Asia-Pacific Archive

Salim Hamdam, the man known as Osama Bin Laden’s driver, was released by Yemen after serving out the rest of his sentence following his transfer from Gitmo last year. Hamdam’s case was profiled in a WPR feature article by Brian Glyn Williams, who testified as an expert witness for the defense in Hamdan’s military commission proceeding. Williams’ expertise on the 055 Brigade, al-Qaida’s paramilitary force in Afghanistan, helped convince the commission that Hamdan was a lawful combattant, entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and not a terrorist.

CAMBODIA MARKS ANNIVERSARY, BUT NO CLOSURE — Cambodia marked the 30th anniversary of the demise of the Khmer Rouge regime Jan. 7 with memorials for the suffering of millions. But the country remains haunted by the knowledge that perpetrators of Cambodia’s greatest crime have yet to stand trial for their crimes. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime held sway over Cambodia from 1975-1979, a period in which millions of Cambodians died from torture, overwork, starvation and executions. In early 1979, a joint Vietnamese-Cambodian force toppled the regime, bringing in a new government largely beholden to its Vietnamese allies. Some Cambodians object […]

I’ve seen quite a few headlines recently trumpeting the Sri Lankan government’s victory in its counterinsurgency against the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) terorist/guerilla insurgency. That comes on the heels of the military’s capture of the LTTE’s “capital” of Kilinochchi. But the news out of Sri Lanka today about the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunga, an anti-government newspaper editor, made me feel like Brian Calvert’s fascinating, three-part series (here, here and here) on the information war that is part and parcel of the government’s counterinsurgency was worth a second look. Especially Part II, which begins as follows: No one understands the importance of […]

First of a three-part series. Part I: Camp CrucibleDAMAK, Nepal — When Matimya Moktan, 41, saw her husband Manbahadur standing unannounced in their doorway after a nine-year absence in prison, her heart sank. “I was sad to see him back here again,” said Matimya, one of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees living in United Nations-administered camps in eastern Nepal. “I had hoped I would see him again in Bhutan, but his standing back in our doorway meant we may never get back there,” she adds, seated in the corner of the family’s dark wattle-and-daub hut in the Beldangi I refugee […]

Not long ago, Sam Roggeveen took me to task via email for saying, “. . . the Bushadministration viewed India predominantly through the lens of Chinapolicy.” I was contrasting that with the Obama administration’s rollout of a “regional approach” that seemed to view India more through the lens of Afghanistan-Pakistan policy. Sam’s two-word admonition? Evidence, please! I think this, via the Times of India, might count as evidence. According to DefenseNews, the P-8 is a long-range maritime recon aircraft, and the ones India just signed with Boeing for will be fitted with “sonar buoys, torpedoes and aerial depth-charge bombs.” That, […]

For obvious reasons, this lede from Keith Bradsher’s IHT piece describing how the Chinese are cooling to U.S. government debt got me clicking through to the Merriam-Webster definition of the word, “crisis”: China has bought more than $1 trillion in American debt, but as theglobal downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more ofits money at home — a shift that could pose some challenges to the U.S.government in the near future but eventually may even produce salutaryeffects on the worldeconomy. Theword has its roots in medical usage, and me being the optimist that Iam, I’d identified it with […]

The outcome of recent parliamentary elections in Bangladesh has not only paved the way for the return of parliamentary democracy, but has also demonstrated that the highly religious but moderate Muslim nation of 144 million is unwilling to embrace divisive Islamist political parties. The elections, initially scheduled for 2007 and the first since 2001, followed the lifting of a state of emergency last month. Led by Sheikh Hasina of Awami League, the secular Grand Alliance — or Mohajat — swept the elections, decimating former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and its ally Jamaat-e-Islam, and sending a clear […]

Ten days ago, I referred to this M.K. Bhadrakumar piece in Asia Times Online as “speculation.” In the meantime, things have moved pretty quickly, and the direction they’re headed in lends increasing weight to the scenario Bhadrakumar sketched out. In a nutshell, the Afghanistan Surge is essentially a done deal, with logistical preparations for an additional 30K troops already underway. That, in turn, creates a need for more secure supply lines than is presently the case via land routes through Pakistan. There are essentially three alternatives: the East-West Corridor by boat, rail and road via Georgia-Azerbaijan-Turkemenistan; airlift via Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan […]