Radical Movements Archive

Amid the shattered dreams of a grand transformation, Lebanon, a land fabled for its vulnerability to foreign intervention, offered an opportunity, a deliverance from the troubles that have afflicted U.S. policy in the Middle East. Since at least 1990, Syria had established dominion in Lebanon and rendered it a base for all sorts of pro-Syrian militant organizations — Palestinian and Lebanese, secular and fundamentalist. Many Lebanese were not happy with the Syrian order, and the opportunity for change came with the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on March 14, 2005. Hariri was a man with a vision […]

NEW DELHI, India – Amid mixed reports of a rebel withdrawal and relative calm, there continue to be fierce and bloody clashes on the island nation of Sri Lanka between military forces of the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. Some analysts have begun dubbing the ongoing violence the beginning of ‘Eelam War IV’ — a reference to the repeated failure of peace talks in the 20-year-old civil war in the tiny country off India’s southern tip. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa continues to deny such, saying instead […]

This week, Colombia’s re-elected president, Alvaro Uribe, officially began his second term in office. There has never been a more popular leader in Colombia’s history than Uribe. Last year, he spearheaded a campaign to get the constitution amended to allow incumbent leaders to seek a second term. With his typical unfailing determination he succeeded, paving the way for his historic victory in May. In the 2006 May election, the conservative hard-liner won 26.7 million votes, representing 62.2 per cent of the vote. The Oxford- and Harvard-educated president not only surpassed the number of votes he received in the previous election […]