War & Conflict Archive

Iraqi Shiite politicians and religious leaders are meeting in Najaf this weekend in the hope of overcoming factional differences and reaching agreement on at least a temporary halt in violence by their militias. The key figure in the negotiations is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the influential Shiite spiritual leader who lives in Najaf and who was recently reported to be furious with the record levels of attacks by Shiite Muslim militia and Sunni insurgents. Sistani, who hardly ever makes public pronouncements, was recently reported as calling for a joint effort by Shiites, Sunni, and Kurds to halt Iraq’s sectarian strife. […]

DAMACUS, Syria — The Iraq Study Group report said what Damascus wanted to hear about the urgency for a change of U.S. policy in Iraq and the need to engage both Damascus and Tehran in Iraqi affairs to minimize, if not end, the rising sectarian violence. Speaking to Al-Jazeera television recently, Buthaina Shaaban, Syria’s minister of expatriate affairs, said that the report was a “very important step because it means ending this era of American meddling in the region and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.” Damascus has long objected to the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, and it has […]

WASHINGTON — Developments in Baghdad are not waiting for President Bush to end his elaborate round of consultations on what to do next in Iraq. The White House now says it will reveal its revised Iraq strategy in the new year. But on Saturday, the Iraqis are scheduled to hold an all-party reconciliation conference in an attempt to unravel the skein of crisis and violence that has brought the country to a state of virtual civil war. Sources in Iraq said the much-postponed conference, now brought forward from its tentative date in early January, is not likely to be put […]

EASTERN SHAN STATE, Myanmar — The divide and conquer tactics employed by Myanmar’s ruling military junta to reign in ethnic insurgent militias on the Sino-Myanmar border have further agitated delicate ceasefire agreements with the formerly China-backed rebel groups. Escalating tensions with the junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), have prompted the largest of these players, the 20,000 strong United Wa State Army (UWSA), to re-supply its forces and bolster defenses in an apparent bid to deter a Myanmar Armed Forces attack on their largely autonomous enclave in Myanmar’s Eastern Shan State, dubbed Special Region 2. Since […]

ON THE BOUAKE-YAMOUSSOUKRO ROAD, Ivory Coast — For the passengers on this bus, the trip started encroaching upon its fifth hour. Most had abandoned rebel-held Bouake, headquarters of the New Forces, for the bright lights of Abidjan, where they had families and business. But their bus had been stopped before Yamoussoukro, the Ivorian capital. Armed government customs agents ordered the driver and his crew to unload all the baggage from the bus, where it could be opened and inspected for possible infractions. Few, if any, were found. The bus driver, his shirt stained with sweat, somewhat shrugged off the delay. […]

Things just got worse for Halima, a displaced woman I found nursing burns from a militia attack in Darfur six months ago. Security is at a premium for war-scarred Halima and tens of thousands of other refugees hunkering down in squalid camps studded across war-torn Darfur in western Sudan. Just days after the African Union extended its limp mandate in the blood-soaked region unil mid-2007, its poorly equipped troops — deployed to protect Halima and others — are now running scared. They could be attacked anytime by Khartoum-sponsored Arab militias, the “Janjaweed,” or bands of quicksilver rebels, the other side […]

BOUAKE, Ivory Coast — Officially, Ibrahim Ouattara, 32, is a nonentity in his country of birth. He has neither a passport nor an identification card to prove his citizenship. Should the resident of this central rebel-held city wish to change his status, Ouattara said he faces a Kafkaesque struggle because no one can apply for their identity papers outside of their town of residence. That requires all the paperwork to be sent to Abidjan, more than 300 kilometers away. There, he said, the bureaucracy inevitably leaves one item behind before sending it on for processing to another town where the […]

WASHINGTON — President George Bush met with a leading Iraqi Shiite politician at the White House Monday amid speculation of an imminent change of direction in the U.S. approach towards charting Iraq’s national destiny. Bush said he told Sayyed Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the influential leader of SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, “we’re not satisfied with the pace of progress in Iraq.” The administration has been gathering proposals from several sources on how to put the democratization of Iraq back on track and accelerate an orderly American withdrawal. One source, the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group is […]

This past week, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) once again dropped the “D” word into the midst of the political debate surrounding the war in Iraq. By announcing his intent to introduce legislation to reinstate the draft, Rangel once again drew attention to the fact that the United States continues to wage a long-term war with an all-volunteer force. Then, as if on queue to highlight the “burden sharing” disparity that motivated Rangel’s proposal, we learned that the President’s daughter was busy fighting her own battle to recover the purse she had stolen while dining in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Thus, as […]