Egypt: Security, Threats, and Politics

As the Egyptian expands detentions of suspects, jailing 49 people accused of connections with Hezbollah, Theodore May of Global Post offers an overview of the groups accused by Egypt as threats to security:

Security Watch Egypt: Another Threat Emerges

Earlier this month, the Egyptian government detained 49 people on the Sinai Peninsula, accusing them of being members of a Hezbollah cell determined to execute attacks on Egyptian soil. It’s a sensational accusation that might give further evidence to the rising cooperation between Islamist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood. It would also speak to continued tensions in the Arab world over Egypt’s relationship with Israel.

It only takes spending a couple of hours in Egypt to discover that the entire structure of the Egyptian state is centered around the security apparatus. Policemen dot nearly every street corner in the city, plain-clothes agents patrol tourist hotspots, and the military runs checkpoints on highways throughout the country.

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Death and Deprivation for Sri Lanka's Tamils: Has Anyone Noticed?

There is a great deal to ponder in why, amidst headline crises elsewhere in the world, the humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka has attracted little attention. There are estimates that up to 6500 Tamil civilians have died and ten of thousands have fled in recent weeks in a worsening civil war that has stretched out over decades.

Tom Fenton of Global Post reveals and considers the situation:

What the Tamils and Palestinians Have in Common

LONDON — For the past three weeks, dozens of flag-waving Tamils have been camping out in Parliament Square, trying to draw attention to the desperate plight of their ethnic minority in far-off Sri Lanka. Several are on a hunger strike. Busy Londoners seem to ignore them, except when the demonstrators hold up traffic. The Tamils are one of the world’s least popular causes.

An estimated 70,000 of them have been killed in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's decades-long struggle for independence against the Sri Lankan government. Civilians trapped between the Tamil Tigers and government troops are in particularly dire straits right now. But their suffering is largely unseen by the world.

The Sri Lankan government has barred independent news organizations and most aid agencies from the combat zone in the northeast, where a dwindling band of rebel militia members is making a last-ditch stand against the Sri Lankan army. Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians are trapped in the war zone and trying to flee. Almost 3,000 have been killed in the fighting in the past two months. The government is pushing hard to finish off the rebellion and believes that if the cameras are not there, the world won’t care what happens.

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Israel's Emerging Statesmen: Avigdor Lieberman and Natan Sharansky

As Enduring America tries to read the foreign policy of the Netanyahu Government in Israel (see Ali Yenidunya's post on the "economic track" of the new Prime Minister), Matt Benyon Rees of Global Post offers profiles of two key figures, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel:

Two Israeli politicians to keep an eye on

JERUSALEM — So, there are two eastern European guys, one from Ukraine and the other from Moldova.

One of them is on the short side and is a chess whiz who suffered through a Siberian labor camp for his uncompromising belief in democracy and freedom. Meet Natan Sharansky, who was picked this weekend by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The other is a beefy former nightclub bouncer who says nasty things about Arabs and is generally seen as just plain uncompromising. Meet Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who, it’s fair to say, is feared and loathed as a hardliner.

The two men couldn't carry themselves more differently and you don't have to be a longtime observer of Israel to know which one fits in better with the western diplomatic community and is most favored by America.


Trouble is they’re essentially the same guy.

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Analysis: Today's Elections in South Africa

Voters go to the polls in South Africa today. It is a betting certainty that the African National Congress will retain power, with Jacob Zuma as President. Christian Hennemeyer argues in Global Post, however, that the evolution from "dictatorship to democracy" is still impressive:

South Africa's extraordinary, ordinary elections

Jacob Zuma, the man who will in all likelihood be elected South Africa’s next president, has been accused of corruption and rape.

Helen Zille, the white mayor of Cape Town and head of one of the main opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance, has been called a racist and a colonialist — although these charges are widely seen as unfounded.

The other main opposition party, the Congress of the People (Cope) — which made history it broke away from the African National Congress last year — seems more interested in internal wrangling than in mounting a serious campaign to be the election spoiler.

The good news is that the run-up to South Africa's national elections looks and sounds a lot like routine politics in the western world, full of venom and vituperation, and less like the brutal and bogus polls held by many other developing nations. After the bloodshed and chaos of recent elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, for example, South Africa’s exercise in democracy is cause for celebration.

When upwards of 23 million South Africans cast their votes on April 22nd, it will mark the fourth time the country has held free elections since the end of white minority rule in 1994. That these elections are expected to be generally peaceful and reflective of the will of the people is an accomplishment whose importance cannot be overstated.

Somehow, in less than a generation, a country that was once the world’s pariah has transformed itself from dictatorship to democracy. Equally impressive is that fact that many citizens now view the right to vote as an ordinary almost banal fact of political life.

But these elections are extraordinary as well, because how South Africa deals with its many daunting challenges has implications far beyond its borders. With a population of nearly 50 million, the continent’s biggest economy, most impressive infrastructure, and a global moral authority embodied by the country’s first black President Nelson Mandela, South Africa is the continent’s giant.

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Somalia: From Pirate War to Land War?

Related Post: “Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates”
Related Post: After the Rescue - What Now with Somalia?
Related Post: Combating Somali Piracy - How Many People Can We Afford To Kill?

Amidst general statements about the response to piracy off the Somalian coast, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's four-point plan announced earlier this week, Teri Schultz of Global Post assesses the possibility of the fight being taken into Somalia:

Leaders to discuss taking pirate fight to land

BRUSSELS — The dramatic tale of the Capt. Richard Phillips’ rescue in the Gulf of Aden earlier this week captured the attention of the world and trained unprecedented attention on the increasing problem of Somali piracy.

Now U.S. and European officials are increasingly discussing the possibility of bringing the fight on land to address the roots of the problem in Somalia.

A high-level meeting here next week, officially billed as a Somalia donors’ conference, now will focus on the piracy problem.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana is hosting the meeting and the guest list is packed with VIPs, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and stakeholders as crucial as Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. The United States will be represented by Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Philip Carter and an official from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We are going to look at what can be done on land,” Solana’s spokeswoman Cristina Gallach said bluntly.

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