world. But Hosni became a controversial figure following a statement last year that he would “burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries” […]

WPR columnist Thomas P.M. Barnett appeared on the BBC radio program “World Have Your Say” Monday. The subject was the U.S. military presence in countries around the world, a subject that Barnett touched on in his latest column. To listen to the program, click here, or right click on that link to download the audio to your computer. Barnett’s portion of the program begins about 11:30. He does his best to bring a little measure of reality to an audience that seems overwhelmingly cynical about and hostile to the U.S. military presence around the world.

A Burmese military court pronounced pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of violating terms of her house arrest Tuesday and extended her detention period by an additional 18 months. The verdict drew immediate condemnation from world leaders, human rights advocates and Nobel peace laureates. British Prime Minister Grodon Brown blasted the entire procedure as a “sham trial” and said “the U.N. Security Council — whose will has been flouted — must also now respond resolutely and impose a world wide ban on the sale of arms to the regime.” The United Nations, White House, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop […]

This is my last post before I leave Sunday for a two-week vacation. It’s the dog days of August, Paris is deserted, and my batteries are in need of some recharging. I’m looking forward to a couple weeks of no internet and no e-mail, and the time to dive into the stack of books I’ve gathered for the trip. I’ve been fighting off the urge all week to get started early on Man Gone Down, by Michael Thomas, which had me the first time I saw the title. I also grabbed Jonathan Lethem’s latest novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, […]

I’d like to say that when we scheduled this week’s feature issue on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, it was with the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in mind. But the truth is that it was a total coincidence. I remember as a kid, at the Red Diaper Baby summer camp I attended for several years, waking early and dressing in white on Hiroshima Day, taking the “peace crane” origami that each of us had folded the previous afternoon while listening to histories of the attack, and filing down the dirt road with the rest of the campers […]

Indian authorities need to completely overhaul the country’s police systems to address rampant human rights abuses that undermine India’s progress and the rule of law, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The existing system, HRW charges in “Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police,” has failed to evolve beyond the repressive characteristics instilled during colonial times and not only encourages abuse, but facilitates it. Torture, extortion, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings are considered common practice. “When they were first constituted as a colonial force in the 1800’s they were taught to use repression, fear — […]

Brian Till makes a very good point: As we begin to re-imagine the world for the twenty-first century –Sergio’s world, as Power is fond of saying, of “broken people andbroken states” — it seems that building successful legal systems needsa bigger niche than we typically afford. This is true in South Asia, where filling the “rule of law” vacuum has historically been an opening for Taliban influence. In Pakistan, particularly, a significant amount of the military-civilian jockeying has played out recently — and currently — over the independence of the judiciary. This is also a good example of a concrete […]

Globalization, this piece from 2point6billion reminds us, has regional escape valves when the rules get tougher to negotiate at the global level. I think the attractiveness of regional common markets will also be reinforced as shipping costs rise due to energy scarcity. And even if buying useless bric-a-brac from countries with cheap labor costs halfway across the world continues to make for a cheaper bottom line, eventually rationing in terms of national security priorities will kick in. Interestingly, while the EU and China-ASEAN free markets seem like win-win situations for all the economies involved, the U.S. attempt to extend NAFTA-CAFTA […]

On the merits, I agree with Andrew Bacevich that the war in Afghanistan does not answer to America’s vital interests. To begin with, to whatever degree we deny al-Qaida the tranquility of safe havens there — or in the Pakistani FATA — they will find other locales to replace it. To the extent that we destroy al-Qaida as an operational threat, whatever urge it gives expression to will find some other organizational structure to replace it. The best we can do to fight, not terrorism, but these terrorists is to contain them until their movement burns itself out, which — […]

The United States signed on to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities last week, joining 141 other countries in efforts to set international standards of rights protections for the estimated 650 million disabled people worldwide. The Convention obliges signatories to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities and actively support their full participation in society. It was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2006 and came into force in May 2008. U.S. policymakers have long had reservations about international treaties related to human rights, signing and ratifying only 3 out of 26 currently in force — […]

The news about the Russian attack subs patrolling international waters off the Eastern Seaboard is not so much that they’re there. And it’s definitely not that there’s anything necessarily worrisome about them being there. The real news is that the news was leaked at all. And I suspect that had to do with letting the Kremlin know that we were wise to them all along. According to a Russian intelligence source cited by RIA Novosti, a sub-based Russian missile launch in the Arctic Ocean in July caught the Pentagon off-guard. If true, yesterday’s leak would be a way to let […]

I wouldn’t be that worried about U.S. military bases in Colombia if I were the Brazilian foreign minister either. (Probably more so if I worked out of Caracas.) What’s interesting, though, is the way a simple basing question in South America now requires regional outreach by the NSA, and the sort of balancing act usually reserved for Asia. To say nothing of the fact that the issue is even a touchy one in Colombia, our best friend in the neighborhood. Curious days for the Monroe Doctrine, to be sure, although I say that without regret. Update: This more detailed article […]

Bill Clinton’s successful diplomatic mission to North Korea is instructive for a number of reasons. To begin with, the entire episode exemplifies North Korea’s method in general — namely, hostage-taking and blackmail. In this case, the hostages were the two American reporters whose freedom Clinton managed to secure. In the case of North Korea’s nuclear program, the hostages are the entire Korean peninsula and regional stability at large. The case of the reporters is instructive also for what it reveals about North Korea’s objective: respect. Laura Rozen’s behind-the-scenes play-by-play shows the degree to which the mission’s success depended on an […]

Great article by Yigal Schleifer on a soon-to-be-unveiled Turkish initiative to address Kurdish grievances. So far, there’s not a lot of detail about the nuts and bolts, but there are a number of reasons to be encouraged. Not least of those is that Ankara has finally acknowledged that the PKK alone is not the problem, and that the military effort to dislodge them from northern Iraq is not the solution. Perhaps the most worrisome sign is this: Dogu Ergil, a professor of political science at Ankara University,says the Kurdish initiative could be hurt by what he sees a lack ofconsultation […]

Anyone wondering what the Kyrgyz giveback to Russia would be for extending the U.S. lease at Manas didn’t have to wait long. That base is getting costly, especially since the logic for it ends with the operations in Afghanistan, whereas whatever concessions the Russians get in Kyrgyzstan are likely to have a lot more staying power.

Seems like the U.S. isn’t the only one having a bit of difficulty with the “hold” component of “Clear, Hold and Build” in Afghanistan: Taliban fighters are returning to an area in northernAfghanistan just days after being driven off in a combinedAfghan-German military operation. There’s growing concern that theTaliban — and al-Qaida fighters — are forming strongholds in what hadbeen the relatively peaceful north. . . . The reports coming from the Kunduz area raise doubts about thesuccess of Operation Adler. The Afghan Army said it wouldn’t repeat themistake made in past offensives that troops were removed too quickly,enabling the […]