Longstanding Conflict - December 2009

❯

Fashionistas Dress Down the Taliban - The Triple Assault

On November 4th, 2009, Fashion Pakistan launched the country’s first Fashion Week. The four-day event, taking place during an army offensive in South Waziristan, was postponed twice due to security fears. The event was held in Karachi, where, according to Dawn Media Group, Islamic militants engage in crime and kidnapping to bankroll the insurgency in the northwest. It has been more than a month since the completion of Fashion week and since, the event was successful at casting a triple assault on the Taliban – an assault on the unstable security situation they have created, an assault on the economic structure they hope to impose, and an assault on the religious paradigm they seek to establish.

December 1, 2009
Salmah Rizvi
Longstanding Conflict - December 2009

❯

Colombia: U.S. Base Sparks Suspicions

The United States and Colombia have finalized a deal that will allow U.S. military access to seven Colombian bases for the next ten years. Both parties have insisted that the agreement reinforces an existing partnership fighting regional narco-trafficking; however, very few of the terms have been released, garnering policy-makers’ suspicions and regional accusations. At stake may be U.S. aid standards founded on humanitarian and legal bases, as well as U.S. legitimacy in a pocket of the world growing increasingly resentful of historical U.S. hemispheric hegemony. After the announcement of the deal’s conclusion, Latin American leaders and policy-makers officially condemned the move; and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dramatically declared at a meeting of the Union of South American nations that “winds of warfare” were blowing across the continent.

December 1, 2009
Bronwen De Sena
Longstanding Conflict - December 2009

❯

30,000 More U.S. Troops Being Sent to Afghanistan

President Obama’s address to the nation at the West Point Military Academy on Tuesday December 1st was well received in as much for its subject matter as for the fact that Mr. Obama has decided upon a course of action. This action will consist of sending roughly 30,000 thousand U.S. troops to Afghanistan on top of the thousands that are already on the ground. The speech and Mr. Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan does have it detractors as well as its supporters.

December 1, 2009
John Lyman
Longstanding Conflict - December 2009

❯

Cyprus: An Island Long Divided

In April 2009 Turkish Cypriot voters gave the hard-line National Unity Party a parliamentary majority, lending urgency to the long-standing problem. Since 1974, the Island has been divided between de facto Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot zones. In that year, the Turkish military invaded Cyprus in the wake of a military coup backed by Greece, claiming its intervention was necessary to protect Turkish Cypriots. To this day, there is a Turkish military presence of 43,000 on the island.

December 1, 2009
Theodore Kahn
Longstanding Conflict - December 2009

❯

Historical Antagonism and the Future of Japan-ROK Relations

Since his rise to the power in February 2008, South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak has significantly alleviated the historical political and social tensions between Japan and South Korea (ROK.) The newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has followed suit by encouraging cooperative efforts to build up an East Asian regional community. The two countries have enhanced cooperation through several channels, including their participation in the Six Party Talks, development assistance in Afghanistan, the combating of piracy in Somalia, as well as youth and academic exchanges.

December 1, 2009
Kei Koga
Longstanding Conflict - December 2009