Armed Conflicts

Israel May Even Miss Morsi

By Pierre Klochendler
For Israel, what must be exercised in the volatile struggle for power and democracy in Egypt are, above everything else, three follow-on principles: stability within its institutions, particularly the armed forces; security in the Sinai Peninsula and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which both border Israel; and peace with Israel itself.

Civil Society Fears Taliban Return

By Giuliano Battiston
While United States President Barack Obama and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai scramble to solidify a peace process ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, fears that the Taliban will use the drawdown to seize power hang like a dark cloud over civil society.

Doubts Linger Over U.N. Troops’ Preparedness to Enter Mali

By Lydia Lim
As the new 12,600-strong United Nations peacekeeping forces don their blue helmets and prepare to take over from African-led forces in Mali, a nation consumed by corruption and extremism, concerns remain whether U.N. troops will successfully execute this transfer of authority.

Activists Preserve a Part of Syria’s Revolution

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
For the small town of Kafranbel in Syria, the old saying "a pen is mightier than a sword" still rings true. Every week in Kafranbel, protesters draw posters, write banners and demonstrate against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

OP-ED: Moving Forward to End Violence Against Women

By Lakshmi Puri
Last year, as rebels captured the main towns in Northern Mali, UN Women registered a sudden and dramatic increase of rapes in the first week of the takeover of Gao and Kidal, in places where most women never report this violence to anyone, not even health practitioners.

Sudan Hits Hard at Female Activists

By Reem Abbas
More and more of Sudan’s female politicians and rights activists are being arrested and detained in the government’s clampdown on opposition political parties.

Fleeing with What’s Most Important

By Amy Fallon
If you were forced to flee your home to survive, what would you take? What could you take? Jean Claude “Van Damme” Ndongizimana, 20, escaped from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with just the bag in which he kept his profits from selling milk and the clothes on his back.

The New Fascism

By Johan Galtung
The atrocious Second World War left behind lasting damage by lowering our standards for what is marginally acceptable.

Grapes of Wrath Sour Wine Market

By Pierre Klochendler
So much about wine is a boast over its land of origin. The label reads, ‘Product of Israel’, but don’t let that deceive you. This particular Cabernet Sauvignon is produced in Israeli-occupied territory.

Afghan Refugees Dig Their Heels into Pakistani Soil

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Muhammad Shakoor, 42, calls Pakistan home. Born in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, he was bundled across the border during the Soviet invasion of his country in 1979 by his family fleeing the chaos of war.

Q&A: Through “My Afghanistan”, Rural Afghans Share Their Stories

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
A bomb blast on a road. A suicide attack near a grocery store. Such is the uncertainty for ordinary men and women in Afghanistan, where daily life is still marred by violence.

Education in Afghanistan – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Shelly Kittleson
Despite impressive advancements in enrolment rates, media reports of gas attacks on girls’ schools, shoddy books, and a lack of classroom facilities continue to mar the reputation of the education system in Afghanistan.

Creating Their Own Spring

By Karlos Zurutuza
The soldiers of former Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi had left just a few days before, but a group of about 50 children were already singing in the Amazigh language in the village of Yefren, 110 kilometres south of Tripoli. This month will mark two years since the establishment of the first Amazigh school in Libya.

Time Still Not Right for Congolese Refugees to Return

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
Tuyisenge*, a former teacher from the Democratic Republic of Congo province of North Kivu, sat on a tree stump watching his fellow refugees go about their lives along the terraces of the hillside Kigeme Refugee Camp in southern Rwanda.

Salvadoran Military List of Victims a Smoking Gun

By Edgardo Ayala
The Salvadoran army kept a detailed list of names and photographs of leftists detained or sought during El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war. The report is the first official military document proving the armed forces’ direct involvement in forced disappearances and other abuses.

Karzai ‘Willing to Join’ Taliban Peace Talks

By AJ Correspondents
The Afghan government has signaled it might join talks with the Taliban a day after President Hamid Karzai said he would boycott any peace talks unless they were led by his government, a spokesman from his administration told the AP news agency.

Border Weakens Between Bombs and Cherries

By Walter García and Pierre Klochendler
It all happened within ten days – Syria’s civil war fought metres away from Israeli orchards abutting the ceasefire line; Austrian peacekeepers hastily evacuating the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separates Israel from Syria; fears of a total collapse of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). All while the cherry-picking season is at its peak.

U.S.-Taliban Talks Set to Begin

By Jim Lobe
Nearly 12 years after the United States ousted the Taliban from power, the White House announced Tuesday that the United States will begin formal talks with the militant Islamist group in Qatar later this week as part of Afghanistan's national reconciliation process.

Colombia, the United States, and Montesquieu

By Johan Galtung
The United States and Colombia are the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas. Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

The Taliban Torches a Lifeline

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
The United States is laying meticulous plans ahead of its 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it has clearly overlooked how its continued drones strikes on the tribal areas of neighbouring Pakistan will affect the much-anticipated pullout.

Kurds Advance, Into the Unknown

By Karlos Zurutuza
A ban on political and even social gatherings, a bar on Kurdish language and culture; uprooting people, forced disappearances and a ‘caste’ of hundreds of thousands of local Kurds deprived of citizenship... life for Kurds in pre-war Syria was probably as dire as it is today for their kin in Iran.
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