Other War Fronts

"In October 2004, Indonesia held its second democratic elections after four decades of authoritarian government. The president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonoa, is a retired general who had attended the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College. Wolfowitz said this is a positive sign because Yudhoyono understands the role of the military in a democracy. / Recent reforms in the country's military and close cooperation since the Dec. 26 tsunami could lead to building military-to-military ties with the United States –- or, as Wolfowitz put it, 'Defense Department to Defense Department.'" [more]

"We are planning three parallel operations: The first operation is called Operation Double (Mivtza Makhpil) in which each family in the Qatif Bloc will join up with a family from outside the Bloc. Their relatives or friends will take up permanent residence here already in the first stage." [more]

"The 'war on terrorism' the United States is babbling about can never coexist with genuine democracy. In the places where the United States wages the 'war on terrorism,' the democratic freedom and rights of the people are repressed and obliterated and the sovereignty of countries and nations is violated without any exception." [more]

"The Judea and Samaria Police is investigating the Gedud Ha'ivri (the Jewish Brigade), a militant right-wing group based in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Tapuach, for setting up unauthorized roadblocks in which its members randomly select Palestinian vehicles for inspection." [more]

"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan is 20 years old or more. He believes the Palestinian problem can be solved by a Palestinian enclave in Gaza and three or four enclaves in the West Bank that will leave Israel in control of half of the West Bank." [more]

"This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar." [more]

"The elected leader in Haiti has now been given a thumbs down by Washington. The power of the bullet is ironically speaking more effectively than the ballot ( or, at least as effectively as the bombs did in Iraq, to urge on regime change)." [more]

A selection of political highlights from the Central American press in early February 2004. [more]

"The Bush administration has concluded that civil war threatens to make Nepal a 'failed state' and a haven for international terrorists, leading it to place the CPNM on the State Department's 'Watch List,' along with organizations like al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, and Lebanon's Hezbollah. U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, Michael E. Malinowski ... advocates an all-out military offensive." [more]

"The Hizb ut-Tahrir Bangladesh is a fundamentalist Islamist political party seeking to establish an Islamic state (Khilafat) in Bangladesh and in other Muslim countries through the adoption of Islamic (Shariah) law." [more]

"Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings." [more]

"The idea that political and economic liberty could trigger ... atrocities is heretical to many Western liberals. That, Ms. Chua says, is because people here are blind to ethnicity." [more]

"Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it." [more]

"Unlike North and East Africa, no country in West Africa has seen a terror attack against Western interests." [more]

"The war on terrorism is apocalyptic exactly because it is militarized and yet amorphous, without limits of time or place, and has no clear end. It therefore enters the realm of the infinite. Implied in its approach is that every last terrorist everywhere on the earth is to be hunted down until there are no more terrorists anywhere to threaten us, and in that way the world will be rid of evil." [more]

"The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position." [more]

"The US imperialist military forces of aggression which are forward deployed in Japan and South Korea are not for deterring instability. Rather, they are for aggravating instability and tension and militarily attacking our Republic and other countries." [more]

"The Bush administration's point man on nonproliferation has exaggerated the threat posed by Syria, Libya and Cuba in an effort to build the case that strong action is needed to prevent them from developing weapons of mass destruction, former intelligence officials and independent experts say." [more]

"President Bush told the Congress of this former American colony on Saturday that Iraq, like the Philippines, could be transformed into a vibrant democracy. He also pledged his help in remaking the troubled and sometimes mutinous Philippine military into a force for fighting terrorism." [more]

"The Israeli attack on an alleged terrorist camp inside Syria yesterday helped punctuate a message the Bush administration has been sending to Syria for months — stop supporting terrorist organizations. But analysts said it could also lead to a widening of the Arab-Israeli conflict, thus threatening the administration's efforts to stabilize Iraq and foster peace between the Israelis and Palestinians." [more]

"Bolton testified that Syria and Libya had weapons of mass destruction programs that must be 'rolled back' and eliminated. [He] said diplomacy is the administration's preferred approach but that 'every tool in our nonproliferation toolbox' was an option. Bolton refused to rule out 'regime change' as an administration option in Syria." [more]

"Any arrest of genuine terror plotters reduces the likelihood of further attacks. But the decentralized nature of the cells and the variety of motives and objectives behind them suggests that the arrest of Hambali, while important symbolically, will of itself do little to reduce regional threats." [more]

"[The] exercise would consist in part of ships and helicopters practicing the 'nonpermissive boarding' of ships suspected of carrying drugs, missile components, nuclear materials and other items that the United States says are being imported or sold by North Korea. Some diplomats are known to worry that [such] exercises ... might be seen as provocative by the government of Kim Jong Il in North Korea, and perhaps by China and Russia." [more]

"A cabinet committee [will] assess how to toughen the law passed in the wake of last year's Bali bombing which allows detention for up to six months without charge based on intelligence reports." [more]

"Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has been described by experts as a terror chain with franchises worldwide. But this week's Jakarta bombing, if it turns out to be the work of an al Qaeda affiliate, suggests that head office may not need a strong grip on its distant outposts." [more]

"The plan would include 4,000 daily air strikes against North Korean targets, the deployment of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft to destroy the Yongbyon nuclear plant and other nuclear facilities, the stationing of U.S. Marine forces off the coasts of North Korea to threaten a land attack on Pyongyang, the deployment of two additional U.S. Army divisions to bolster South Korean troops in a land offensive against North Korea, and the call-up of National Guard and Reserve units to replace U.S. combat forces that are currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan" [more]

"Some officials believe the draft plan amounts to a strategy to topple Kim's regime by destabilizing its military forces. The reason: It is being pushed by many of the same administration hard-liners who advocated regime change in Iraq." [more]

"Tension on the Korean Peninsula is high over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons, and such shooting incidents in the DMZ are rare. In recent years, however, negotiations and reconciliation efforts have moved forward despite such outbreaks of violence." [more]

"We can ignore it if we like, and therefore lead to further terrorist attacks, or we can try to understand. The United States has done some very good things in the world, and that does not change the fact that the World Court was quite correct in condemning the United States as an international terrorist state." [more]

"[F]ears have prompted an escalating campaign by U.S. diplomatic, military and law enforcement officials to increase cooperation with Yemen's government, which has mobilized troops to crack down on suspected militants since Sept. 11 and has announced plans to expel more than 100 foreigners for questionable activities." [more]

"The FBI issued an extraordinary terrorist alert Monday night, asking law enforcement and the American public to be on the lookout for a Yemeni man and several associates who might be plotting a terrorist attack as early as Tuesday." [more]

"The draft gives the Philippine government command of the exercise, bars U.S. troops from combat operations, fixes the U.S. presence at a maximum of 660 soldiers, prohibits permanent U.S. military facilities, and limits training to Basilan island and nearby Zamboanga city, where most U.S. soldiers are staying." [more]

"[I]t turns out that a modern war may require the troops to know enough about alien cultures, at a minimum, to avoid offensive behavior. So as war becomes more complicated, so does preparation for it. Cultural sensitivity needs to be added to the already-crowded basic-training curriculum." [more]