Briefing Archive

BOGOTÁ, Colombia – A decision by the Colombian government to release hundreds of guerrillas from state jails has sparked controversy and provoked criticism among political allies of Álvaro Uribe, the Colombian president. Earlier this month, over 150 imprisoned Marxist guerrillas were transferred from prisons to a temporary holding center as part of a unilateral prisoner release that Uribe hopes will kick-start a prisoner swap and prompt the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to free scores of hostages held by the rebels in remote jungle camps across the country. Among the 56 so-called political hostages, […]

Germany has a new superstar. With the publication of his new book “Five Years of My Life: a Report from Guantanamo” [“Fünf Jahre Meines Lebens: ein Bericht aus Guantanamo”], the former Guantanamo inmate Murat Kurnaz has been all over the German media. Even before the book’s official release on April 23, there had already been a feature spread on the Web site of the popular weekly Stern, an empathetic review on the rival Spiegel-Online, and reports featuring the star author himself on both of Germany’s public television networks ARD and ZDF. Typically glowing reviews in all of Germany’s major papers […]

Editor’s Note: Corridors of Power appears this week on Wednesday, but will return to its normal Monday slot next week. SOME EUROPEANS MORE WELCOME THAN OTHERS — High on the talks agenda of George Bush’s hosts everywhere he went in the New Europe was the visa waiver issue. Visitors to the United States from 15 European Union countries haven’t needed entry visas for years, but nationals of the 12 recently admitted members do, and the latter want equal treatment. Among them are the Eastern European countries on Bush’s recent travel itinerary. They complain that they supported Bush on Iraq, and […]

Editor’s Note: Click here to watch a video report related to this article. ISLAMORADA, Florida — Bound at the wrists and ankles, a Cuban man accused of smuggling a boatload of his countrymen from the communist island to U.S. shores is loaded off the deck of a Coast Guard Cutter and onto a small, swift vessel that whisks him to the Florida Keys. There, customs and immigration officials await his arrival at Coast Guard Station Islamorada beneath a picnic shelter used as an impromptu interrogation center. The suspect — a resident Cuban alien — is questioned about the knife, bullets […]

CARACAS, Venezuela — In a fit of rage last Thursday, Maria Bausson gripped her nearly empty water bottle, rushed over to a metropolitan police officer and thrust it into his hand as a nonviolent gesture. “There, have my bottle. It’s all I have,” said Bausson, 22, an architecture student at the Central University of Venezuela. After police blocked the path of university students supporting national reconciliation and civil liberties en route to Plaza Caracas, students allowed their passions to flare. Student leader Yon Goicoechea remounted the vehicle that served as the protesters’ stage and sound system after allegedly getting pepper […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — After a military-civilian clash over disputed land in East Java turned deadly last month, outraged locals are urging Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to act decisively in taming trigger-happy soldiers and reigniting the stalled reform of the Indonesian armed forces. The incident is bound to echo in Washington, where some legislators in the now Democrat-controlled Congress have shown signs of uneasiness over President George W. Bush’s 2005 decision to resume U.S. ties and funding to the Indonesian military, also known as the TNI. The latest uproar was precipitated May 30 when Indonesian marines fired on protestors gathered […]

The Russian government warned that it might implement its threatened unilateral “moratorium” on observing its commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty after an extraordinary conference of the treaty signatories, held this past week in Vienna, failed to address Moscow’s concerns. Russia called for the emergency meeting, the first in CFE history, after complaining for months about the stalemated status of the treaty’s implementation. Anatoly Antonov, the chief of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security and disarmament department and head of the Russian delegation to the conference, told the session that Russia remains committed to conventional arms control in […]

KABUL, Afghanistan — The bus bombing that killed at least 35 people Sunday in the deadliest attack in the capital since the fall of the Taliban may have been carefully planned with a timed device, says one of Afghanistan’s leading conflict analysts, another possible sign insurgent tactics are evolving. The Taliban claimed one of its suicide bombers was responsible for the thunderous early morning explosion that tore off the roof and sides of a bus carrying police recruits and blasted through two other transportation vehicles near Kabul police headquarters, scattering metal and body parts as far as 30 yards away. […]

LONDON — After months of fruitless shuttle diplomacy, threats of sanctions, broken promises and politicking, Sudan’s government has agreed to accept a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers to back up the beleaguered African Union mission in its western Darfur region. The deal, announced June 12 from the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, would bring an additional 17,000 to 19,000 troops and 3,700 police officers into Darfur, a region the size of France where fighting between troops, government-backed militias and rebels has raged since 2003. An estimated 2.5 million people have been made homeless and some 200,000 have lost their lives […]

TEL AVIV, Israel — As a seemingly inexhaustible source of bad news, the Middle East is arguably the perfect place to go in search for the silver lining that the proverb promises for every cloud. The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki demonstrated last week how it is done: In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he argued eloquently that the desperate situation in Iraq should be seen as part of a struggle comparable with the American civil war and he challenged skeptics with the question: “Why expect freedom to come easy to Iraq?” As it turned out, al-Maliki is […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column on the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. HUMAN TRAFFICKING A MAJOR GLOBAL PROBLEM: The U.S. State Department released its annual victims of human trafficking report on Tuesday, looking at the situation in 164 countries and ranking countries on their individual efforts to combat the trade. The annual report ranks countries on a three-tier system: Tier 1 includes countries that are extremely active in protecting trafficking victims; Tier 2 countries are those that may be falling short but are making significant efforts; […]

TORONTO — Credit the apostle of development aid, Bono, for his unbending consistency. In Heiligendamm, Germany, last week, He accused the G-8 countries of obfuscation and creative accounting in their $60 billion pledge to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. His criticism, shared by HIV/AIDS organizations and other development activists, is twofold: That money is not designated solely for Africa, nor does it have a timeline. “We are looking for accountable language and accountable numbers: We didn’t get them,” Bono said in a statement. “Clear year-by-year steps were needed but this labyrinthine language offers no path — it’s a maze designed […]

Hoping to curtail the violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta, new Nigerian President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua sent his vice president to the United States to meet with an international consulting firm that advises world leaders on conflict resolution, Nigerian officials and experts told World Politics Review. Yar’Adua sent Vice President Jonathan Goodluck to Boston last month to meet with staff at the Consensus Building Institute, an advisory group that specializes in “multiparty conflicts.” CBI’s client list includes the United Nations and the governments of Nigeria, Kenya, and Angola, as well as U.N. officials in Sudan. Outside of Africa, the […]

Now what? Is this anyone’s idea of how things would turn out in the yet-to-be-born Palestinian state? After three days of a vicious civil war in the Gaza strip, the Islamic militants of Hamas routed their rivals of the more secular Fatah. In the process, they killed scores of Palestinians. They terrorized their own people, and they made a questionable future even more uncertain. When Hamas gunmen took over the Gaza headquarters of Fatah and emptied file cabinets into the street, what came flying out the window were the best laid plans of politicians and pundits for a future Palestinian […]

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Authorities in Kazakhstan recently passed a constitutional amendment that could allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev to remain in office for the rest of his life, but a Shakespearean drama playing out among members of the country’s ruling family has largely dominated the local media spotlight. At issue is whether Nazarbayev, who has led Kazakhstan since the late 1980s, is running a politically motivated investigation into his son-in-law, who claims to have fallen out of the president’s favor since privately revealing his own interest in running for president in 2012. Actions taken over the past month by Kazakh authorities […]

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to Tokyo Saturday from what he described as a “very satisfying” debut at the Group of Eight summit in Germany. Yet despite being quick to claim some personal success in steering international discussions on subjects including climate change, he returns to another in a series of polls showing support for his cabinet has plummeted in recent weeks. A survey by the Yomiuri Shimbun published Friday (June 8) showed Abe cabinet’s approval rating had sunk to 32.9 percent — a 17 percent drop from a poll conducted by the same newspaper less than […]

MELBOURNE, Australia — One Sydney gardener said he was as happy as a dog with two tails while in Melbourne three suburban blokes who sacrificed their beer brewing operation to save a drought-stricken veggie patch were tickled pink. The heaviest rainfall in years is finally hitting Australia, raising hopes the coming winter could spell an end for the “Big Dry,” which has crippled agriculture, reduced economic growth and imposed severe restrictions on life in the nation’s biggest cities. The rain started in late April and has continued to fall — with a routine unseen for at least six years — […]