Yesterday morning, I attended a lecture and discussion led by Tatyana Zhukova titled ‘From Nomads to Central Asian Tigers’ about her home country of Kazakhstan at the World Affairs Council – San Diego. Zhukova, an ethnic Russian, worked for several years as an economic specialist for the US embassy in Kazakhstan and recently moved to […]
Sunnis, Shi’a, secular and sectarian citizens alike, Iraqis have been debating the issues that come with US military occupation for years now. But one week ago, the Iraqi Parliament came together, despite their different beliefs, and passed the Status of Forces Agreement by a vote of 149-35. There were dissenters, of course; most were Sadr […]
Thursday, December 4, 2008 marks the 5th round of US-China bilateral trade talks, formally named the Strategic Economic Dialogue, and jointly facilitated by US Sec Treas Henry Paulson and Chinese VP Wang Qishan. While topics for discussion include product safety, environmental issues, and revaluation of the Yuan, the heavyhitter this round centers around the global financial […]
In a blistering op-ed piece in The Zimbabwe Times Clapperton Mavhunga wonders whether the recent clashes between police and military are not merely a diversion from the real issues.
The African Elections Database is an invaluable resource (and a dangerously seductive time-waster). I would strongly encourage you to bookmark it, and I am adding it to the (still under construction) blogroll.
In The Washington Post Peter Fromuth advocates taking a new approach to piracy and abandoning a strategy that he argues has been largely the same for two-thousand years.
The rising political tensions between India and Pakistan are having a direct impact on Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia. The two regional powers have traded influence in Afghanistan to try and outmaneuver the other and it is Pakistan's security apparatus's greatest fear right now that India currently has the upper-hand with US-backed Karzai […]
The fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo appears to have achieved a brief, tentative interregnum. But The Mail & Guardian argues that the calm is deceptive. Meanwhile there are fears that Rwanda is helping to stir trouble in its vast neighbor's eastern provinces, right in Rwanda's own backyard.
Recent polling data indicates that South Africans simply have no real sense of who Kgalema Motlanthe is or what he stands for. This is exactly as Jacob Zuma would like it, as a cipher as placeholder in the office of the president only strengthens Zuma's claim on the position. The Congress of the People is […]
Ghana is gearing up for a presidential and parliamentary election this weekend. The West African country that became the first to break the shackles of colonialism is now seen as one of Africa's success stories. With oil riches on the way by 2010 the stakes are high. Can Ghana avoid the so-called oil curse and […]
A spokesman for the South African government has indicated that the antagonists in Zimbabwe are close to achieving a power-sharing agreement. If this is the case (and I, for one, am hopeful but am not holding my breath) it seems likely that the current cholera emergency coupled with the instability brought about as the result […]
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African president FW de Klerk have written to President Kgalema Motlanthe requesting that he set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the arms deal that has so shaped and warped the current South African political climate. It is hard to imagine what rationale Motlanthe or the ANC […]
Anna Husarska, senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee, looks at the Congo crisis in a column in The Guardian and wonders what it will take to broker peace in the most deadly conflict since World War II. Her suggestions, while incontestable, are also somewhat underwhelming: Keep international attention focused on the conflict in […]
I am not customarily in the business of giving advice to pirates. They have their interests, I have mine, and rarely the twain doth meet. Nonetheless, I would strongly discourage the Somali pirates from extending their trade to passenger liners. Low-intensity attacks on merchant ships are one thing. Menacing — or to use a variation […]
Well, well, well — just when I posit that we have seen relatively few differences between COPE and the ANC here comes a potential whopper. Philip Dexter, a “senior member” (whatever that can possibly mean for a party that has not fully launched yet) of COPE has put forward a position on Zimbabwe and Robert […]