Defense & Security Archive

DILI, East Timor — All is calm in East Timor, but tension bubbles under the surface in this island state a few days before the historic, first post-independence parliamentary election, slated for June 30.Fourteen parties and coalitions arevying for seats in an election whose only certainoutcome is the creation of a meaningful political opposition, and thus potentially a more functional democracy than this former Portuguesecolony has ever known. However, only the next few months will prove whether that will translate into the stability and peace needed for real development, or into more trouble. The real political battle is between former […]

The world has dithered in putting together the necessary political response to the humanitarian catastrophe that has ensued in Darfur since 2003. The latest “breakthrough,” with the Sudanese government consenting to a hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, comes after years of stalling by Khartoum, and half-hearted efforts by the international community. In any case, the 20,000 troops will not get on the ground before 2008, and the peace agreement that they are meant to be enforcing remains a dead letter. So not much is likely to change for the traumatized people of Darfur anytime soon, despite French President […]

Before the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm, nonproliferation experts in the U.S. government lobbied the other member countries to endorse another so-called “10 + 10 over 10” plan that would have extended G-8-led multinational WMD threat reduction efforts after 2012. As in 2002, the United States would have pledged $10 billion, with the other seven G-8 governments contributing another $10 billion, during the decade after 2012. If adopted, the U.S. proposal would have extended the “Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction,” launched at the June 2002 G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada. At the summit, however, […]

MEXICO CITY — Alejandro Ruiz Rodriguez, a Mexico City law student, lost a stack of important legal documents last year. Despite searching everywhere imaginable, they never turned up. As a last resort, he asked Jesus Malverde, an unofficial saint beloved by narcotics traffickers, for intervention. Inexplicably, the documents surfaced shortly thereafter. “I don’t know if it was just by chance or if Jesus Malverde was responsible,” the 26-year-old said at a monthly gathering of Malverde adherents in Mexico City. “Either way, I’m here every month to give thanks . . . it was absolutely miraculous.” Like an increasing number of […]

SINGAPORE — Evidence is growing that threads of homespun Islamicextremism in seven countries of Southeast Asia are weaving links amongeach other. Malay Muslim insurgentsfighting an increasingly violent conflict in southern Thailand, forexample, now appear to be receiving assistance from Islamists elsewherein Southeast Asia.The thread appears to loosely wind through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia and even tightly controlled Burma. Mention of terrorism in this region and the international community automatically thinks of the Bali bombings, which killed 202 vacationers in October 2002. But the violence is far worse in southern Thailand, where barely a day has gone by […]

The Middle East, the land that gave the world the very concept of the Messiah, is about to receive a new one. So, why don’t we hear any Hossanas in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Rammallah over Tony Blair’s imminent anointing as the new Middle East envoy by the International Quartet for Middle East Peace? By now, after a decades-long parade of envoys, special representatives, shuttle diplomats, mediators, negotiators, intermediaries, and every variety of peace-making performers and reconciliation evangelists, the one creed that is spreading in the region, beyond the three major monotheistic religions, is the gospel of cynicism. That’s the […]

Editor’s Note: To watch a video on the work of Zakia Zaki, click here. We were sitting in her office overlooking the rust-colored foothills of the Hindu Kush, Zakia Zaki speaking Persian slow enough for me to follow. A man brought in mugs of black tea and joined us. Zaki was the manager of the radio station I was visiting in Jabul Saraj, at the mouth to the mythic Panjshir valley, then half a day’s drive north of Kabul. The gentleman was her deputy. It was a first: I had never seen a man serve a woman tea in Afghanistan. […]

Editor’s Note: Corridor’s of Power, written by WPR Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini, appears every Monday in World Politics Review. RHINEMAIDEN’S SWANSONG — The grand finale of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s six months as president of the European Union (Portugal takes over next week) was not exactly a triumph, but it wasn’t Gotterdammerung either. To stick with Wagnerian metaphors, it was more The Flying Dutchman, in which the 27-nation European Union is destined to sail eternally from one compromise to another. Still, at last week’s EU summit Merkel — reportedly with an energetic assist from French President Nicolas Sarkozy — seems to […]

The revelation that the Office of Vice President Richard Cheney has refused to comply with an executive order requiring it to file an annual report on how it handles classified national security information has drawn attention to several complex issues in the area of government secrecy.Executive Order 12958 — first signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and reissued by President George W. Bush in 2003 — seeks to establish a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified information. Under the order, classification can only be mandated by officials and individuals who can clearly justify their action. The Information Security Oversight […]

While much of the world watched in astonishment as gunmen from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements ripped through the streets of Gaza, terrifying civilians and tearing to shreds the myth of Palestinian unity, observers in Arab lands also found themselves mesmerized and horrified by what they saw. Among Arabs, the images packed a more visceral punch, leaving a sense of profound disillusionment.<<ad>>After all, the West had always viewed Palestinians, with their armed gangs and suicide bombers, with a mix of fear, skepticism, and — among some age groups and political persuasions — a certain amount of admiration. Among Arabs, […]

The Russian government warned that it might implement its threatened unilateral “moratorium” on observing its commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty after an extraordinary conference of the treaty signatories, held this past week in Vienna, failed to address Moscow’s concerns. Russia called for the emergency meeting, the first in CFE history, after complaining for months about the stalemated status of the treaty’s implementation. Anatoly Antonov, the chief of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security and disarmament department and head of the Russian delegation to the conference, told the session that Russia remains committed to conventional arms control in […]

KABUL, Afghanistan — The bus bombing that killed at least 35 people Sunday in the deadliest attack in the capital since the fall of the Taliban may have been carefully planned with a timed device, says one of Afghanistan’s leading conflict analysts, another possible sign insurgent tactics are evolving. The Taliban claimed one of its suicide bombers was responsible for the thunderous early morning explosion that tore off the roof and sides of a bus carrying police recruits and blasted through two other transportation vehicles near Kabul police headquarters, scattering metal and body parts as far as 30 yards away. […]

LONDON — After months of fruitless shuttle diplomacy, threats of sanctions, broken promises and politicking, Sudan’s government has agreed to accept a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers to back up the beleaguered African Union mission in its western Darfur region. The deal, announced June 12 from the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, would bring an additional 17,000 to 19,000 troops and 3,700 police officers into Darfur, a region the size of France where fighting between troops, government-backed militias and rebels has raged since 2003. An estimated 2.5 million people have been made homeless and some 200,000 have lost their lives […]

TEL AVIV, Israel — As a seemingly inexhaustible source of bad news, the Middle East is arguably the perfect place to go in search for the silver lining that the proverb promises for every cloud. The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki demonstrated last week how it is done: In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he argued eloquently that the desperate situation in Iraq should be seen as part of a struggle comparable with the American civil war and he challenged skeptics with the question: “Why expect freedom to come easy to Iraq?” As it turned out, al-Maliki is […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column on the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. HUMAN TRAFFICKING A MAJOR GLOBAL PROBLEM: The U.S. State Department released its annual victims of human trafficking report on Tuesday, looking at the situation in 164 countries and ranking countries on their individual efforts to combat the trade. The annual report ranks countries on a three-tier system: Tier 1 includes countries that are extremely active in protecting trafficking victims; Tier 2 countries are those that may be falling short but are making significant efforts; […]

Hoping to curtail the violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta, new Nigerian President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua sent his vice president to the United States to meet with an international consulting firm that advises world leaders on conflict resolution, Nigerian officials and experts told World Politics Review. Yar’Adua sent Vice President Jonathan Goodluck to Boston last month to meet with staff at the Consensus Building Institute, an advisory group that specializes in “multiparty conflicts.” CBI’s client list includes the United Nations and the governments of Nigeria, Kenya, and Angola, as well as U.N. officials in Sudan. Outside of Africa, the […]

Now what? Is this anyone’s idea of how things would turn out in the yet-to-be-born Palestinian state? After three days of a vicious civil war in the Gaza strip, the Islamic militants of Hamas routed their rivals of the more secular Fatah. In the process, they killed scores of Palestinians. They terrorized their own people, and they made a questionable future even more uncertain. When Hamas gunmen took over the Gaza headquarters of Fatah and emptied file cabinets into the street, what came flying out the window were the best laid plans of politicians and pundits for a future Palestinian […]