The opposition of Kenya's Christian churches to constitutional reforms is in part rooted in a new and disturbing hostility to Islam. This attitude marks a significant retreat from the churches’ past role in Kenya’s democratisation, says Daniel Branch.
The bitter conflict over South Ossetia in August 2008 has turned to post-war stalemate. But just as the war and the current impasse involve more than Georgia and Russia, says Rein Müllerson, so progress in the region and beyond requires bold diplomatic thinking on all sides.
The appointment of a new head of the lead United Nations anti-drugs agency is a precious opportunity to abandon a failed policy, says Juan Gabriel Tokatlian.
Georgia’s Minister for Reunification Temur Yakobashvili outlines his government’s plan to retrieve the territories lost two years ago, in its war with Russia
A vicious short war between Georgia and Russia erupted on 8 August 2008 over one of Georgia's “occupied territories”, South Ossetia. Two years on, Mikheil Saakashvili remains in power, surrounded by another cluster of ambitious young colleagues. Tbilisi’s construction projects are transforming the
The International Court of Justice ruling on Kosovo’s declaration of independence benefits Serbia too. But what of its effects on Bosnia? Florian Bieber considers the implications of the ICJ opinion.
The proxy contest for influence between the European Union and Russia in a wide arc of states encompassing eastern Europe, the Caucasus and central Asia is changing shape, says Katinka Barysch.
The achievement of Isaias Afewerki’s regime in Asmara is to have used confrontation with its neighbours to entrench its survival. It is a political lesson that the international community still needs to learn, says Selam Kidane.
A lengthy political crisis in Nepal has exposed deep divisions over the country’s future, in which matters of identity - national, ethnic, caste, class - are to the fore. A new federal constitution is intended to address these. The obstacles in its way could be removed by rethinking the “identitar
The dignified commemorations of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in July 1995 retain their integrity and human core, even as the leaders of a divided Bosnia seek to channel the grief into political pageantry. Peter Lippman, in eastern Bosnia, reports.
A decade of wars has produced a strategic shift very different from what Washington and its allies intended - less towards unipolar order than the complexities of multipolar disorder. This poses a challenge to policy-makers and analysts alike, says Arshin Adib-Moghaddam.
The new constitution which the Kyrgyz people voted in on 27 June 2010 seeks to break the presidential pattern of government. But the recent violent upheaval has left the government weak. America and Russia both need Kyrgyzstan to thrive as a country ruled neither by despotism nor fundamentalism. T
