Conflict

Opinion

WFP Economist On CAR: "It Doesn’t Get Much Worse"

22 April 2014 -

The Central African Republic (CAR) – torn apart since December by widespread conflict and killings of civilians by armed groups – is unravelling. The consequences are already catastrophic for many people. Almost the entire population is in desperate need of food.

Opinion

'Send the vultures packing'

11 January 2013 -

From my café terrace in The Hague’s pleasant street bustle I immediately spot him. Boniface Mwangi sticks out with his polo shirt in black, green and red, the colours of the Kenyan flag. Apart from that, the two-time winner of the CNN Africa Photojournalist Award (2008 and 2010) is an inconspicuous figure. He shows signs of fatigue that s ...

News

“The UN provides the necessary legitimacy”

22 August 2012 -

In sixteen UN peace and reconstruction missions around the world, there are some 120.000 men and women at work.‘A real UN army does not exist’, says Marco Bianchini, head of the UN liaison Office for Peace and Security in Brussels. The growing need to prevent or control conflicts on the international stage results in complex UN missions ...

Analysis

Kris Berwouts on the road in Congo

12 July 2012 -

I spent the last twenty days of June in the Congo. Most of that time, I visited people and communities at grass root level. In brief, I went to Fizi – Baraka – Uvira – Bukavu – Kalehe – Minova – Goma. All by road. I ended my trip in Kinshasa, trying to wrap with a more national perspective. What follows is not really an article, nor is it an elabor ...

News

The battle for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir

17 November 2011 -

On 7 October 2001 the US and Great Britain engaged in a blitzkrieg against a small and very poorly equipped Afghan army. Ten years later, this attack turned into the longest war the United States has ever fought. It has become an international operation of epic dimensions. Why does the situation seem so desperate? In Opstandland (Rebel Land) Gie Go ...

Opinion

Mladic versus Bin Laden method

1 June 2011 -

The US operation in May 2011 that killed 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden couldn't have contrasted more with the low-key arrest a few weeks later of Ratko Mladic, a man held responsible by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for the siege of Sarajevo, and the Srebrenica massacre, the largest mass-murder in Europe since Worl ...

Opinion

Conflict Prevention: the Ultimate Casualty of the Osh Violence?

7 December 2010 -

“For years, there has been a part of the development sector that existed and expanded on the assumption that the Ferghana was soon to explode”, a former colleague in Kyrgyzstan said after the violence in the south which left between 300 and 800 dead in June 2010. “Eventually they got more than they could deal with.”

News

Afghan senior journalist Danish Karokhel: ‘A life of war is my motivation to fight for peace’

17 December 2009 -

On Christmas Eve 1979 Soviet tanks entered Afghanistan. The war and violence that began then, is still with the Afghans, thirty years and many regime changes later. Afghan top journalist and chief editor Danish Karokhel, explains how he experienced those past thirty years.