America’s new-old military thinking, Paul Rogers
The centre of the wars that the western powers, principally the United States and Britain, are involved in has moved east. Afghanistan, where the "war on terror" was launched in October 2001, has replaced Iraq as the site of their...
Afghanistan and Iraq: western wars, genocidal risks , Martin Shaw
The war in Afghanistan is intensifying, especially in the southern province of Helmand where western coalition forces are attempting to take the fight to the Taliban. The inevitable result is an increase in deaths and injuries (often disabling...
Xinjiang and Tibet: China’s ethnic trap, Temtsel Hao
The ethnic protests and clashes in China's westernmost region of Xinjiang on 5-6 July 2009 and the following days have caused around 200 deaths. The deadly violence, mainly between the Uyghur (and Muslim) population and the Han Chinese - but...
Hugo Chávez: a leader’s destiny, Enrique Krauze
The sacralisation of history is an ancient practice in Latin America. In the region's Catholic countries, stories of the past, with their heroes and their villains, became instant paraphrases of the Holy Story, complete with martyrologies, holy...
Ingushetia abandoned, Varvara Pakhomenko
Getting rid of presidents in Northern Caucasian republics rarely ends well. An explosion is bad news: when Akhmat Kadyrov was killed in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov came to power. When Murat Zyazikov was replaced in Ingushetia, Basaev immediately...
Georgia: social chasm, political bridge, Robert Parsons
The arguments in the kitchens and salons of Tbilisi, in its taxi-cabs and buses, its cafes and wine-bars are as fevered today as the mid-summer storms that clatter over the mountains surrounding the city. In the ongoing national row over the
Notes from Samara , Sergei Khazov
For most Russians Samara means the famous "Zhigulevskoe beer", "Assorti" chocolates from Europe's largest chocolate factory Rossiya or Lada cars from the Volga automobile factory in Togliatti. The Samara Region also...
Kashmir's democratic catharsis, Riyaz Wani
In the summer of 2008, Indian Kashmir reverberated with the groundswell of protest. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, heeding the call of the separatist conglomerate, the Hurriyat Conference. This was the first time after the...
Women choosing to be, Rana Shubair
There are many twists in the fate of Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, but in Palestine as a whole. They are all significant steps in the one million mile journey of my people. Gaza, not more than 360 square kilometres, may be a tiny...
Honduras: time to choose, Adam Isacson
There's a clear reason why every country in Latin America so quickly lined up against the military coup in Honduras on 28 June 2009: because it was terrifying.
President Manuel Zelaya's forced removal revived a practice that most in the...
UK minister acknowledges lack of military hardware in Afghanistan, Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal
Lord Malloch-Brown, British minister for the UN, Africa and Asia, admitted in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that British forces "definitely don't have enough helicopters" in Afghanistan. In a statement later issued from the...
"New" Europe to Obama: open letter, openDemocracy
Dear President Obama,
We have written this letter because, as intellectuals and former policy-makers in central and eastern Europe (CEE), we care deeply about the future of the transatlantic relationship as well as the future quality of...
Moldova: new generation, new politics?, Louis O’Neill
Boris Yeltsin knew a little something about obtaining power, retaining power and, ultimately, relinquishing power gracefully when the time had come. It was nineteen years ago this month at the 28th Party Congress of the Soviet Union that Yeltsin...
Leszek Kolakowski: a master figure, Adam Szostkiewicz
Poland, and Europe, are losing our best. A year ago it was Bronislaw Geremek, now it is Leszek Kolakowski. This great philosopher and public intellectual spent years after 1956 in brave and critical opposition to the communist orthodoxy that ruled...
The moon landing: forty years on , David Hayes
Carl Haiming, academic
The moonwalk is a grand, even a "cosmic" diversion from the epic struggles for liberation that mark our revolutionary age. From Vietnam to Cuba, from Northern Ireland to Palestine, the peoples of the world are...
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