CFR.org | Sri Lankan War Comes Roaring Back

Escalating violence between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger separatist group threatens to end the shaky 2002 cease-fire and spark another round in a brutal civil war that has caused 65,000 deaths. S.P. Tamilselvan, a leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) called the army’s recent occupation of the formerly Tiger-dominated northeastern city of Sampur a violation of the truce, saying the Tamil populations are in “misery” and warned the Sinhala population, who make up three quarters of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people, that they “face the same fate in the future.” (The Hindu). The terrorist organization, which is known for recruiting child soldiers and pioneering the use of suicide bombings as a terror tactic, has proven a resilient foe for the Sri Lankan military over the course of more than two decades, as this new Backgrounder explains. But the Christian Science Monitor reports that the Tigers are weakened by a breakaway faction, waning support from the minority Tamil population, and the recent crackdown on LTTE operatives in the United States.

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CFR.org | Remembering 'Forgotten' Diseases

New epidemics such as avian flu and Severe Acute Respiratory System have captured media attention in recent years, but more familiar infectious diseases continue to persevere and, in some cases, resurge. Take the case of polio, targeted for eradication by the largest public health initiative in history. When the campaign began in 1988, more than a thousand children a day were infected by the disease. By 2003 the case count had dropped to fewer than 800 a year. But the incidence of polio has been slowly increasing, with over 1,000 cases reported so far this year. More than 200 cases have been reported in India, up from sixty-six last year, and there are concerns the disease may go global after the Indian strain showed up in Nepal, Bangladesh, Angola, Namibia, and Congo (IHT). 

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CFR.org | Chinese Train Carries Controversy

With much fanfare, China opened the world's highest railroad (AP) connecting Beijing with the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, on July 1, the Chinese Communist Party anniversary. An engineering feat, the high-tech train reaches heights of more than 16,500 feet and carries passengers in sealed cars pumped with oxygen across the frozen Himalayas. But two months after its inauguration, the train is already experiencing trouble. Cracks have appeared in concrete bridges and the railbed is proving unstable in certain areas (RFE/RL); one passenger has already died from altitude sickness (The Standard).

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CFR.org | Japan's History Test

Imperial visits to the controversial Yasukuni memorial stopped almost thirty years ago. A 1988 memorandum, leaked last month, revealed that the late Japanese Emperor Hirohito ended his visits after the enshrinement of war criminals at the memorial in 1978. "That is why I've since stopped visiting. That is how I feel in my heart," said Hirohito (Yomiuri). But the imperial memo hasn't stopped Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi from making another annual visit to the shrine (The Age)—which honors 2.5 million war dead along with more than a thousand war criminals—on the August 15 anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender. The visit drew immediate condemnation from China and South Korea (ChiTrib). 

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CFR.org | Feldman: Guantanamo Detainees May be Difficult to Try, Depending on Hamdan Ruling

President George W. Bush, during a recent interview with the German ARD television network, said he "would like to end Guantanamo." But, he said, closing the facility depends on the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which will determine whether detainees should be subject to civil or military trials. The case arose in 2004 after an indicted detainee—a Yemeni national and former driver of Osama bin Laden—Salim Ahmed Hamdan, challenged the legality of the military tribunals trying him.

CFR Adjunct Fellow Noah Feldman, author of After Jihad and a law professor at New York University, discusses the legal issues at stake in the Hamdan decision, expected in late June. He says the case will decide whether military tribunals are constitutionally sufficient and warns that if the Supreme Court rules current trial procedures inadequate, it may be difficult to try many of the nearly 500 Guantanamo detainees because "much of the evidence—all of the evidence, in some cases—is gleaned from procedures that would not be admissible in ordinary courts."

Read the full text of the interview.



CFR.org | Still Open for Business

Four years after U.S. officials began detaining "unlawful enemy combatants" at a camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, steady international calls to close the center have failed to budge Washington. The UN Committee Against Torture weighed in this week with a report on the issue. Opponents of the detention camp, where nearly 500 people are still held without formal charges, may have been hopeful after U.S. President George W. Bush recently told German television: "I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court." Bush said closing the camp depends on whether the Supreme Court decides that detainees will be tried in civilian courts or by military tribunals. That ruling is expected in June in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, discussed in this CFR Backgrounder. 

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CFR.org | Backgrounder: Bolivia's Nationalization of Oil and Gas

On his hundredth day in office, Bolivian President Evo Morales moved to nationalize his nation's oil and gas reserves, ordering the military to occupy Bolivia's gas fields and giving foreign investors a six-month deadline to comply with demands or leave. The May 1 directive set off tensions in the region and beyond, particularly for foreign investors in Brazil, Spain, and Argentina. Morales' nationalization agenda has been described as another chapter in Latin America's turn to the left, and fears are rising that the Bolivian leader has fallen into the fold of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. But some experts emphasize there may be more infighting than cohesion overall in the region.

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CFR.org/NYTimes.com | Bolivia’s Nationalization of Oil and Gas

On his hundredth day in office, Bolivian President Evo Morales moved to nationalize his nation’s oil and gas reserves, ordering the military to occupy Bolivia’s gas fields and giving foreign investors a six-month deadline to comply with demands or leave. The May 1 directive set off tensions in the region and beyond, particularly for foreign investors in Brazil, Spain, and Argentina. Morales’ nationalization agenda has been described as another chapter in Latin America’s turn to the left, and fears are rising that the Bolivian leader has fallen into the fold of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. But some experts emphasize there may be more infighting than cohesion overall in the region.

Read the full article at CFR.org.

CFR.org | Violence After Darfur Deal

Arab militias known as Janjaweed have terrorized Darfur's African civilians with the backing of Sudan's government since 2003, despite international clamor against what the U.S. government and human rights groups call genocide. Peace negotiations between the Sudanese government and rebels teetered on the brink of collapse for nearly a week until Friday morning, when the Sudanese government and Sudanese Liberation Movement—the largest rebel faction—agreed to a deal called "a shaky foundation" by the Financial Times. The pact, which rebel leaders agreed to "with reservations," was brokered by U.S., British, and African Union (AU) mediators, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who rushed to the talks in Abuja, Nigeria after the sides failed to meet an April 30 deadline (AllAfrica.com). The history and main players of the Darfur crisis are explained in this CFR Background Q&A.

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CFR.org/NYTimes.com | Darfur: Crisis Continues

Three years after government-backed Arab militias known as "Janjaweed" began burning villages and conducting large-scale massacres in the Darfur region, the Sudanese authorities and rebel forces are moving at a painfully slow rate toward peace. In the meantime, a situation the U.S. State Department has called "genocide" has left some 2 million people displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. A well-meaning but ill-conceived peacekeeping mission by the African Union has failed to stop the massacres and destruction of villages. Now the UN Security Council, in spite of reluctance on the part of China and Russia, is calling for greater UN and NATO involvement in the crisis, against the wishes of the government in Khartoum.

Read the full text at NYTimes.com (PDF) or CFR.org.

CFR.org | Backgrounder: Pakistan’s Political Future

Since taking control in a bloodless 1999 coup, General Pervez Musharraf has held on to power for nearly eight years, making him one of the most longstanding leaders in Pakistan’s sixty-year history. He won a flawed 2002 presidential election, according to EU monitors, and also maintained control of the country’s military by remaining army chief. As his five-year term nears its October 2007 end, Musharraf says he needs to remain in office to follow through on initiatives begun during his presidency. However, as a series of domestic crises threatens his authority, opposition leaders question whether Musharraf should remain army chief if he gains reelection. Meanwhile, former Pakistani leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both in exile, clamor for political support from their consituents at home. As the election nears, questions arise over Pakistan’s political future—with or without Musharraf. Futhermore, the U.S.-Pakistani alliance appears to be weakening as the Musharraf government continues to fail in its efforts to curb Taliban and al-Qaeda activities in the country’s northwest tribal areas.

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Co-authored by Carin Zissis and Greg Bruno

CFR.org | Chad's Oil Troubles

The oil pipeline agreement involving the World Bank, a U.S.-led oil consortium, and the government of Chad was hailed as a model to help developing nations dig their way out of poverty and avoid corruption. Under the deal, spurred by World Bank funding, most of Chad's revenues would go toward development projects. But in December, Chad's parliament voted to modify the agreement, canceling a "future generations" fund for Chad's post-oil future, and diverting funds away from poverty alleviation and toward the purchasing of arms. The World Bank responded by suspending its loans and freezing Chad's assets. A temporary agreement was reached April 27, but experts say potential civil war, cross-border troubles with Sudan, and the weakening of President Idriss Déby's regime may threaten the pipeline deal, casting further doubt on the prospects for transparency in future development projects in the region.

Read the full article at CFR.org.

Amnesty International Magazine | Homegrown Progress

Turkish human rights defender Cânân Arin takes a bricks-and-mortar approach to building a movement for women's rights.

Cânân Arin casually shrugs when describing the occupational hazards of being a leading women's rights advocate in Turkey. A few years ago, Arin recalls, a doctor in Istanbul survived a beating from her husband that left her spine broken in three places. When Arin helped the doctor initiate divorce proceedings, the abuser came after her as well.

"He threatened me, he tried to bribe me, he tried everything against me because there was no way to break me," says Arin, a lawyer who has pioneered the movement to provide shelter and legal services for domestic violence victims in Turkey. An unfaltering, powerful woman of 63, Arin knew she was the last line of defense for the woman; her family had turned her away and her abuser had evaded jail by paying a $2 fine.

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FOXNews.com | Children in Camo: Underage Warriors Become Growing Concern

In the early 1980s, Oscar Torres (search) and the other boys in his neighborhood would clamber up to the corrugated tin roofs of their one-room shacks to hide from military officers, who forcibly recruited children as young as 12 years old to fight in El Salvador's civil war. Boys who did not become soldiers often fought for guerrilla forces.

"That was our daily life," recalls Torres, 34, who fled to the United States in 1984. "We didn't think it was anything extraordinary."

Two decades later, screenwriter Torres was initially reluctant when Mexican filmmaker Luis Mandoki encouraged him to co-write a script based on his war-torn childhood for the film "Innocent Voices," which is being released Friday in major U.S. cities.

"He asked me, 'Why me?'" said Mandoki. "But by the end he realized, 'It's not just about me.'"

Before the film's closing credits roll, statistics flash across the screen about child soldiers forced to fight for national militaries and rebel groups. Although more than 190 countries agree that a person legally becomes an adult at the age of 18, the United Nations estimates that 300,000 children under that age are engaged in as many as 30 conflicts around the globe, from Uganda to Colombia, from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone.

"It's become like a global virus," said P.W. Singer, author of the book "Children of War" and national security fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

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Amnesty International Magazine | Traffic Report

Human trafficking is neck-and-neck with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world, after the drug trade, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Newsday | Running with the Right Crowd

Panfilo Gomez can run a mile in less than five minutes. Somehow, even though he works six days a week hauling 60-pound boxes at a Key Food supermarket in Queens and has a family he loves to be with, the four-time marathoner makes time to train almost every day.

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Urban Latino | Gallery of the Gods

Sacrifice your weekend plans; the Aztec Empire has arrived in New York. The first major show about Aztec civilization to hit the U.S. in 20 years dominates six levels of the Guggenheim until mid-February. The exhibit features several artifacts that have never left Mexico before - and may never do so again. It focuses on advanced arts created in the centuries leading up to the Spanish conquest, including life-size sculptures, glittering gold lip plugs and earrings, and intricately detailed clay figurines.

In one room, a sensational statue of Mictlantecuhtli, god of the underworld, grins widely as his liver hangs below his ribs, the shadow of his claws creeping up the wall. Mexican architect Enrique Norten is behind the show's dramatic design, including a backdrop of gray fabric draping the walls of the museum's famous coiled rotunda, leading to a stone carving of a serpent's head in the lobby.

Scarce exhibit descriptions might frustrate knowledge junkies, but the intent isn't to boost audio tour sales. Instead, each object is left to speak for itself as a work of art.

"The exhibit design showcases the magnificence and impressive size of the pieces," said Sarah Selvedge of the Guggenheim's education department. "It's not so much about what the Aztecs were doing in the original context. It's about what it means now and how we see these things."

Visitors searching for context can take one of the free scheduled tours or attend artist lectures. If the more than 430 pieces aren't enough, head downstairs to see the Aztec-inspired Keith Haring pop art exhibit. The Guggenheim charges a hefty $18 admission, but offers a two-for-one on Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m., when the café serves blood orange margaritas.

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Amnesty International Magazine - Spare the Child

Over the past 15 years the world has made major strides toward ending the execution of juvenile offenders.

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Amnesty International Magazine - Afghanistan Unveiled

When the Taliban was in power, most of the women who filmed Afghanistan Unveiled could barely leave their homes, let alone study or work. But in 2002, the young documentarians - some still teenagers - traveled across mountains, rivers, and deserts to make the first film by and about Afghan women.

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IPS News - 'The Gatekeeper' Shows Plight of Mexican Migrants

”Welcome to California,” says an undocumented Mexican lab worker after showing how to make the drug methamphetamine by mixing toxic chemicals over a burner in a dim, windowless shack.

The scene is from ”The Gatekeeper,” a drama tracing the experiences of a group of Mexicans who illegally cross the Tijuana-San Diego border. After arriving in the United States, the migrants are forced to work making the highly addictive street drug, also known as ”speed” or ”meth”, to pay off their passage.

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