The story of a powerful and ambitious Armenian oligarch is also a case-study in the flaws of European Union policy in the small Caucasian republic, says Armen Haykyan.
The dinner-party is a symbol of complacent presumption, the last occasion to be associated with genuine dialogue or the jolt of rethinking. But it’s possible to renew the ritual in surprising ways - and really caring about the food is just the start, says Keith Kahn-Harris.
A half-decade after 9/11, the United States appeared to Andrew Stroehlein to be locked in a “conflict mentality”. Now, he says, a new set of economic concerns - and even the rise of carnivalesque politics - signal the return of a kind of normality.
Eritrea’s people are sharing in the food hardships of the wider region. But their government’s authoritarian rule is intent on keeping their fate from wider view, says Selam Kidane.
The success of Libya’s uprising is welcome - even if both the rebel movement and foreign support for it reflect the inevitable contradictions of politics. The challenge now includes holding account all perpetrators of atrocity, says Martin Shaw.
The slow implosion of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s was echoed in the internal divisions and crises that consumed its western associates. Indeed, the once influential Communist Party of Great Britain faced its own trauma exactly a year before the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Geof
The parliamentary election has been called for 4 December and the jockeying for position among the opposition parties will doubtless increase as politicians return refreshed from their holidays. How can those outside the system have any effect at all on the outcome? Grigorii Golosov considers some
The Black Sea republic of Abkhazia has elected its third president since securing effective independence from Georgia in 1993. The tiny country faces economic and social difficulties, in part deriving from its lack of international recognition. But its democratic experience deserves more attention
The task of building a democratic and inclusive Libya with working institutions must overcome the international community’s key flaw as well as the Gaddafi regime’s legacy, says Vidar Helgesen.
A pattern of violence against the Ahmadiyah religious community, in which the perpetrators enjoy near-impunity and official indulgence, is disfiguring Indonesia. It also presents a wider challenge to the country’s vital search for a model of religious tolerance in public life, says Charles Reading
The authorities’ destruction of a building and precious archive of human-rights workers in Baku is an act of mindless cruelty that damages Azerbaijan itself, says Thomas de Waal.
