War & Conflict Archive

BANGKOK, Thailand — The curiously named Caravan of the Poor, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s own version of Nazi brownshirts who intimidated anti-government demonstrators on the streets of Bangkok earlier this year, has evaporated in the week following Thailand’s coup. Instead, smiling mothers photograph their plastic gun-toting sons who pester to be lifted onto tanks parked in the capital’s streets. Newly married couples choose a backdrop of the flower-festooned armored vehicles instead of the royal palace or a historic temple to commemorate their special day on film. But the calm and the lack of combatants comes at too high […]

MOSHAV HANIEL, Israel — On a Friday night in Israel, somewhere along the portion of the country that measures just eight miles across between the West Bank and the sea, an Israeli family gathered to celebrate. In a home a few hundred yards from the Palestinian town of Tulkarm — from where many suicide bombers have made their way into the heart of Israel — three generations sat under the stars, toasting a 12-year-old girl’s coming of age, her Bat Mitzvah. As the girl’s relatives reminisced of her transformation into a sweet, wise teenager, one of her aunts leaned into […]

A simmering conflict is threatening to start another war in Sudan. This time, it is as much about oil as it is ethnicity. Unequal distribution of oil revenues, bungled oil contracts, and differences in ethnic power sharing are creating new fault lines in an already divided country. The South Sudan Defense Front (SSDF), a former ally of the Khartoum government in its battle against the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), has threatened to attack SPLA positions once again. The group, formed by Riek Marchar, now vice president of the Government of South Sudan, or GOSS, complains that its people […]

QUIBDÓ, CHOCÓ, Colombia — In this part of Colombia, most people don’t want to talk about the fighting between government forces and rebels in what’s been a 40 year long civil war. President Alvaro Uribe Vélez was re-elected in May to a second four-year term and he’s promised to make the long-neglected state of Chocó not only safer, but more of a commercial addition to the nation’s economic prosperity. That first step will mean finding a way to end the fighting between right wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense of Colombia/AUC) soldiers and left-wing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia […]

Had they been short on rally slogans, Sudan activists behind last weekend’s Global Darfur Day could have tapped Benjamin Disraeli’s classification of the three kinds of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics. A new study published Sept. 15 in the journal Science says the U.S. State Department’s death toll estimates for Darfur, released last year, underestimated the count by “hundreds of thousands” of lives. The new study is no news flash for Sudan watchers who have tracked the three-year-old conflict between government-backed militia and rebel groups in western Sudan. They’ve been accusing the Bush administration of low-balling the figures […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — For a time during the dark, stormy night it was feared that rival military factions might clash on the rain-swept streets of Thailand’s sprawling capital for control of the city following a coup during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s absence at the UN General Assembly. But by dawn Wednesday it became apparent that despite calls by Thaksin in New York for the arrest of the coup leaders, no one was riding to his rescue. Pro-Thaksin elements in the military, police and political hierarchy, including the army supreme commander who had talked directly with the mercurial political leader by […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — There are few countries in the world that are in the midst of an armed conflict while also facing a post-conflict situation. Today, Colombia, the third most populous country in Latin America, is confronting such a challenge. Three years ago, Colombia’s President, Alvaro Uribe, initiated a peace process with the Self- Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an umbrella organization of right-wing paramilitary factions. Since then, nearly 32,000 fighters have laid down their arms. In July 2005, the controversial Justice and Peace Law was passed which set out the framework for demobilization, the punishments paramilitaries would receive and […]

SDEROT, Israel — On the surface, life in this Israeli town of 24,000 looks peaceful. The quiet streets, with intersections marked by neat traffic circles, each decorated with a charming sculpture, seem sedate under the harsh sun of Israel’s Negev desert in the south of the country. Agricultural fields in the distance add to a sense of pastoral peace. Suddenly, the Red Dawn warning system jolts Sderot back into the awful reality of life here: Another Qassam rocket has been fired from nearby Gaza. The entire town has 15 seconds to seek shelter or risk death. A moment later, the […]

Six weeks in hell — or, more precisely, in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. That sums up the brutal fighting endured by the NATO troops who took over from U.S. troops in the area at the end of July. But while British, Canadian and Dutch troops have had an unexpectedly hot reception, pleas from the area British commander calling for other NATO countries to “pull their weight” and commit 2,500 more troops to the southern war have fallen on deaf ears. Though 1,000 more Polish troops were announced last week as “on way” to the region, it had nothing to […]

While Congolese waited for the presidential election results last month, I heard several half-truths about Congo. The one that has stuck with me happens to be a favorite among Western diplomats. “Kinshasa is not Congo,” they say, commenting on the east-west tension surrounding President Joseph Kabila’s candidacy. Their premise is sound, but their conclusion is wrong. Kinshasa, which lies in the country’s far west, is the gate to Congo, and whoever holds the key to the city controls national politics. With more than 7 million residents and 12 percent of voters, the capital is also the country’s most ethnically integrated […]

NAIROBI, Kenya — “Hope” is not a word used often among political and security analysts. In the face of past violence and potential genocide, it is even more rare. Yet analysts have used the term in recent forecasts of what lay ahead for the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that held its first democratic elections in four decades a month ago. Still, serious challenges remain. The open availability of small arms, unequal distribution of local resources, the political influence of foreign contractors and combatants, and, not least, the behavior of local armed factions, will also shape the future of […]

This week, an officer responsible for investigating the killing of several Iraqi civilians by four U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq recommended that they be charged with premeditated murder and face the death penalty. If the Commanding General of the Division accepts this recommendation — which is the common practice — he will send these charges to a General Court-Martial that will ultimately decide their fate, possibly sentencing them to death. If these cases reach a military court room, they will no doubt trigger debate on the “justice” of trying American soldiers for their conduct in battle. […]

DAGESTAN, Russia — The newlyweds sat at the front of the dim banquet hall here looking out at their guests. Three hundred people intermittently gathered around the long food-filled tables or hopped around the dance floor, sweating through their fancy clothes as they swished their arms back and forth doing the region’s traditional dance, the lezginka. After three hours of reveling in the southern Russian heat, the flawlessly coiffed bride descended to the floor in her corseted white dress while her groom danced around her holding a fluffy taffeta baton. As he passed it off to various male relatives and […]