The torture scandal rocking the U.S. and British militaries in the “war on terror” is shocking because of the serious breaches of international law involved. But it also exposes serious flaws and ambiguities in the international legal framework prohibiting and criminalizing torture.
With the September 19 agreement, the negotiators at least temporarily trumped the hardliners by using ambiguity as a method of achieving common ground. In November, they’ll have to risk both clarity and confrontation in order to get a real deal.
As the king, politicians, and Maoists fiddle, Nepal is rapidly becoming a failed state. An even-bloodier phase looms ahead in the conflict, which has claimed more than 12,000 lives to date. Prospects for peace in Nepal’s ten-year-old Maoist insurgency look as bleak as ever. Even so, Nepal needs to be prepared for post-conflict reconstruction.
The United States has supposedly created new “democracies” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but these endeavors give democracy a bad name. Sure, the two countries have some ingredients of representative democracy, such as elected officials and a constitution. But both countries are still beset by grinding poverty, insurgencies, and entrenched militia forces that make the exercise of democracy either impractical or dangerous. Both countries have high numbers of foreign troops occupying their land and terrorizing the population while hunting “terrorists.” And both countries’ governments answer to their respective U.S. ambassador on most issues. In the midst of such a violent and coercive environment, Afghans are pressing ahead with the latest in a series of “democratic” exercises imposed by the United States: the first Afghan parliamentary elections in four decades will take place this Sunday, September 18. Even though many Afghans hope that the elections will empower them to end their troubles, the fear is that the elections will probably be as undemocratic in practice as every other U.S.-inflicted Afghan institution.
Between Monday, September 17 and Thursday, September 20, FPIF circulated the following sign-on letter via the Internet. Over 1,800 people, mainly academics and foreign policy experts signed the letter–a remarkable response over a short period of time. We sent out a press release Thursday afternoon, just prior to President Bush’s speech to Congress and the country, and distributed the statement to all congressional members. Those who signed included professors from 83 different colleges and universities, students from 40 academic institutions, and people from 18 different countries, ranging from Cameroon to Pakistan to Ukraine. A number of the signers also sent notes and comments.
The devastating bombings which struck the Egyptian city of Sharm al-Sheik on July 24 underscore both the extent of the threat from Islamist terrorists and the failure of the United States and its allies to effectively deal with it.
Lost amidst the publicity about the breakup of the AFL-CIO at its convention last month were two events that, in their own ways, could point to a radically new foreign policy for American unions and workers.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election victory in late June was a surprise
for pundits both inside and outside Iran. Not only did the proverbial favorite
Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani not win, but the turnout was around 60% in both rounds,
so the much-debated election boycott did not reduce participation to historic
lows. Ahmadinejad, Tehran’s mayor, with the help of the security-military
apparatus, mobilized his conservative base in the first round of balloting
to force an unprecedented second-round runoff against Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The
mayor then reached out to the political independent masses to win over 60%
of the vote. The unpredictability and close nature of the result (as well as
of Mohammad Khatami’s victory in 1997) are especially significant in
the Middle East, where elections, when they do occur, are often formalities.1
Within a day of arriving at the United Nations John Bolton, the former lobbyist for Taiwan and advocate for one permanent seat on the Security Council, the United States, had cut a deal with the Chinese representative. China wants to stop an additional permanent Security Council seat for Japan. The United States had promised Japan its support in return for its loyalty over Iraq, but hated Germany more than it loves Japan. So the two agreed to thwart the attempt by the G-4 (Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan), to secure permanent seats during the current reform proposals.
BASRA, IRAQ—The cracking towers and gas flares of the al-Daura oil refinery rise above the neighborhood on Baghdad’s outskirts that bears its name. On February 18, Ali Hassan Abd (Abu Fahad), a leader of the refinery’s union, was walking home from the Al Daura Refinery with his young children, when gunmen ran up and shot him.