Happy Friday! 4 Quick Items about subjects we have touched on recently: 1. Joshua Foust at Registan.net brings greater depth to this blog's analysis of Central Asia's water problems which appeared yesterday. Along with discussing Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan's recent water troubles, Foust reports on a recent raid by Tajikistan citizens into Kyrgyzstan in order to […]
Tempered optimism may have dominated the news cycle with regard to Zimbabwe for a couple of days, as supporters of the opposition have basked in the prospects of something even “sweeter than a miracle.” But might grim reality be setting in? Never mind that even if all goes well and the opposition emerges fully victorious […]
The Journal of Turkish Weekly recently wrote an interesting piece concerning Central Asia's growing water issues, which I briefly touched on about a week ago when I reported on EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana's speech concerning climate change. The Journal's outlook focus's on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan's "uneasy' water and energy relationship, mainly pertaining to […]
[Crossposted from a much longer post on the Zimbabwe situation at the FPA Africa Blog.] While South Africa maintains its wary silence on the elections, the ANC has issued a predictable and unexceptional statement asking Zimbabweans of all parties to respect the results, however they turn out. One hopes this boilerplate does not ask Zimbabweans to respect […]
So, what do we know today about the crisis in Zim? Well, rumors swirl more freely than facts, and so what we actually know, as opposed to what we can project, is relatively limited. We know that we all are still waiting for something resembling real election results, that barring shenenigans on Mugabe's part, he […]
Lest we forget, in the one-crisis-at-a-time media mindset that tends to prevail, especially in the West (and I know I’ve been pretty myopic lately, but I’m one man, not an entire newspaper!) Kenya is not out of the woods yet. The major players are squabbling anew, this time over the composition and size of the country's […]
South Africa's premiere political cartoonist, Zapiro (who received an honorary doctorate recently at Rhodes University, one of my old stomping grounds) has been on the Mugabe beat in recent days. Here are some samples: From 2 April: From 1 April: From 28 March: And a classic, from March 2005, republished 27 March, 2008:
If you’ll pardon the self indulgence, we all probably could use a bit of a respite from the constant focus on Zimbabwe, important as events there are. The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) has published my review of Robert O’ Collins’ and James N. Burns’ new book, A History […]
Across Africa, and indeed the world, all eyes are on Zimbabwe. That includes mine, as I’ve been writing extensively about the election at the FPA's Africa Blog. If it is possible to be both optimistic and cynical, that probably sums up the tone of my coverage.
Tea leaves are everywhere to be read in Zimbabwe. It appears that Robert Mugabe has lost the House of Assembly, the one area of the vote over which he had the least control. So what does this defeat mean for Mugabe? Will it provide more impetus for him to continue to find a way out while […]
In an earlier post, I discussed a burgeoning Russia/NATO partnership concerning Afghanistan. This agreement, which is being negotiated as we speak at the Bucharest NATO Summit, however, may not come to fruition. Only a day or so ago, Konstantin Kosachev, head of Russia's State Duma Committee for Foreign Affairs, stated that the agreement was "premature' […]
Few things in life- first dates, certain church services- have of much ritualized pointlessness as the annual Arab Summit. It is a parade of forced smiles, empty promises, grand, boring speeches, and zero progress on any issues. The summit, controversialy held in Damascus, failed to make any headway on the most pressing issue in the […]
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