Domestic Politics Archive

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A U.N.-backed court in Cambodia has begun its initial hearings into war crimes allegations with mixed success and predictions of a long and bumpy road ahead for a tribunal described by legal experts as more complex than the Nuremberg trials held immediately after World War II. Its importance was underscored by the United States ambassador at large for war crime issues, Stephen Rapp, who called the Khmer Rouge tribunal “the most important trial in the world.” Rapp, in Phnom Penh for the start of the proceedings, drew parallels between the Khmer Rouge tribunal and the trials […]

Mexico’s next major political milestone, the 2012 presidential election, is still off on the horizon, but for the impatient, Sunday’s gubernatorial contest in Mexico state offers a sneak preview of what to expect a year from now. The campaign to govern the most populous state in the country pits the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) Eruviel Ávila against Luis Felipe Bravo Mena of the National Action Party (PAN) and Alejandro Encinas of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Despite the stature of both Bravo Mena and Encinas — a former presidential chief of staff and a former mayor of Mexico […]

Iraq’s long-suppressed Shia majority is in the ascendancy. Thousands of pilgrims flocked to a Baghdad shrine this week in a vibrant expression of religious identity that would not have been tolerated under the ruler of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Against the backdrop of a sputtering economy and a spate of scandals battering India’s global image, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is in Washington today. The visit — largely touted as a damage-control and public relations initiative — will see the senior minister meet U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and American industry leaders to reinforce the message that the Indian growth story is still robust and that the country remains an attractive investment destination. The timing of the Mukherjee-Geithner summit is also significant, as it takes place shortly before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to New Delhi in July […]

Turkish riot police used tear gas to break up a rally by thousands in Istanbul, demonstrating over court rulings banning newly-elected pro-Kurdish MPs from taking their seats.

Last month, the Australian government announced that it would pursue a deal with Malaysia to resettle some Australian-bound asylum seekers. In an email interview, Matthew J. Gibney, an expert in asylum policies at Oxford University, discussed Australia’s “Malaysian Solution.” WPR: How would the Australian government’s “Malaysian Solution” operate? Matthew J. Gibney: The “Malaysian Solution” is a deal, initially outlined on May 7, but yet to be finalized, between Australia and Malaysia, under which up to 800 asylum seekers who land in Australian territories would be transferred to Malaysia. In Malaysia, the asylum seekers would be processed for refugee status by […]

Recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans and Europeans don’t want NATO to widen its war against embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. So long as the West’s low-and-slow approach to regime change continues to weaken the dictator, there is good reason to stick with President Barack Obama’s strategy of limited intervention. Yet as international cameras focus in on Libya, a prospective tipping point for the future of the Middle East becomes all the more visible in Syria, despite that country’s ban on international journalists. And although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken an admirably tough line regarding the […]

The capture this week of La Familia Michoacana drug cartel boss José de Jesús Méndez, aka El Chango or the Monkey, represents a shiny notch on the belt of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, whose five-year-old presidency has been defined by its war against drug kingpins. But the arrest is unlikely to stem the ongoing violence that has caused frustrations to mount among Mexican voters ahead of the nation’s 2012 presidential election. In fact, it’s likely to have the opposite effect, says Sylvia Longmire, a former special agent with the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations and author of the […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on rebel groups in Central Africa. Part I examined recent moves toward peace and stability in Chad and the Central African Republic. Part II examines ongoing instability in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) are dismantling rebel groups and moving toward greater stability, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are continuing on a violent path. On July 9, Sudan will become two nations. The Republic of Southern Sudan, which will enter independence as one of the poorest […]

Senegal’s president has blinked in the face of riots in the capital city of Dakar and withdrawn a proposed change to the country’s electoral law.

Thailand has enjoyed a relative calm in the past few months. Political demonstrations have been orderly, and a string of bombs that shook the capital toward the end of 2010 did not continue into 2011. This lull, however, could be merely the calm before another storm. In fact, with a general election scheduled for July 3, a distinct lack of fundamental change characterizes Thailand’s faulty democratic system, offering scant hope for a political resolution to the country’s longstanding fault lines in the short-to-medium term. A key prerequisite for any definition of democracy is that elections decide who governs. In Thailand, […]

Last week, the Islamist group Boko Haram bombed Nigeria’s police headquarters in Abuja, killing six. In an email interview, Jennifer Giroux, a senior researcher at the Crisis and Risk Network at ETH Zurich, discussed Nigeria’s rebel groups. WPR: Who are the main rebel groups in Nigeria, and what are their main objectives? Jennifer Giroux: Nigeria is a complicated case. One can delineate two types of rebel groups. The first operates in the south in the Niger Delta, where decades of poor natural-resource management has left the region in a state of low development, high poverty and significant environmental damage. The […]

I just wanted to add a couple of final thoughts to my post last week on the Libya . . . war. I initially agreed with the Obama administration’s sense that the U.S. participation did not rise to the constitutional threshold of war powers. But just about every online writer whose opinion I respect considers that assessment to be not only unconvincing but ridiculous on its face. That, combined with the fact that we now know the administration arrived at it by cherrypicking its own internal legal advice, makes me realize that I, like the Obama administration, was taking an […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on rebel groups in Central Africa. Part I examines recent moves toward peace and stability in Chad and the Central African Republic. Part II will examine ongoing instability in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On June 12, the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) and the country’s last major rebel force, the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace, signed a peace agreement. The following day, mediators in Chad reached a peace deal with the Popular Front for Reconstruction, a rebel movement based in the CAR […]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has represented the face of Iran for the West for more than half a decade, is on his way out of power in Tehran. Whether or not the ayatollahs formally push him out of office is yet to be seen. But for practical purposes, the Ahmadinejad era of the Islamic Republic’s history is coming to an end. Two years ago, during the height of the pro-democracy protests that followed Iran’s presidential elections, most of the country’s most powerful clerics stood steadfastly behind Ahmadinejad. As millions of Iranians took to the streets accusing Ahmadinejad and his […]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement Monday that he desires a second term as president but won’t run against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin should Putin declare his candidacy has inspired heightened speculation over Russia’s unusual power-sharing duo ahead of elections next March. When attempting to understand the Putin-Medvedev dynamic, Ben Judah, a London-based policy fellow and Russia specialist with the European Council on Foreign Relations, says one must take care not to view the two as being in competition with each other. “It shouldn’t be confused as a battle between two rivals,” Judah reminded Trend Lines earlier this week. “The tandem […]

Nationalists and unionists clash in a second night of violence in Northern Ireland.