Far too wonky to publish on a respectable blog like this one, I’ve written a brief analysis of the connection between Yemen, terrorism, and American policy over at Foreign Policy Watch. The post, I should add, includes some rare praise for the Bush administration.

In Haaretz, Rami Livni notes an unusual change that is beginning to develop amongst the Israeli left: The traditional peace-camp solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – two nations, two states – has fallen out of favor, and its supporters’ ranks have dwindled. Instead, other voices have been advocating, with increasing confidence, a single bi-national state. The one-state advocates still don’t have a joint program or political front, but the balance within the left...

There are two reports that have come out recently that shed some light on the poor state of national reconciliation. First, the Center for American Progress reviews the latest developments and finds that the Iraqi government has only met 3 of the 18 political benchmarks. Second, the International Center for Transnational Justice has a report on the De-Baathification law and, like others, they remain pessimistic about its worth.

It’s no secret that the EU is pushing Ankara hard to reform its policy towards minority groups. In Turkey, the Kurds and the Alevis, for example, are not officially recognized as minorities and have struggled, as a result, to maintain their respective identities. The Islamist AKP government, under European pressure, has made some limited changes. Kurds are now allowed to speak their language on certain radio and tv outlets, and the use of Kurdish has also been decriminalized in private educational...

This photo ran in Thursday’s New York Times under the article heading, “Kenya’s Political Rivals Meet.” But there’s something odd here and it’s not merely the fake smiles of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga – it’s the presence of Kofi Annan. That Annan, a former UN Secretary-General, is leading the international community’s Kenya delegation is a testament to the limited clout of the UN’s Ban Ki-Moon, a man whose leadership has been wobbly and whose...

One need not believe that good fences make good neighbors to think that broken fences – and ambiguous invitations – are bound to sour neighborly relations. At Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip, the fence and Egypt’s stated security posture both broke down on Wednesday, as thousands of Palestinians streamed into the Sinai to buy goods that have become difficult or impossible to find in Gaza over the last two years. In a testament to Arab hospitality, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak at first...

Rudy Giuliani is often considered the most pro-Israeli candidate in the presidential race. He’s been given kudos for ejecting Yasser Arafat from a concert in New York city back in 1995, for numerous statements in support of Israeli policies, and for refusing a $10 million dollar check from an Israel-bashing Saudi prince after 9/11. Furthermore, his key foreign policy advisors (Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes) are long-time hawks and Israel partisans. But is it accurate to paint Giuliani, and...

It’s quite possible, as Marc Lynch notes, that Bush’s latest trip will go down in history as “one of the strangest and most pointless visits to the Middle East of any world leader.” Indeed, it’s hard to come up with any concrete achievements either on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, or with regards to containing Iran. Lots of talk, much shaking of hands and kissing of cheeks, but few actual commitments. The Sunni states played nice with the president but they gave him...

I’ve made no secret on this blog regarding my skepticism about the surge. But, to be honest, I’d like nothing more than to be proved wrong. The possibility of eating crow was therefore happily on my mind as I read this weekend’s big news from Iraq — the passage of a “de-Baathification” law, one of the political benchmarks considered vital for establishing national reconciliation. Several pieces published recently, however, have cast doubt on the effectiveness of...

Matt Dupuis, writing over at FPW, argues that the President’s containment strategy for Iran has not been well-received in the Arab world. Although the Bush administration is eager to build an alliance to check the Shiite nation’s rising regional clout, Sunni states are having none of it. In fact, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have recently been making direct overtures to Tehran in an effort to ease tensions and improve relations!

That’s what Robert L. Strauss, a former Peace Corps country director, believes has gone badly wrong with Kennedy’s organization: …even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century. This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps...

Gulf News reminds us that even limited, half-assed pressure from the United States can compel our Middle Eastern allies to make substantial changes: Washington rarely makes public criticism of Saudi Arabia over its political and human rights record. But Bush spoke out against a Saudi court verdict condemning a gang rape victim to 200 lashes in a case that provoked international outcry in November. Last month, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz , promoted as a reformer in the Saudi media, issued a “pardon”...

As The Daily Star snidely comments, Bush’s efforts at peace in Israel-Palestine are “as likely to succeed as the efforts of a lazy student who whittles away an entire semester in fraternity halls before cramming at the last minute for final exams.” It’s hard to argue with that. Indeed, despite our president’s naive prediction of a peace deal by the end of his term, Bush’s visit clearly isn’t being taken very seriously. The Israelis, for their part, have been...

Joe Klein, a political columnist for TIME, writes that Obama has been vigorously involved in some behind-the-scenes work to calm the violence in Kenya. On January 1st, he called Secretary Rice to discuss the situation and, when she called back, he agreed to record a message to be aired on Voice of America. Since then, he’s talked with Desmond Tutu — who’s been trying to jumpstart the negotiations — and has had “near-daily” conversations with both the American ambassador...

As Kenya continues to be plagued by violence, opposition leader Riala Odinga has rejected incumbent president Mwai Kibaki’s calls for negotiations. According to the New York Times, Mr. Odinga declined an invitation to meet with the president this Friday, saying that the negotiations would merely be “public relations gimmickry” meant to “deflect attention from and undermine” international diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. With the president blithely trudging into...

President Bush, speaking yesterday: I strongly believe that Europe will benefit when Turkey is a member of the European Union. I view Turkey as a bridge between Europe and the Islamic world, a constructive bridge. And so I believe it’s in the interests of peace that Turkey be admitted into the EU…. I think Turkey sets a fantastic example for nations around the world to see where it’s possible to have a democracy coexist with a great religion like Islam and that’s important....

Hidden deep in this week’s NYT article, “In Global Battle on AIDS, Bush Creates Legacy,” I noticed this paragraph: Colin L. Powell, then the new secretary of state, was deeply troubled by demographics showing that in some African nations, AIDS threatened to wipe out the entire child-bearing population – a condition that could create instability, and a climate ripe for terrorism. Just weeks into his new job, he called Tommy G. Thompson, the new administration’s health...

Kristen Gillespie, writing at The Nation, argues that Al-Jazeera has developed a pro-Islamist bias: Dozens of hours of viewing Al Jazeera for this article confirm the charge. Whether it’s reporting the Hamas perspective from the occupied territories without mention of the Palestinian Authority’s version of events, or the fawning depiction elsewhere of Islamist parties and militias as the grassroots reflection of Arab sentiment, Al Jazeera has moved away from its ideologically diverse...

Anatol Lieven, over at TNI, writes about Bhutto and the future of her party: She was a populist aristocrat, with all that means in terms of grace under pressure, presence of style and absence of substance; and her party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has long been a dynastic party, not a modern mass party with a common and credible program. For that reason it is unlikely to survive the death of the last adult and politically credible representative of the Bhutto dynasty. In the long run, the...

Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss write about Russia: …growth has averaged 6.7 percent — especially impressive against the backdrop of the depression in the early 1990s. The last eight years have also seen budget surpluses, the eradication of foreign debt and the accumulation of massive hard-currency reserves, and modest inflation. The stock market is booming, and foreign direct investment, although still low compared to in other emerging markets, is growing rapidly. And it is not just...

The international media has been quick to portray the recent violence in Kenya as an ethnic dispute. But is it really? David Dryer argues that the situation is being misread.

Bush’s long-term proposal towards the AIDS epidemic has been to request 30 billion dollars over the next five years for prevention, treatment, and care. A worthy goal and a critical step, it would seem. But criticism of the plan has been forthcoming — and it’s come from some unusual sources. Daniel Halperin, an HIV/AIDS specialist at the Harvard School of Public Health, argues in the NYT yesterday that the intense focus on AIDS has a major downside: it has resulted in the neglect...

This week, North Korea was to have provided “a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs” as stipulated by the February 13th agreement. So where do things stand? Matt Dupuis has the scoop.

I can’t claim to know much about Mauritania, but I just read an extremely interesting article about the country in the latest edition of the Arab Reform Bulletin. In it, author Salma Waheedi demonstrates that not all news coming from the Arab world is bad news: Mauritania, an often-ignored country in the western periphery of the Arab world, surprised observers two years ago by undertaking one of the most forthcoming advances toward democracy in the region. Democratic reforms came as a result...

Toby Jones, assistant professor of history at Rutgers, criticizes the notion that the Saudis can be trusted to conduct their own internal reform: The suggestion that the Saudis know what pace of reform the “traffic will bear” is hard to take seriously. Authoritarian states regularly claim to be “reforming,” a process that typically leads to a stronger authoritarianism in the end. Saudi Arabia is no exception. Ask any Saudi reformer, including Abdullah al-Hamid who is in jail...