After suffering through months of intense battles between Islamist militants and the army, the impoverished northwestern region of Pakistan must now endure the severe ramifications of a fierce wave of flooding in September that has so far claimed close to 2,000 lives, wiped out whole villages, and left innocent families clinging to the tops of their submerged homes hoping to be rescued.
Just weeks after widespread ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan killed hundreds of people, destroyed thousands of houses, and caused hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks to flee their homes, widespread abuse by Kyrgyzstan’s law-enforcement agencies is again fueling tensions.
The leaders of the G20 will meet on April 2 in London. One item on their agenda will be to consider enhancing the International Monetary Fund’s role in international financial governance. This can only be successfully achieved if the IMF undergoes substantial reforms that require either difficult political compromises or amendments to the Fund’s Articles of Agreement, the formal international treaty that created the IMF and that has only been amended three times since the organization’s inception in 1946.
It’s official. President Barack Obama now fully owns the war in Afghanistan. Standing alongside his military advisors and in front of the Washington press corps, he outlined a plan with “a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” While the goal and the five objectives to meet this goal are clear, they’re also unattainable and will likely result in the U.S. (and NATO) being trapped in the region for decades to come.
Accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore called on the nations of the world to mobilize to avert climate disaster “with a sense of urgency and shared resolve that has previously been seen only when nations have mobilized for war.”
This report measures in fiscal terms how far our own nation has to go to reach that goal.