In The News

Fawaz A. Gerges January 23, 2007
One can sympathize with the Bush administration’s desire to shift gears in the Middle East, from merely reacting to Iraq’s instability to actively pushing for peace in the region. Author and Mideast scholar Fawaz Gerges sees Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic mission, however, as a case of too little, too late. Moderate Arab governments offer hollow words of support for the US in...
Roberta Cohen January 11, 2007
Thousands of Iraqis, many moderates and professionals, flee the violence of their nation each month, leaving the armed militias and the poor behind, battling for territory that lacks energy, water and other essential supplies. Before the invasion, the Bush administration had assumed that Iraqis would welcome the removal of a dictator and pursue orderly government. But almost four years later, the...
Alisha Ryu November 3, 2006
A round of Somali peace talks failed to produce a power-sharing agreement between the fragile secular government based in Baidoa and the Islamists who control Mogadishu. The breakdown highlights a long and bitter rivalry between Somalia, largely Muslim, and Ethiopia, with equal numbers of Christians and Muslims. Talks failed, according to this Voice of America report, after the Islamists...
Daniel Pepper September 30, 2006
The ruling military junta in Burma does not care what the world thinks about its rule. Though the junta pays no heed to outside pressure, some neighbors are intent on fostering relations or at least paying the government for permission to tap into its rich natural gas resources. While the Western countries largely shun the military regime, China and India stand ready to pay up to $17 billion...
Dominic Bailey September 28, 2006
Sunbathing tourists have discovered unexpected company on the beaches of the Canary Islands lately, as boatloads of West African migrants wash up on the shores of this Spanish possession just off the Moroccan coast. These migrants make the life-threatening crossing to flee political upheaval in regions like Senegal’s separatist Casamance province and to seek better lives in the schools and labor...
Stefan Wagstyl September 26, 2006
Economists argue that immigration is good for a country’s overall growth – even as some national leaders concede that controlling immigration is near impossible. But other analysts question the social costs of alienation of many Muslims or resentment from working-class Britons about high unemployment rates. Some anxiety also emerges about growth in and of itself, as populations swell and strain...
Rüdiger Falksohn August 31, 2006
For more than 20 years, the Tamil Tigers have fought to establish their own state in Sri Lanka. Representing about 18 percent of the small island’s population, the largely Hindu group suffered persecution for years before signing a treaty with the Sri Lankan government in 2002. Not long after the December 2004 tsunami, brutal ethnic violence broke out with assassinations and bombings of schools...