August, 2007

National Geographic has an excellent piece with gorgeous photos on Pakistan this month. Getting to know the culture, politics, and people of Pakistan will only help in understanding what's becoming an ever-more-critical country.

PCR Project Co-Director Rick Barton was quoted in the International Herald Tribune today on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Full story here, key quote below:

As part of CSIS's Smart Power project, please find here the “Dialogue with America” report for the Smart Power Commission in which thoughts and comments from over 230 people in four states are synthesized into key themes for US fu

Yikes, this is something that’s got a lot of people talking - USAID will now begin screening key personnel from aid groups for ties to terrorist organizations.

Pakistan’s supreme court has ruled that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif can return, throwing in question President Musharraf’s easy reelection this fall.

Musharraf overthrew Sharif’s government after it tried to ban the general from reentering the country in 1999.

Winner of the 2006 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, filmmaker Ari Sandel's West Bank Story brings "a little singing, a little dancing, and a lot of hummus" to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Mr.

As we move toward our October 22-23 conference Overcoming Extremism: Protecting Civilians from Terrorist Violence (official website coming soon!), a new regular feature on the blog will be profiles of speakers at the conference. Today's featured speaker is Irshad Manji.

Great and informative piece on the War on Drugs and how globalization has been like steroids for organized crime.

The Washington Post today has an interesting feature on the effects of climate change on the world’s water supply—and what that means for global conflict.

But the NYTimes tackles them head on (and frankly we’re a little dubious on that old rule). Thorough exploration of the intersection of religion and politics and why secularism is a very interesting wrinkle in the course of world affairs.

The challenges of building an independent Iraq continue to grow as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the formation of a new coalition government yesterday which did not include any Sunni moderates.  In an attempt to end parliamentary stagnation, al-Maliki spearheaded the effort to Wake Me Up When September Ends

For months now, Iraq-watchers have had their attention focused on September and a report on the surge informed by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker. Guaraunteed to be a spectacle, it was assumed that open hearings would be the name of the game, with plenty of time for Congress to question the men publicly about their findings.

Everyone remembers curling up on the couch to tune into an episode of Sesame Street. However, the children’s television program is become more than a source of entertainment. Always seen as an educational broadcast, Sesame Street is now pioneering a path of cultural awareness and social innovation.

CARE, one of the world’s foremost humanitarian organizations, has announced that it will no longer accept food donations from the U.S. government for re-sale in developing countries. Under the resale system, the U.S.

We're all about prevention of conflict, too, here at PCR, and with this latest piece on the silence of places like think tanks during the run-up to the war in Iraq, we've been paying special attention to what's going on in and around Iran.

The Arab media has taken some heat for underreporting events in Darfur. The most simplistic view of the conflict pits Arabs against Africans, with the Arab janjawiid as the most identifiable villains.

In collaboration with the World Bank, the PCR team is pleased to announce the release of its report on Floods in North Korea

North Korea has experienced massive flooding following several days of torrential rain, affecting both Pyongyang and the countryside. The floods have already been responsible for an estimated 200 deaths in the country and have destroyed at least 30,000 homes.

Like a scene out of Cambodia or Rwanda, mass graves are being discovered throughout the war-torn landscape of Afghanistan. The Washington Post is reporting that several members of the international aid community have unearthed 88 sites across Afghanistan filled with the remains of political dissiden

It has been over four years since the U.S.

The Northern Nigerian state of Kano has expelled 17 actors accused of immorality.

PCR co-director Rick Barton recently spoke to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7:30 report on civilian contracting in Iraq.

The State Department has released the new U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan. As expected it’s a mix of carrots (more funding for the Good Performers Initiative which rewards provinces that reduce production) and sticks (more non-negotiated poppy eradication and support for in-country interdiction).

Remember the days of paper and pencil tests? Remember the two year long procedure of getting a Top Secret security clearance for a government position? Well, these days appear to be on the way out. As Marianne Myles, U.S. Department of State Director for Recruitment notes the process has been entirely streamlined in an attempt to attract “the best and the brightest” to the agency.

This paper written for the IFC’s Gender Entrepreneurship Markets division focuses on the role of women entrepreneurs in post-conflict economies.

Tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims successfully convened at a shrine in Western Baghdad today. Guarded by Iraqi and U.S. forces, they traveled and prayed almost completely unassailed (the Times reported one sniper who was killed by coalition forces).

Nicholas Kristof highlights some of the problems and promises of foreign aid in this op-ed. He also joins in the collective groan over the threatened cuts to MCA funding.

Thirteen years ago Hutu leaders used Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) to catalyze the genocide in Rwanda.  The effects were devastating.  Today, the problem of proliferating violence over the airwaves continues.  As Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo explore for RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, Sunni insurgents in Iraq are using media to breed hatred and spread a Musharraf To Be Given Emergency Powers

Al Jazeera is reporting that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will be given “emergency powers” for up to one month.  The move follows a dramatic pull out of a traditional peace conference with tribal chiefs in Afghanistan this week.  Both of these events underscore the rising tension between Pak

Public diplomacy conducted via a group not in ideological lock-step with the administration? That sounds like a good idea…

Lael Brainard of the Brookings Institution recently published a report critiquing the current direction of the U.S.

The Post’s report on the 190,000 missing small arms in Iraq has us thinking about the international arms trade.

While President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai share many of the same foreign policy views, their position on Iran is not one of them.  According to the New York Times, Bush disagreed with Karzai that Iranian influence in Afghan

The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) between Pakistan and Afghanistan continued to erode over the weekend.

A project sponsored by the University of Momboy in Venezuela delivers books to isolated rural communities via mule. Some of these bibliomulas are even wired as they occasionally bear movie projectors and laptops. And the tentacles of globalization stretch a little farther… more here.

When he was elected president in 2005, Evo Morales embodied the hopes of indigenous Bolivians (check out the link for a blog focused on indigenous Bolivian issues).

Violence continues to forestall any vision of peace that may have come out of the recent Somali reconciliation conference.  Attacks on civilians remain a severe threat with new bouts of fighting occurring daily.  Recently, at least five people were killed Children of War

Reuters reports that with the end of several West African conflicts, the number of child soldiers has dropped to an estimated 250,000 worldwide. The norm against the use of child soldiers is well established in international law.

One of the topics we’ll be addressing in our big October 22-23 conference, Overcoming Extremism: Protecting Civilians from Terrorist Violence (tons more info coming soon), is the so-called “enabling environment” that serves to condone/support/foster acts of terrorism.

ICG has released a new report on the implications of Hamas’s takeover of Gaza last month.  It can be accessed here.

According to Al Jazeera, and as reported earlier, the government of Sudan has officially accepted the UN Security Council resolution to deploy a peacekeeping force of over 26,000 AU-UN troops to war-torn Darfur.  As

For more than a year, the PCR Project, with support from the Henry Luce Foundation, has been surveying U.S.

We're happy to share the prepublication draft version of our latest report A Perilous Course: U.S. Strategy and Assistance to Pakistan.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved yesterday a resolution calling for the deployment of 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur.  The vote came after months of negotiations with Sudan’s government, and will add significantly to the ranks of approximately 7,000 African Union troops already in the area.  The resolution cites Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which authorizes the Security Council to