WPR Blog Archive

Rights advocates are urging the Zimbabwean government and international community to act to end forced labor and bloodshed related to diamond-mining operations in the country’s east. “The police and army have turned this peaceful area into a nightmare of lawlessness and horrific violence. Zimbabwe’s new government should get the army out of the fields, put a stop to the abuse, and prosecute those responsible,” HRW’s Africa director, Georgette Gagnon, said in a statement. Military forces are involved in a systematically bloody campaign to control diamond mines in Zimbabwe’s eastern Marange district, Human Rights Watch charges in a June 26 report, […]

Interesting bit of accounting by Geoffrey Forden at Arms Control Wonk, who does a “back of the napkin” calculation of how much the Natanz enrichment facility has actually cost Iran. Grand total? $270 million. There are broader costs associated with Iran’s nuclear program, but for now, the most troubling component at the heart of the diplomatic standoff remains the uranium enrichment going on at Natanz. For a facility that now dominates the region’s strategic agenda, that seems like a pretty good return on investment. It also means that whatever actual infrastructure damage, in dollar terms, that any airstrike might cause […]

Six years and nearly four months ago, Washington’s neocon advocates of the war to oust Saddam Hussein predicted that a grateful Iraqi population would welcome victorious U.S. forces with flowers, music and dancing in the streets. It never happened. There was none of the emotional dizziness and tears of happiness that accompanied the liberation of Paris in 1944 — the romantic prototype for such events, and doubtless what the neo-cons had in mind. But those displays are taking place this week. There is music and dancing in the streets as Iraq launches a national celebration to mark its real liberation: […]

When it comes to the stakes involved in today’s Iraq “withdrawal,” so far discussion has focused on the implications for the U.S. project in Iraq. But the outcome, as reflected in the security situation over the next six months, will have regional repercussions as well, because we’re currently applying variations of the same nation-building model we’ve used in Iraq around the Middle East and South Asia. The most obvious example is Afghanistan, and there’s overlap with what we’re pressuring Pakistan to do in the FATA. But there’s also the U.S. involvement in training Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. […]

If you thought Tom Ricks was pessimistic about Iraq in the post-U.S. era, you haven’t read Jari Lindholm: . . .Whatever Iraq will look like after the war is over, it will not be ademocracy. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if next January’sparliamentary election would be the last of its kind for at least acouple of decades. As for the actual “withdrawal” of U.S. troops from cities, officially effective today, Lindholm calls it largely symbolic: This may be a big deal politically to both Obama and Maliki, but on theground little will change for the Americans. They have already […]

Looks like I wasn’t the only one to scratch my head about the eagerness to condemn what transpired in Honduras as an anti-democratic, extral-legal military coup. Jason Steck, writing at RCW’s The Compass, tries to clear things up: What both sides miss is that a “coup” isn’t always extralegal. In short, what is happening in Honduras may be an example of a coup that is not only legal, but mandatory. The oddness of this concept to American minds requires an explanation. [. . .] . . . [S]ome countries explicitly endow their military with a role inmaintaining democratic governance. . […]

When’s a comparison not a comparison? When you don’t intend it to be one. From Haaretz, on French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Sarkozy then advised Netanyahu to fire [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman andbring former foreign minister Tzipi Livni back into the coalition,according to the report. Netanyahu reportedly told Sarkozy thatLieberman came across differently in private than his publicappearances would suggest. French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen also comes across as anice person in private, Sarkozy reportedly responded, to whichNetanyahu replied that Lieberman was not Le Pen and that there was nobasis for comparison. […]

Worth noting that the Obama administration is not the only government facing tough choices about how to respond to the recent events in Iran. Germany, too, has experienced some divergences of opinion about whether a firm response on human rights should take priority over the need for a negotiated settlement to the nuclear standoff. As for the Russians, they’re deciding whether the events should get in the way of a signed-sealed-but-not-yet-delivered contract with Tehran for S-300 missile defense systems. Richard Weitz devoted one of his WPR columns to explaining the system’s significance. In a nutshell, it would make an airstrike […]

As much as NATO coalition partners’ contribution to the Afghanistan War has been criticized over the years, it bears noting that as long as the war is a multilateral effort, Russia can’t hold negotiations over supply routes entirely hostage to its bilateral spats with the U.S. That said, the fact that the tone out of Moscow regarding supply routes in general has been pretty conciliatory of late suggests to me that Russia was authentically on board with the Kyrgyz government’s decision to renew the Manas lease. That reflects the fact that the last thorny irritant left over from the Bush […]

The interesting thing about the situation in Honduras is that while it’s being called a military coup, it’s in fact a contestation of the civilian chain of command over the military, with the actual dispute being between the executive on the one hand and the judiciary (backed up by the legislative branch) on the other. Notice that, having clarified the legitimate body to whom they answer, the generals didn’t seize power, but immediately turned it over to an interim civilian leader. Notice, too, that the referendum in question, which the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional, is of the “constitutional coup” […]

Depending on who you read, or who you believe, the post-election turmoil in Iran has either, 1) faded into a more repressive version of the status quo ante, with a more central role for the Revolutionary Guard and a resigned opposition that no longer credits the regime with any legitimacy; or 2) gone into hibernation mode, with a number of compromise (i.e., political) solutions still possible and/or the revolutionary fervor still roiling under the surface. It doesn’t take a genius to notice that the two are not mutually exclusive. Nor are the two clauses of the second option, for that […]

Two weeks ago, unidentified gunmen targeted Somali radio reporter Ahmed Omar Hashi, aka Ahmed “Tajir,” as he was walking in Mogadishu’s Bakara Market with Moqtar Hirabe, his director. Hirabe died, on the spot; Hashi’s friends rushed him to Medina Hospital, pictured, with wounds to his arm and stomach. The attack was the latest in a series of assaults on journalists. In the following week, my readers at War is Boring, with a big boost from World Politics Review, helped me raise more than $1,600 to get Hashi out of Somalia — and the Committee to Protect Journalists raised $1,000, on […]

In President Barack Obama’s restrained reaction to the upheaval in Iran, pragmatism won out. The administration’s calculation was that, in the long run, the United States was still going to have to do business with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Obama also avoided adding to what is widely perceived as America’s history of encouraging revolutions and then not supporting them. To mention two: References to the 1956 uprising in Hungary resurfaced this week because many Hungarians are still bitter that the West — and particularly the United States — failed to come to their aid in fighting Soviet troops. Radio […]

On any other continent, the tit-for-tat killings of the president and head of the military in what is suspected to be a rivalry over revenues from drug trafficking would have captured the world’s imagination. But when the country in question is Guinea-Bissau — a tiny, obscure, former Portugese colony on the west coast of Africa — those remarkable events barely raise an eyebrow. Yesterday, the International Crisis Group called for international support and intervention to help the political elites in Guinea-Bissau stand up to the military and return to the path of democracy. Just prior to the March 2009 killings […]

DILI, East Timor — Little over a year after declaring his intent to launch an anti-corruption commission, East Timor’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has been hit with renewed graft allegations, this time by ABC Australia. The story claims that Gusmao’s daughter is a shareholder in Prima Foods, a company that received a $3.5 million food-importing contract signed off on by the PM. In what is regarded as Asia’s poorest country per capita, oil revenues excluded, food security remains a pressing issue for many Timorese in rural areas. The annual “hunger season” in the early months of the year, when there […]

World Politics Review friend and contributor Iason Athanasiadis was arrested by the government of Iran this week, and World Politics Review joins the Washington Times, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Global Post, the Neiman Foundation, and Iason’s friends and family in calling for his release. A Greek citizen who lived in Iran as a journalist and student for three years, and who obtained fluency in Farsi during that period, Iason’s coverage of Iran and regions beyond for World Politics Review and numerous other publications has been characterized by a rare dedication to objectivity, intellectual honesty and cultural understanding. His […]

Sam Roggeveen at the Interpreter responded to my post yesterday on the third round of START talks, arguing that the primary motivation for the talks is to reduce the cost of maintaining the two countries’ nuclear arsenals. Although I don’t discount the financial incentive, I think — and hope — that the primary goal of both the U.S. and Russia is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, by leading the effort themselves. I agree with Roggeveen that the Kremlin’s recent statement linking any agreement to the U.S. backing off of European-based missile defense probably doesn’t represent […]