War and Peace
Items on the quest for peace and the fact of war
Lebanon on the Brink
Thu 15 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman
The international community is proving feckless in restraining the influence of Hezbollah and thus Iran in Lebanon.
Has Lebanon, one of the few states in the Arab world with a free press, free elections, and a broadly pro-Western orientation, finally plunged into the abyss of an Islamofascist dictatorship? It looked very like that last week as Hezbollah gunmen, well-armed and well-trained, poured into the streets of Beirut and for a while controlled the city and much of the country. Lebanon appeared about to resume the civil war that ravaged it between 1975 and 1990. More than fifty people died in clashes between rival militias.
A Second Look at Annapolis
Thu 13 Dec 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
A “successful” round of talks?
It is more than two weeks now since the Annapolis Conference on Middle East peace convened by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the property of the U.S. Naval Academy. The one-day conference could hardly avoid being seen as a huge anti-climax, in spite of the fact that it was touch and go until just before the event that some of the countries invited would even turn up. The invitees were nearly fifty in number, and included the entire Arab League’s 22 members, representatives of the EU, the UN, China and Russia. The central guests of the conference, of course, were Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Conspicuous by their absence—they were not invited—were representatives of the Palestinian political party, Hamas, and of course, the Iranians, who denounced the conference before, during, and after it took place.
Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations
Mon 05 Nov 2007 • Responses: 6 • by David Aikman
Cynics have already charged that in the Bush administration’s intensive focus on Israeli-Palestinian issues, we are seeing a repeat of the Clinton years. Supposedly, in the seventh and eighth year of any White House administration, there is an attempt to break the deadlock over one of the thorniest negotiating issues in the world: the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians. Just as President Clinton, in his last year in office—indeed, in his final days in office—came tantalizingly close to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in 2000, so President Bush is trying the same ploy in 2007 and 2008. He has dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East region to try to prod the two sides towards an accord, and to mobilize support for any subsequent agreement among regional powers.
Turkey and the Armenian Genocide
Mon 15 Oct 2007 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman
“This is a choice between condemning genocide and endangering our soldiers in Iraq,” was how Tom Lantos, Democratic chairman of the House committee and himself a Jewish Holocaust survivor, summed up the dilemma. Should the House Foreign Affairs committee approve a resolution designating a barbarous mass killing by the Turkish government in 1915 “genocide”? If the full House votes within a few weeks to pass the resolution, which is non-binding on the administration, the White House warned that vital transportation and communication links with U.S. forces in Iraq might be endangered. Turkey could slow down or even halt the passage of U.S. military goods and personnel through the Incirlik airbase in eastern Turkey. To underscore the threat, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week in a phone call with President Bush specifically threatened a Turkish retaliation against the resolution. The day after the Congressional Committee vote, Turkey recalled its ambassador to the U.S.
Burma: Monks vs. Generals
Fri 28 Sep 2007 by David Aikman
Is it possible that one of the most repressive regimes in the entire world, the reactionary and superstitious rule of the generals in Burma, is about to fall? It would be foolish to predict an imminent change of regime in a country where the ruling military clique has successfully resisted virtually all change for nearly half a century. But it is certainly possible. For the fifth straight day, up to 1,300 young Buddhist monks splashed through the monsoon-soaked streets of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the capital of Myanmar (formerly Burma) in outright, but silent, protest against that country’s military regime. The generals, who rule the country, declared the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks, were an “enemy of the people.” The monks would not desist from protesting, they said, until they had “wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma.”
Petraeus and Crocker: The Best of Their Generation
Thu 20 Sep 2007 by David Aikman
The performances of four-star General David Petraeus and Career Ambassador Ryan Crocker before Congress recently were startling for a number of reasons. First, Petraeus, the administration point man for the conduct of the war in Iraq, explicitly denied that his remarks had been even reviewed in advance by anyone above him in the military and civilian chain of command, much less cleared, before he presented them to the U.S. Congress. The White House, in effect, was not in the loop in his Congressional testimony. Second, neither Petraeus nor Crocker “promised” the American people victory in Iraq or suggested that it was even probable; the most they offered was that it was “attainable.” Third, after four and a half years of a war that has become increasingly unpopular in the U.S., here was a fighting general from that war on Capitol Hill being almost mobbed by Senators and Members of Congress who were climbing over each other to shake his hand. Fourth, after four and a half years in which the entire Iraq War has become intensely political, the key figures speaking about it to the American people were not politicians at all, but career professionals: one in the military, one in the Foreign Service.
Iran: The Regime Tightens the Screws
Thu 16 Aug 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Internal factors may yet destabilize the government of Iran, but don’t bet your foreign policy on it.
The photographs were deeply unsettling: seven bodies swung in the breeze from public gallows in the city of Mashad, Iran’s second-largest city. “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) shouted the crowd assembled to watch the public executions. In case the grim message was being overlooked, local TV carried a live broadcast.
This is Iran, early in August 2007, and apparently in the grip of the most intensive crackdown on dissent and political opposition since a purge of the country’s universities in 1984. According to some people, the crackdown on real and suspected opponents of the regime may be as murderous as the Ayatollah Khomeini’s execution of regime opponents in the year 1980, within months of his taking power.
Citizen Reporters in China
Mon 30 Jul 2007 by David Aikman
Cell phones and Twitter accounts are upsetting the status quo in China.
When demonstrators turned out by the thousands in Xiamen, Fujian province, on China’s coast opposite Taiwan, police knew they had a different problem from normal. Protests by ordinary Chinese citizens, mostly against land seizures by pushy developers, take place by the score on a daily basis in China. They are a nuisance to the authorities, and worrisome, but they are ordinarily suppressed by large police contingents before things get out of hand.
Xiamen, on June 1 and 2 this year, was different. Not only was the demonstration much larger than usual—by some estimates 8–10,000 people—but also the demonstrators were summoned, essentially, by cell phone text messages and Internet blog sites.
Dealing with Extremists in Islam
Thu 26 Jul 2007 • Responses: 66 • by Luder G. Whitlock, Jr.
A withdrawal of Western troops from Iraq will not assure that conflict will end.
The relationship between the West and Islam will be one of the most important issues during the first part of the twenty-first century. It has enormous implications not only for the Middle East, but for Europe with its growing Muslim population. The growth of a militant, violently ruthless Islam endangers not only the West, but the world.
Another Middle East War?
Fri 20 Jul 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Aikman surveys the many tangles of the current situation.
Most Americans numbed by daily casualty reports coming out of the war in Iraq—the drip-drip-drip of American fatalities and the veritable torrent of deaths of Iraqi civilians murdered as they shop for groceries—probably just wish the Middle East as a whole would disappear.
Unfortunately for weary Americans, it won’t. The most war-prone region on the planet won’t go anywhere just yet, and there is a strong probability that, before the end of this year, it may have exploded yet again into a cross-border conflagration.
