In The News

Bad Policies Caused the Lampedusa Tragedy

Hans-Jürgen Schlamp October 10, 2013
A boat carrying 500 refugees sank just within sight of the Italian island of Lampedusa. More than 250 died and more are missing. The refugees from Somalia, Eritrea and other hopeless states took off from African coast just 160 kilometers away. Europe has failed to offer a political solution to the refugee crisis. More than 200,000 refugees have landed in Lampedusa since 1999 with up to 20,000...

US al-Liby Capture Violates Libyan Sovereignty

October 8, 2013
The capture in Libya of Abu Anas Al Liby, accused of engineering the 1998 bomb blasts that destroyed two US embassies in Africa and killed 220 people, represents a violation of Libyan sovereignty by the United States, suggests a Abu-Dhabi newspaper. The United States did not notify Libyan officials. The US should have followed procedures carried out for a raid in Somalia on the same day, where it...

Kenya Pays Stiff Price for Intervening

Peter Fabricius September 26, 2013
Kenya’s intervention in the Somali civil war is the reason given for al-Shabab’s terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall that left dozens dead. The terrorist group, described as weakened in recent years by such intervention, controls much of southern and central Somalia, across the border to Kenya’s east. Kenyan troops had aided Ahmed Adobe, a Shabab rival in driving the group out of Somalia’...

Egypt Court Bans Muslim Brotherhood Activities

Laura King, Ingy Hassieb September 25, 2013
In one short year, the Muslim Brotherhood went from winning Egypt’s first democratic election to being cast as a pariah: An Egyptian court has “banned all of its activities and ordered the confiscation of its financial assets,” report Laura King and Ingy Hassieb for the Los Angeles Times, and they question whether such rapid reversal “by an increasingly authoritarian interim government will...

A Syrian Lesson for India

Nayan Chanda September 11, 2013
The United Nations monitors global weather conditions, population growth, security and refugee populations, and the trends are interconnected in many complex ways. In Syria, severe drought between 2006 and 2010 turned more than half the land into desert, contributing to a vicious civil war: Drought and water shortages led to unemployment, forcing hundreds of thousands into Syria’s cities – many...

People Will Pay if Army Fails Challenge of Political Islam

Amin Saikal September 9, 2013
Political Islam in Egypt – with the democratic election of Mohamed Morsi and one chaotic year in office – took an ideological approach to government, failing to compromise with other forces in society that led the revolution against Mubarak’s dictatorship. After deposing Morsi, the Egyptian military has cracked down on his party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other supporters. Conservative...

Africa and Pakistan Face Polio Outbreaks

Donald G. McNeil, Jr. September 4, 2013
New polio cases are emerging in some of the world’s most unstable places – North Waziristan, Somalia and a Kenya refugee camp. The world had about 350,000 cases in 1988 and 223 cases in 2012, a 99 percent decrease, but polio can spread quickly, especially among children under the age of five, reports the World Health Organization. Poverty and rumors add to the challenges of health care workers....