Briefing Archive

CHINA SENTENCES OLYMPIC DISSIDENT — Two events that occurred within hours of each other on March 24 highlighted a disconnect between the spirit of the Olympic Games and China’s human rights record. Shortly before dignitaries gathered to light the Olympic torch in Olympia, Greece, and launch the flame’s around-the-world journey to Beijing, a Chinese court sentenced human rights campaigner Yang Chunlin to five years in prison. Yang was convicted of subverting state authority. The unemployed factory worker’s crime was to have circulated a petition in 2007 protesting government land seizures that included the statement: “We want human rights, not the […]

The African Union launched an invasion of a separatist-controlled island off the coast of Mozambique last week in part, to bolster the multilateral organization’s image abroad. Around 1,300 AU troops joined 400 Comorian government troops to oust Col. Mohamed Bacar from Anjouan, one of the three islands that make up the Union of the Comoros. In a one-day fight, the AU-Comorian troops gained full control of the island, and Bacar fled to French-controlled Mayotte, the other island on the Comorian archipelago. The only problem for the AU was that hardly anyone noticed the successful mission. In the United States, there […]

Common sense suggests that when a house is burning down, the owners do not charge the firefighters an exorbitant fee to enter. Nor do the owners bar the relief brigade from entry and accuse them of spying for the neighbors down the street. When occupants inside the house start dousing the flames on their own, they are not viewed as betrayers and traitors. Yet that scenario more or less captures the reprehensible attitude of the Zimbabwe government toward the media in advance of today’s (March 29) presidential and legislative elections. The Information Ministry has charged reporters at least $1,700 to […]

In a March 26 interview at the White House with foreign journalists, U.S. President George W. Bush said he had accepted an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss bilateral issues at Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on April 6. Remarking that “It’s important that we have good relations with Russia,” Bush characterized the summit as “a follow-up” to the March 17-18 meeting between senior U.S. and Russian national security officials in Moscow. That “2+2” meeting — which included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the American side, and Foreign Minister Sergei […]

TEL AVIV, Israel — The annual Arab League summits have long inspired cynics to quip that the meetings should not be expected to produce much more than yet another declaration announcing that “the Arabs have agreed not to agree.” Among commentators, this year’s summit in Damascus has produced considerable agreement: the editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat dismissed the meeting as early as February with the harsh verdict that all “the Arab summits, without exception, are unsuccessful, but it seems that the Damascus summit will be the biggest failure of them all.” In the days preceding the summit, […]

Imagine for a moment that the province of Quebec secedes from Canada, becomes an independent nation, and chooses to call itself “Vermont.” Or that the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon breaks from Mexico and becomes the independent nation of “Texas.” How would the United States respond to these developments? Would these names imply that the new countries have a claim on American territory? Does the name of the state of New Mexico create a claim on Mexico’s territory? These are exactly the types of questions facing Greece and Macedonia right now, as a long-simmering dispute comes to a head. NATO […]

Various explanations have been posited to make sense of the ongoing Iraqi Army operation codenamed Sawlat al-Fursan (Attack of the Knights), which has been directed against the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) throughout the south of Iraq. Marc Lynch summarizes the various theories that have gained traction in explaining the motivations for launching the Basra offensive at this juncture, and most of the more persuasive arguments focus on the motivations and rationales of the Iraqi actors: [1] “Iran is liquidating its no longer useful proxies” theory (which would fit this general line of speculation about Iran’s doubts about Sadr and preference for […]

Switzerland’s Social Democratic foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has a subtle approach to the issues that fall within her area of responsibility. When it is a matter of deciding between Swiss business interests and the upholding of human rights, her answer is: “we can do both!” The latest example is the gas deal between the Laufenberg Electricity Company (EGL) and Iran that was signed last week in Tehran in the foreign minister’s presence. Calmy-Rey let it be known that she used the visit to Tehran to explain matters of particular concern to her: among them the “pursuit of the human rights […]

PARIS — U.N. refugee camps in Chad’s eastern province now provide shelter to more than 200,000 Darfur refugees and close to the same number of Chadians displaced by their country’s civil war. But in the absence of any governmental control over the area, both the refugees and relief workers have been increasingly targeted by border-crossing insurgents, militias, and organized bandits that use the region as safe harbor, exacerbating an already desperate humanitarian crisis. The European Union peacekeeping force currently deploying just inside Chad’s border with Darfur was mandated last September by the United Nations to fill the security vacuum that […]

This was supposed to be Syria’s moment in the sun. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had held out great hopes for the events scheduled for the final days of this month. Starting on March 29, Syria will host this year’s Arab League summit. The gathering in Damascus was supposed to bring together the heads of state of the league’s 22 members, providing Syria with a bright stage on which to display its regional stature while bathed in the warm glow of Arab unity. But just like Arab unity and Syria’s regional stature, a successful summit was always a doubtful proposition. By […]

KATMANDU, Nepal — Despite high hopes for Nepal’s “historic” April 10 vote, the early campaign period has indicated that elections will not be free, will not be fair and certainly won’t be fast. Instead, expect ongoing violence between political parties, widespread voter intimidation and a result around, say, two months after election day. That’s not to say the months of planning and millions of dollars will be a complete waste, but the vote probably won’t herald the birth of a “New Nepal,” as so many have hoped for after 10 years of civil war and half a decade of dubious […]

One of the most complex issues related to the “Global War on Terror” that has confronted policy makers, military commanders, legal advisors, and even federal courts has been determining where the “battlefield” in this war starts and ends. This is not surprising. The characterization of the struggle against international terrorism as a “war” by the United States had the effect of forcing the proverbial square peg into the round hole. The law that had evolved up to Sept. 11, 2001 to regulate “war” had simply not addressed a military struggle between the armed forces of a nation-state and operatives of […]

WASHINGTON — Several recent U.S. court decisions are threatening an effort to dramatically reduce Russia’s stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium. The court decisions would eliminate high tariff barriers that have effectively blocked Russia’s exports of uranium to the United States, except for those covered by a 1993 U.S.-Russian agreement for downblending 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from nuclear weapons into fuel for nuclear reactors by 2013. To date, the agreement has helped lead to the downblending of 325 metric tons of HEU, equivalent to 13,000 nuclear warheads. The downblended uranium currently supplies more than 40 percent of the […]

TORRÉON, Mexico — The Merida Initiative is a billion-dollar anti-drug aid package that only a kindergarten teacher could love: The results are not important, just the mere idea that the United States and Mexico are cooperating makes it worthwhile. The focus on the two countries overcoming their prickly past and learning to play nice ignores the fact that their interests in the war on drugs are not the same. What solves Mexican problems won’t necessarily work on American ones, and what works for Washington could make things a lot worse south of the Rio Grande. The increased commitment and cooperation […]

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — On rare occasions, the wasteland that is North American television surprises. During a recent dreary, winter morning, an arts channel broadcast a Senegalese movie that depicted life in the lesser corners of Dakar. A female vendor took her abused friend and daughter into her care, and then she fell in love with a corrupt but amiable policeman. Not much happened, and, if it did, this writer missed it because of a scheduled flight out of town. Nevertheless, the Senegalese movie provided an antidote to the conventional portrayal of Africa in a spate of popular Western movies. […]

MIAMI — Cuban President Raúl Castro was conspicuously quiet during the recent tensions between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador in the wake of Colombian troops’ crossing into Ecuador to kill a leftist rebel leader. Other than a phone call to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Castro made no attempt to sound off against Bogotá’s decision to violate Ecuador’s sovereignty. Havana’s silence was surprising to some, considering the communist island’s historical ties with Colombia’s leading rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. FARC leader Raúl Reyes was killed during the March 1 assault on his jungle camp in Ecuador, about […]

SO WHO WILL LEAD IN RUSSIA? — The election of Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s new president, and the virtual certainty that departing President Vladimir Putin will take over as prime minister has produced a new power-sharing situation, and a new buzzword to describe it: diarchy. Coming up with the term was the easy part. The hard part is carving up the territory before the May changeover. Lyudmila Alexandrovna, a columnist for ITAR-TASS says Putin’s aide, Igor Shuvalov, has been instructed to “draw up a new structure of executive power . . . in which the office of future Prime Minister […]