MONROVIA, Liberia — To Liberians, she is President Ellen, or “our iron lady.” Her supporters call her a difference-maker and a straight talker, a leader who says what she’s going to do and then does it. Those qualities have inspired admiration and even love for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president. “She love the country,” Roland Watson, a driver for an aid agency, said. “I think she want to make things happen in this country.” The same cannot be said about Liberia’s former presidents, who presided over 14 years of civil war that claimed 250,000 lives and impoverished [...]
PRISTINA, Kosovo — Standing in front of an aerial photograph of Kosovo’s biggest ski resort, Kirk Adams gets visibly excited. “You’ll get half a meter of powder here” — he points to a ridge on the mountain — “and you have it all to yourself. You’re skiing fresh tracks all day.” The resort, which Adams frequents, is a former Yugoslav ski area in a remote town called Brezovica. The whole complex is slipping into disrepair. Only one of nine lifts is functional. The two hotels are shabby, functional at best. “As a resort it’s a nightmare,” Adams concedes. “But it [...]
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of articles by Rhea Wessel on the rights of Muslim women in Europe, particularly Turkish women in Germany. The stories will appear occasionally on World Politics Review. Read the rest of the articles in the series here. STUTTGART, Germany — Hülya Kalkan recently joined the growing ranks of German women of Turkish descent who have written condemning accounts of their young lives. In her book, “I Just Wanted to be Free,” published in 2005, Kalkan relates how she and, a few years later, her younger sister Esme narrowly escaped being forced [...]
