WPR Blog Archive

Arab countries not only fail to live up to their human rights obligations, but actively seek to undermine international mechanisms for rights protections, the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) charges in its new annual report (.pdf). “Arab governments not only champion impunity for crimes; they actively seek out and punish those who strive for the establishment of a democratic government that guarantees accountability for all institutions and individuals. Thus, in many Arab countries people are not only victimized by the lack of justice, but also by the very act of seeking it,” Bahey eldin Hassan, CIHRS General Director […]

We’ve been linking pretty regularly in the Off the Radar News Roundups to the Hatoyama government’s difficulty in finding an acceptable alternative solution to the Futenma base relocation in Japan. Which is a problem, because the DPJ campaigned pretty extensively on renegotiating the issue. Clearly it looks like Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will have to backtrack, and clearly there will be political costs to that, among them, possibly losing his upper house majority due to a coalition partner’s defection. Tobias Harris offers some insights into how Hatoyama’s calculations ended up so wildly off the mark. He also makes a compelling […]

In case you missed it, Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher was in Poland yesterday to sign a Status of Forces Agreement. The forces in question are the U.S. troops that will be stationed there to service the Patriot missile batteries that have replaced the “hard” missile defense installations that so riled Russia. In other words, Poland got what it wanted all along, which was an American troop presence, if a less permanent one, to create on-the-ground commitments on the part of the U.S. The fact that Poland has also committed more troops to Afghanistan suggests that whatever offense was taken […]

The EADS A400M is years late and billions over-budget. It’s got defense ministries across Europe holding their collective breath and biting their collective nails. It’s a symbol of all that could be right about EU defense, and all that is hopelessly wrong. But at least it flies. (Photo gallery of the first flight here.)

“Corruption is the great leveler,” 2009 Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani said at an Asia Society event on Tuesday. “We have perfect national unity [on that subject], when we are divided on other things.” Corruption is not unique to Afghanistan, or other developing nations. However, ending large-scale corruption there will be one of the pillars needed to form a stable nation, according to experts at an Asia Society event. Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister, broke down the corruption issue in alarming detail, exposing the shortcomings of both the international and Afghan communities. For a country that recently acknowledged that […]

The bad news is that Russia’s latest test-launch of the Bulava sub-based nuclear-capable missile failed. It’s the seventh failure out of 12 tries for the next-gen missile that’s central to Russia’s efforts to modernize its strike capability. The good news is that the missile, which failed in the third stage while in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, set off an extraordinary spiral light show over Norway. After the UFO scare died down, I imagine people were quite grateful for the display. Score one for soft power. On a more serious note, for all the alarmism during the Georgia War […]

I’ve long felt that the discussion of the Afghan government’s many shortcomings tends to exagerrate the importance of the corruption factor in driving the insurgency. To the extent that the government is corrupt, that’s more a problem for those funding it — namely, international donors. The problem in Afghanistan is that the government is not just corruptbut also incompetent, leaving service vacuums in terms of security andlaw and order that are filled by the Taliban. But worse still, all thereporting suggests that government officials are also actively engagedin either targeting the population or else complicit with those thatdo. I was […]

The junta in Guinea has accused French intelligence agents of orchestrating the assassination attempt on strongman Capt. Moussa Camara that led to Camara seeking urgent surgical intervention in Morocco. France has “energetically denied” the rumors, which is not surprising, but not necessarily very convincing, either. In the meantime, the French ambassador was subjected to a “muscular” search by Guinean armed forces on his way to the airport, with his bodyguards forced aside under threat of RPGs. France has vehemently protested the incident, which is not surprising, but pretty convincing. In particular, I’d be very surprised if the French troops stationed […]

I mentioned a WSJ article last week that reported that Georgia would be deploying a brigade to Afghanistan. That raised my eyebrows, since a Georgian brigade can be as much as 3,300 troops. But Joshua Keating found this WaPo article putting the number of Georgia troops at a more realistic 900. The WSJ article has since been revised to reflect that number as well, with no mention of a brigade anymore. (Keating raises another interesting point, namely, why would Georgia think that contributing troops to Afghanistan will help its NATO chances, which I’ll try to discuss a bit later.) As […]

A lot has been written, both here on this blog and elsewhere, about COIN being the most significant military transformation to emerge from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this Small Wars Journal post on a Marine Corps experiment to reduce the smallest independent unit of action from the battalion level to the rifle company level struck me as being potentially more significant. The move grows out of stabilization operations, and so is perfectly consistent with the COIN tactical emphasis on small-unit autonomy to react to the local social terrain. But that kind of transformation, once begun, will probably […]

Afghan women face widespread discrimination with little help from a government that is failing to protect them against a rising tide of violence, Human Rights Watch warns in a new report. “The situation for Afghan women and girls is dire and could deteriorate. While the world focuses on the Obama administration’s new security strategy, it’s critical to make sure that women and girls’ rights don’t just get lip service while being pushed to the bottom of the list by the government and donors,” Rachel Reid, a HRW Afghanistan researcher said in a press release. The report, “We Have the Promises […]

Here are a few of this week’s highlights from WPR’s video section: -Romanians are discouraged by their choices for the next president as election day approaches. The Wall Street Journal reports in this video. -Kosovo meets resistance in its fight for independence. This Al Jazeera video shows the push back coming from Belgrade. -Residents of Gyumri, Armenia’s once-prospering second city, contemplate the significance of an open border with Turkey in this WSJ video. -United NationsSpecial Representative in Iraq Ad Melkert discusses the political climate in Iraq in this New America Foundation video. And if you missed our Afghanistan strategy video […]

If you’re looking for a clear-eyed, non-alarmist assessment of Turkey and the bilateral U.S.-Turkey relationship in advance of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Washington on Monday, I recommend Hugh Pope’s brief monograph (.pdf, via Yigal Schleifer). Pope argues that the suspicions that Turkey labors under (hidden Islamist agenda and a “neo-Ottoman” shift to the East) are largely overblown. He recommends that President Barack Obama avoid the many potential issues of conflict between the two countries, and instead focus on two central policy objectives that he says will test Turkey’s true intentions: getting Ankara to recommit to its EU […]

As I suggested, the fact that President Barack Obama stated in his West Point address that he was “confident” additional forces would be forthcoming from NATO allies was a tip-off that assurances had been made. Still, there’s a reason why the NY Times calls them “new troops,” even if you had to read the WSJ’s report to understand why: About half of the pledged troops are already in Afghanistan, as part of last spring’s Afghan election surge, and simply won’t be withdrawn as scheduled. There’s also something else that the Times didn’t bother to mention, and the Journal glossed over, […]

Canadian mining companies continue to face pressure from politicians and human rights advocates to address persistent claims of rights abuses associated with their operations around the world. Allegations of abuse have been swirling around Canadian mining companies’ operations, which account for 43 percent of all the world’s exploration efforts, for more than a decade. Complaints about environmental degradation, health issues and rights abuses have come from communities in over two dozen countries — including Romania, Bolivia, Tanzania, and India — according to MiningWatch Canada. A United Nations report (.pdf) on a 2004 incident in which 73 people were killed in […]

I’d be remiss not to point out this Arms Control Wonk post regarding Iran’s recent declaration that it would build 10 new enrichment facilities. In a nutshell, Joshua Pollack wonders whether the sites might not end up corresponding to the intelligence files the IAEA already has on other hidden sites., what he calls “compliance in defiance”: One way to see it, then, is that the Iranian side has seized theopportunity to get tough by coming clean, or to come clean by gettingtough. In the two-level gameof international diplomacy and Iranian domestic politics, this sort ofJanus-faced response may be as close […]

There are a number of revealing aspects to the reactions of various NATO allies to President Barack Obama’s call for more troops for Afghanistan. First, last week’s reported telephone call to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi makes more sense in light of Italy’s initial signals that it will deploy between 500-1,500 additional troops to Afghanistan. The troops will actually be redeployed from other theaters of operation (Kosovo and Lebanon) according to previous drawdown schedules there. So nothing immediate (the second half of 2010), but probably in line with the U.S. deployment schedule. It’s also a bold political move on Berlusconi’s […]