Briefing Archive

Pierre Heumann of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche spoke with Al-Jazeera Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Sheikh in Doha. This revealing interview appears here in English for the first time. -o- Mr. Sheikh, as the Editor in Chief of Al-Jazeera, you are one of the most important opinion-makers in the Arab world. What do you call suicide bombers? For what is happening in Palestine, we never use the expression “suicide bombing.” What do you call it then? In English, I would describe it as “bombings.” And in Arabic? Literally translated, we would speak of “commando attacks.” In our culture, it is precisely not […]

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 […]

The U.S. and U.K. governments have independently made public statements on the future of their respective nuclear weapons programs in the last week. Considering the timing, it is tempting to conclude that the two events are linked, but in fact these announcements reflect the two countries’ differing approaches to modernization given the unique characteristics of their nuclear arsenals. The Announcements On Monday, Dec. 4, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the British Government decision to replace its four Trident nuclear submarines and reduce its nuclear stockpile to 160 warheads. Following parliamentary debate and a vote scheduled for the end of March […]

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — U.S. lawmakers have again fallen for a steel industry propaganda campaign. The cause this time is a news article that rehashed what has been known for years about the inhumane conditions of charcoal workers in Brazil. Charcoal is used to make pig iron, which is transformed into any number of consumer goods for sale in the United States. Every several years, usually around election time, the United States steel industry stirs up its lobby in an effort to close the U.S. market to foreign competitors. Democrats and Republicans are both subject to the barrage of […]

Guadalajara, MEXICO — The tense situation that appears close to resolution in Oaxaca, Mexico, began in May with a teachers’ strike, a fairly regular event. But with the unleashing of an authoritarian crackdown the following month on the striking teachers, it descended into an open revolt against the governor of one of the Republic’s poorest and most corrupt states. The nearly six months of unrest has left at least 16 people dead and the state economy in shambles. And while some of the parties in the conflict — namely the teachers and a left-wing group backing their demands — have […]

Last month’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the largest meeting of African and Chinese leaders in almost half a century, underscored Beijing’s growing interest in Africa. The attendees included Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premiere Wen Jiabao, as well as 48 African heads of state. The official purpose of the summit was to promote “friendship, peace, cooperation and development.” While much of the media’s attention has naturally focused on the expanding economic ties between China and Africa, Beijing’s increasing political and military presence on the continent also warrant greater attention. Sino-African commercial relations clearly have been booming. Trade rose 35 […]

CAIRO, Egypt — During the latest protest against sexual harassment here last month, women were once again the victims of harassment. This time, however, the assaulters were none other than Egypt’s security policemen. At a Nov. 15 protest, female protesters were stalked, groped, shoved and pushed around. In one case, a woman in flowing black robes and a colorful bright scarf was held by the arm, dragged over a flight of stairs and shaken by her veil as bystanders and a fellow male protestor were hurled back. The humiliated young woman — in her early twenties — was not the […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — Cambodia is on the verge of attracting the attention of business news writers instead of the horror headlines that for so long marked reporting about the Southeast Asian country. Instead of horrendous stories of the murderous and bizarre Khmer Rouge regime that bludgeoned the place back into the dark ages, the news out of Cambodia is set to focus on oil and gas production and refineries and port development. It should be a time for happy anticipation by the international institutions and NGOs that have propped up the country for years. But instead there is trepidation that […]

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez yesterday earned six more years to steer the world’s fifth largest oil producer through what is set to become the region’s most expansive socialist experiment. Amid claims of voting irregularities by the opposition, election officials last night announced that Chávez had won 61 percent of the vote, with 38 percent garnered by conservative opposition candidate Manuel Rosales. Caracas exploded with the news. Fireworks, horns and throngs of chatting supporters broke an eerie silence that had settled on the tense city throughout the day of voting. By 11 p.m., thousands had converged on Miraflores, […]

Editor’s Note: “Corridors of Power” is a new weekly column written for World Politics Review by veteran foreign affairs correspondent Roland Flamini. Each week, Flamini will report news items drawn from his extensive travels and contacts with diplomats and foreign policy officials from governments around the world. White House security adviser Stephen J.Hadley’s suggestion in the leaked Iraq memo that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad should be encouraged “to move into the background and let (Prime Minister) Nouri al-Maliki take more credit for positive developments” must have been good news for the Afghan-born American diplomat. What seems at […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — In South America’s Southern Cone, “Dirty War” wounds are getting a fresh coat of pain. Under populist governments in Uruguay and Argentina, human rights investigators have been turning over old stones to prosecute crimes dating back to the region’s 1970s dictatorships, a period of state violence against dissident citizens known as the Dirty War. And old ghosts are flying. In October, Uruguayan President Juan Maria Bordaberry was arrested for his involvement in the 30-year-old murders of two politicians and two leftist guerrillas. Officials in Montevideo had detained the 78-year-old former leader and his former foreign minister, […]

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 […]

Last month, a coalition of self-styled human rights groups, including the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, announced that it had filed a war crimes complaint in Germany against Donald Rumsfeld and thirteen other present or former U.S. officials. Other sponsoring plaintiffs include Germany’s Union of Republican Lawyers (RAV) and the French-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). (The presence of the FIDH among the plaintiffs is particularly noteworthy, since the FIDH is a regular and substantial recipient of EU financing.) Whereas the announcement will undoubtedly have sent Rumsfeld-haters, Bush-bashers and anti-Iraq War activists the world over into raptures, those […]