Armed Conflicts

U.S. Military Assistance to Central Asia Highly “Opaque”

By Carey L. Biron
U.S. military assistance to key Central Asian governments has increased dramatically in recent years, but remains highly “unexamined”, according to new research presented in Washington on Tuesday.

Caught Between Islamists and the Military

By Ahmed Usman
Locals in the city of Maiduguri in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno have intensified their calls for the military to withdraw from the town, the stronghold of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, after claims that they are being maltreated and abused.

Q&A: “A Stable, Lasting Peace Treaty for Colombia Will Take Time”

By Patricia Grogg
As peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas are about to start in Oslo, the possible participation of rebel leader Simón Trinidad, in prison in the United States, has not yet been decided.

UN Envoy to Syria Calls for Eid Ceasefire*

By AJ Correspondents
The U.N.-Arab League envoy has called for a ceasefire in Syria during the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, as the revolt against the Syrian government enters its 20th month with a death toll of more than 33,000.
Weapons exports are flourishing in Spain. Carsten Lorentzen/CC BY 2.0

Purveyors of Death Flourish in Spain During Crisis

By Inés Benítez
At the height of the economic and financial crisis, the Spanish government is promoting the export of weapons, creating concern among civil society organisations that say commercial interests are prevailing over the law and human rights.

Syria Stands Between Egypt and Iran

By Walter García, Adam Morrow, and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
The election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi to the presidency this summer was followed by a flurry of conjecture that the restoration of Egyptian-Iranian diplomatic relations – frozen since 1979 – was in the offing. Yet despite some initial indications to this effect, local analysts now say such speculation appears to have been premature.

Caged in the Great City

By Walter García and Pierre Klochendler
Ali Shuruf turns on the lights, that shine into a gaudy living room. Beyond the window, the dominant colour is uniformly grey: the house stands literally against a wall. Not just any wall – the infamous eight-metre cement wall separates Palestinians from Israelis.

The Key to Damascus Could Lie at the Borders

By Walter García and Zak Brophy
A group of six men listen as voices crackle through a walkie-talkie. They are sitting in a farmhouse in the north of Lebanon less than a kilometre from the Syrian border. The sound of gunfire and shelling in the distance sporadically punctuates the atmosphere. One of the group returns to the room after taking a telephone call. “Good news from the battle,” he exclaims with a smile.

Israel Gives U.S. Election Company

By Pierre Klochendler
The timing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for early elections is no coincidence. The incumbent Prime Minister’s strategy is to receive the Israeli public’s renewed confidence as a new U.S. president takes office, thus making himself immune to U.S. pressure as the debate on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme enters a critical phase. 

Girls Determined to Fight Guns With Books

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Shazia Begum, one of three girls injured in the attack on the Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai says the Taliban had sought to silence a very influential schoolgirl.

New Threats, Same Old U.S. Hegemony

By Raúl Pierri
Although it admits that it cannot be a long-term solution, Washington insists on strengthening the armed forces in Latin America, to confront “new threats,” including citizen insecurity. But activists argue that it is only another means of maintaining control over the region.

Tribal War Simmers in Libya’s Desert

By Walter García and Rebecca Murray
A group of Tabu fighters with mud-splattered trucks rest on the outskirts of Zweila, a small historic slave-trade stop in Libya’s southwest Sahara.

Anti-Iran Hawks Maintain P.R. Offensive

By Jim Lobe
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly last month that Iran’s nuclear programme was unlikely to breach his “red line” for presumed military action until next spring or summer, many observers here looked forward to some relief from the nearly incessant drumbeat for war by U.S. neo-conservatives and other hawks.

Clock Running Out on Afghan Political Solution

By Carey L. Biron
After more than a decade of international military intervention in Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers have come to accept that a political solution is the way forward in Afghanistan, analysts here are suggesting.

Bounty Offered in Pakistan Activist Shooting

By AJ Correspondents
The Pakistani government has offered a Rs10 million (105,000-dollar) bounty for the capture of the Pakistani Taliban assailants who shot Malala Yousafzai, a teenage rights and education activist in the northwestern Swat Valley, officials say.

Untreated Mental Illness the Invisible Fallout of War and Poverty

By Stephen Leahy
About 50 percent of Afghanis over 15 years of age suffer from mental health problems - depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. In northern Uganda, nearly every family suffered during the vicious 20-year rebellion during which thousands of children were kidnapped and turned into child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army.

How the U.S. Quietly Lost the IED War in Afghanistan

By Gareth Porter
Although the surge of “insider attacks” on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban.

U.S.: Romney Assails Obama’s “Passivity” in Foreign Policy, Middle East

By Jim Lobe
In what was billed as a major foreign policy address, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney Monday assailed Barack Obama for “passivity” in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, arguing that it was “time to change course” in the Middle East, in particular.

Besieged Homs Areas Endure Heavy Bombardment

By AJ Correspondents
Syria's military has intensified its shelling of rebel-held areas of the city Homs, activists say, amid reports of aerial and ground bombardment elsewhere in the country.

World Forgetting Palestinian Rights

By Walter García and Pierre Klochendler
The annual debate has just wrapped up and, already, the certainty is that if last year Palestinian statehood auspiciously dominated the international agenda, this time, the issue vanished from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and will vanish even further from world affairs.

OP-ED: Polio Eradication – A Reflection on the Darfur Campaign

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Dr. Sam Agbo
It was early July 2004, and Darfur was looking like a war zone - massive human displacements of an estimated one million people, ongoing skirmishes, inclement weather, a parched landscape due to the recurring droughts, and sheer misery everywhere.
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