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LONDON – So far so good, at least on the wider level. While internally Iraq seems on the edge of chaos, the much heralded clash of civilizations between the Muslim and Judaeo-Christian worlds has yet to become apparent. We have anger and despair aplenty in the Arab and Muslim worlds. But very little rushing to the standard and there was no great pilgrimage of warriors to join the fight, as happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan twenty years ago, and then, having driven the Red Army out, were left to ferment in that mountainous redoubt. With the armaments supplied by the CIA the mujahidin were transformed into Al Qaeda that became, for a relatively brief moment as these things go, ‘the greatest threat to the homeland that America has ever known.’ Nevertheless a ‘Cold War’ between much of the Muslim world and the West is certainly in full swing. Winston...

The Challenge of Nuclear Weaponsin the Twenty-first CenturyA Path Forward The peoples and governments of the world face an urgent challenge relating to weaponry of mass destruction and particularly to nuclear weaponry.  At the crossroads of technology, terrorism, geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new and potent dangers for humanity. Despite ending the nuclear standoff of the Cold War era, nuclear weaponry is again menacing the peoples of the world with catastrophic possibilities.  We recognize the need for any government to pursue its security interests in accordance with international law; and further, we recognize that distinctive threats to these interests now exist as a result of an active international terrorist network having declared war on the United States and its allies. Nonetheless, we reject the assessment of the current US administration that upgrading a reliance on nuclear weapons is in any sense justified as a response. We find it...

LONDON – I walk up Sonia Gandhi’s drive way, past  guards with Uzi machine guns, and can’t help thinking that when I came to interview Mrs. Indira Gandhi (Sonia’s mother-in-law) on the eve of her great comeback and massive electoral win, I walked up to her front door and knocked. There were no guards and only one servant to let me in. I am ushered into Sonia G’s office. She barely acknowledges my presence. “Buon giorno”, I say. There is no reply. I have been warned that she’s cold and she doesn’t offer me a hand. She walks over to me and asks me to sit down. I look her in the eye and ask my first question to the Italian widow of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was cruelly blown to smithereens by a female Tamil terrorist, a member of the now defeated Tamil independence struggle in neighbouring Sri...

Om Afghanistan Af Ulla Fasting,TFF Ven og medlem af Det Radikale Venstre Læs også Ulla Fastings “Indtryk fra Afghanistan” Dag 1 Afghanistan ved en ny tids begyndelse I denne uge tager vi til Afghanistan, som jeg har besøgt to gange i sommer og hvor jeg samtidig læste Khaled Hosseinis bog* om sin barndoms Afghanistan. En barndom, hvor drengen Amir vinder den store drageturnering og sin fars anerkendelse, men samtidig svigter sin bedste ven Hassan. Det er dette svigt og vejen til soning, bogen handler om, men den fortæller også om det Afghanistan, som var før den russiske besættelse og før Taleban kom til magten.Det er det Afghanistan, som i dag skyder op hist og her og som mange afghanere forsøger at bygge en fremtid på. Bogen er god at have med sig, for i manges bevidsthed er Afghanistan kun det 6. fattigste land i verden, talebansk mørke, kvinder i burka,...

Af Ulla FastingTFF Ven og medlem af det Radikale Venstre Læs også Ulla Fastings fortælling i Danmarks RadiosVed Dagens Begyndelse Jeg er netop kommet hjem fra min anden rejse til Afghanistan. Første gang var besøget først og fremmest privat med ophold i Kabul, men jeg fik samtidig en invitation til at undervise jordemoderstuderende i Herat for Dansk Afghanistan Komité (DAC). Anden gang var jeg to uger i Herat og et par dage i Kabul for DAC for at interviewe kvinder fra de forskellige kvindeorganisationer om deres arbejde og for at se på sundhedsvæsnet, – hospitaler, sundhedscentre, mobile sundhedsteam og sygeplejerskeuddannelsen. Jeg rejste på egen hånd, men var i Herat altid ledsaget af tolken og kørte med chauffør i en af DAC’s biler. I Kabul kørte jeg alene rundt, men med taxa fra et sikkerhedsclearet taxafirma. I Herat færdedes jeg frit sammen med andre DAC-medarbejdere i byen, når vi skulle handle...

LONDON – After the downs of 2006 surely 2007 can only be up? Don’t be so sure but there is one thing we can all do to save the planet from mankind’s excess – a little more walking. In the days when the International Herald Tribune was on the Rue de Berri, off the Champs Elysees, I would often walk there from my pension in the Marais, three or so miles down the Seine. It is quite remarkable that one can conveniently traverse the length of one of the world’s major cities without having to leave a towpath or back alley, except for the last 500-yard dash up from the river. The same is true in London. Setting off from the hotel on the edge of Kensington Gardens where the guerrilla chiefs of the patriotic Front stayed during the London constitutional conference on Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, it was possible to...

LONDON – The horror of Sudan was on the front page three times last week. The extraordinary economic progress made by Africa, and many other parts of the Third World, as recorded and analysed in a new World Bank report released last Thursday, was mentioned a bare once in a shortish item on the business page. This paper was no different from all the others. This is how news editors are trained to work – don’t report the trains that arrive on time, and feign ignorance about those that arrive early. Only the ones that are late or, better still, crash, are worthy of note. According to the Bank, the developing countries are now in “the driving seat” of the world economy, with GNP growth reaching an average of 7% this year. (Average means, unless we forget, that if the statistical standard variation is normal half are above the mean.) Although the...

LONDON – The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London in October, 1998, was a bolt from the blue. It can be said with near certainty that it never had crossed the mind of senior members of the British judiciary who were soon to be landed with untangling the legal intricacies. Indeed, it was such an impossible idea that until almost the very last moment it never occurred to the ex-dictator himself that he could be vulnerable in the very country where his great friend and supporter, Margaret Thatcher, had been prime minister. But when Baltazar Garzón, a senior Spanish magistrate, is on your tail you have to watch out. He has bested Felipe González, the former socialist prime minister, for having been party to the use of a police cell to assassinate leaders of ETA , the violent Basque group. He has also had great success in bringing to quick...

Peace is a dynamic process of nonviolent social interaction that results in security for all members of a society. Peace is not a subject matter taught in many schools. I have often heard it said that the curriculum is too full to add more, but what could be more important than learning about making peace? I think the “full curriculum” is a justification for not wanting to challenge the status quo and teachers are not rewarded for bringing new material into the classroom. I am a proponent of bringing peace into every classroom. Basic questions need to include: How can this problem be solved peacefully? Or, how could this problem have been solved peacefully? Blase Bonpane, who received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2006 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, suggested that when students study wars in history the only meaningful question is: How could this war have been avoided? We need...

I. Metaphor and the Politics of Despair In addressing the General Assembly back in 2003 on the urgent need for UN reform, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, resorted to a frequently quoted metaphorical trope: “Excellencies, we have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded.” He explains the rhetoric by saying “[n]ow we must decide whether it is possible to continue on the basis agreed upon or whether radical changes are needed.” And further, Annan notes that he had earlier “drew attention to the urgent need for the [Security] Council to regain the confidence of States, and of world public opinion—both by demonstrating its ability to deal effectively with the most difficult issues, and by becoming more broadly representative of the international community as a whole, as well as the geopolitical...

LONDON – In a speech the other day one of Tanzania’s new breed of remarkable entrepreneurs, Ali Mufuruki, chairman of Infotech Investment Group, made a withering public attack on African defensiveness about its appalling economic record: • “If the excuse is colonialism then compare the experience of Africa with that of Korea, which after decades of the most brutal form of colonial oppression, exploitation and humiliation, plunged into a civil war that killed more than one million of its people and split the country into two parts. Today South Korea is the tenth biggest economy in the world.”    • “India was long colonised by the British. Today Indians are the third biggest investors in the UK.” • “If the excuse is civil war or liberation war then look at Vietnam. Three decades ago it was split in two, its infrastructure completely destroyed and millions killed. Today it is one of the...

“Främjar EU freden?Analys, kritik och alternativ” Svensk resumé av liten skrift på danska och engelska Ofta betecknas Europeiska Unionen som ett fredsprojekt, men vad menar man inom EU egentligen med fred?I denna rapport analyserar den dansk-svenske freds- och konfliktforskaren Jan Øberg EUs politik beträffande försvar, utrikespolitik, konflikthantering och fred. Också den överordnade principen i förslaget till författning för EU analyseras. Oavsett vad som händer med författningsförslaget, är det viktigt att analysera innehållet i detta dokument, som ju är beslutat av samtliga regeringschefer i EU och av EU-parlamentet. Jan Øbergs rapport visar att i författningsförslaget och andra centrala EU-dokument finns en fredsuppfattning som ensidigt lägger huvudvikten på militärt dominerat försvar och säkerhet. Enligt denna uppfattning finns det ’gott våld’, som ska balansera eller utrota ’ont våld’. Däremot spelar konflikthantering och problematisering av våldet som sådant i stort sett ingen roll. Jan Øberg diskuterar två motstående fredsuppfattningar i relation till fyra dimensioner,...