Why It Matters

Of Sludge and Salad: Wastewater Greens the World's Gardens

2008-08-19T07:14:52Z

You might want to hold your nose for this one.

Photo: IWMI

An intriguing new study is out on the use of wastewater in world agriculture. If you've ever wondered where all that cruddy old water goes when you pull the bathtub plug, brush your teeth, or purge the loo, this is the report you've been waiting for. The short answer: On your salad. The big surprise is, that may not be all bad.

In a survey of 53 cities worldwide, the International Water Management Institute (IMWI), a water research and advocacy group, has found that the vast majority of produce cultivated in urban plots is irrigated with what amounts to tainted water, fetched from polluted streams and lakes or wells. True, only a fraction (say 10 percent) of global agricultural output is harvested in the cities, and only a part of that crop is consumed uncooked. Yet in these cities alone, some 1.1 million farmers produce vegetables and fruit for 4.5 million people. Projecting the numbers worldwide, no fewer than 200 million farmers rely on recycled water to sow 20 million hectares, an area twice the size of Hungary. The findings were released during World Water Week, a summit of sages and policy types gathered in Stockholm through Aug. 23 in an effort to rethink the way the world farms and flushes.

At first whiff, this all seems dire. After all, the water we dump, from sink or commode, back into an ecosystem, carries a galaxy of bugs, bacteria and germs that can cause nasty diseases from diarrhea to hepatitis. Worse, it's a good bet that most families that consume the fruit and vegetables grown with such swill do not properly wash their produce, a sure invitation to illness. Cholera outbreaks in Israel and Chile have been traced to food contaminated with wastewater .

Now it turns out that even the plumbing has a silver lining. Noisome as it seems, dirty water may be the only reason that many people around the world eat at all, especially in the poorest countries. Nearly 200,000 residents in Accra, the capital of Ghana, put produce on the table thanks largely to wastewater. Nearly a quarter of Pakistan's domestic vegetables are nurtured with wastewater. It's no exaggeration to say that "bad" water helps fill the bowls of scores of calorie depleted households around the world.

Add to that the fact that irrigating with waste adds a kind of pro bono fertilizer to the farm and also returns moisture to drying lands. "It's a great way to cope with water stress," says senior IWMI official, Pay Drechsel. The soil is also a great natural filter, "cleansing" dirty water as it seeps into the ground. There may even be a plus for the climate, as sludge-laden water returns carbon to the earth that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

More to the point, there may be little alternative. For a time, the World Health Organization, rightly fearing the rampant spread of diseases, cautioned against using tainted water for cropping. But in time, "they realized this would put millions of farmers out of business," says Drechsel. Some 85 percent of the 53 cities studied dump their sewage and wastewater into streams and lakes. In the poorest societies, where clean water is as precious as it is scarce, diverting fresh water to the farm is to rob the drinking glass.

WHO has now adapted its approach, signing off on farming with wastewater in countries where clean water is scarce but with the caveat that authorities move aggressively to treat waste and that families thoroughly wash their produce. "With an ever greater number of emerging economies lacking resources to adequately treat their waste, this situation will continue."

So pull the plug and pass the salad. But wash, first.

Bolivia's Democratic Divide

2008-08-13T22:10:11Z

By Andrew Bast

This weekend witnessed a worrying twist of fate in Bolivia. Voters went to the polls in a national referendum on the country’s leadership, and President Evo Morales won in a landslide. He took more than sixty percent of the vote, higher even than the fifty-three percent he won in the 2005 presidential election. His enthusiasm was unguarded. "I dedicate this victory to all the revolutionaries in the world," he proclaimed in a nighttime victory speech from the balcony of his presidential palace in the capital of La Paz. He had reason to celebrate. The vote cemented his leadership and gave momentum to what could likely be his landmark accomplishment in office, rewriting the country’s constitution.

The twist is that voters not only cast ballots on the president, but on their local leaders as well, and a coterie of opposition governors in the country’s wealthy eastern provinces--Morales’ chief adversaries--also won in the referendum. For months they have been organizing against Morales. The departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando and Beni have all voted to become more autonomous from the central government, challenging Morales’ centralization of power in La Paz, his land reform initiative and his reengineering of the constitution. “The outcome of the vote in Bolivia is likely to only deepen the wounds between two fiercely antagonistic political projects,” says Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue. “Each side will be tempted to dig in even further.” How Morales plays his so-called revolutionary hand will very much determine Bolivia’s future. Morales would be wise to watch his autocratic ally, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, for what not to do; better to err on the side of democracy and demonstrate real skill as a politician.

Bolivia’s provinces, especially Tarija, are rich in natural gas, making the situation all the more volatile. After taking office, Morales nationalized the industry, straining tensions to the breaking point. Recently, autonomy protests in the provinces have turned violent, and the memories of the 2003 protests over the country’s natural gas reserves, which left eighty people dead, ousted President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and helped bring Morales to power, are still fresh. The issue is as raw as any in the country and could give rise to conflict once again.

A resolution seems distant. Morales has said publicly that he is prepared to talk with the governors, though no one knows what, if any, concessions he would be willing to make. From the outside, the U.S. State Department has said it "stands ready to assist" the discussions, despite its tormented relationship with Morales’ government. Spain, Bolivia’s once-colonial administrator, has also offered to help nudge talks along. The most promising pledge came this week from the Organization of American States, which is headed by the Chilean José Miguel Insulza and had a major success earlier this year when it passed a resolution in March to resolve the standoff between Hugo Chávez and Colombia. In Bolivia, negotiations are the next logical step, but with both sides boosted by big wins at the polls, when, where or on what terms are all big question marks rather than agenda items.

In addition to touting his success as another victory for the revolution, Morales has said that his presidency “starts a new Bolivian history.” Indeed, he is the first indigenous president to be elected in Latin America, and his proposed constitutional reforms would lend political representation to the long-disenfranchised indigenous majorities in the country. But his presidency is not a revolution. It is the result of votes and process and democracy, and with that recognition comes the undeniable fact that he cannot write off the past, no matter how much he may want to.

After a stinging defeat of his Venezuelan constitutional reforms in December, Morales’ staunch ally Hugo Chávez last week decided to instead issue his reforms by decree, subverting the democratic process. Morales would be wise to learn from his mentor, namely that such autocratic strategies make for bad so-called revolutions. Changing Bolivian history could mean bringing the country together, not fanning the flames of autonomy by strong-arming the opposition. Since they have popular support in their provinces, the governors’ grievances deserve a fair hearing, and if Morales has the political skill to bring them into the fold, 21st-century socialism in Bolivia could establish a sound democratic foundation. Considering the way that Chávez’s project is being left behind by less bellicose leaders like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Morales’ aim may be morally admirable, but his method will have to be more independently minded.

Turkish Court Narrowly Averts Crisis

2008-07-31T13:23:27Z

Turkey was just one judge’s vote away from a constitutional coup. But after three days of secret deliberations, Turkey’s constitutional court voted six to five not to ban the country’s ruling party and exclude its top leaders from power. Seven votes were required to shut the party down on charges of allegedly plotting to introduce Islamic law to secular Turkey – a judgment which would certainly have plunged Turkey into a full-blown political crisis. Instead the court’s members – hardline secularists all – nevertheless decided to pull back from the brink and impose a simple penalty of cutting the party off from State funding – effectively a slap on the wrist for the AKP, but at the same time a face-saving solution for the judges.

Chief prosecutor, Aburrahman Yalcinkaya had demanded that Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's president, Abdullah Gul, and 69 other AKP figures be banned from politics for five years. Their crime, according to the lengthy indictment, was that they had allowed the party to become a focal point of “anti-secular activity". In particular, the prosecutor was incensed by the AKP’s lifting of a two decades-old ban on female students wearing Islamic headscarves at university.

A seemingly trivial pretext, perhaps, for banning a democratically elected government – and one which is the most popular in modern Turkish history. But the court case is just the latest and most dramatic episode in a decades-old confrontation between political Islam and the secular establishment, which has sworn to keep religion out of public life in accordance with the radical secularism of Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. In 1999, just three years before his party swept to power, Erdogan himself was imprisoned for sedition after reciting a religious poem at a rally. And just last year, Turkey’s politically powerful military tried - unsuccessfully - to prevent Gul's election to the presidency, also because of his strong religious beliefs and his headscarf-wearing wife. The AKP called the military’s bluff by immediately calling an early general election, which it won in a landslide, and then successfully re-nominating Gul. The secularists’ response to that defeat was to draft the indictment which was knocked down by the court today.

Nevertheless, the AKP must tread carefully to avoid more time-wasting battles which have distracted the ruling party from much needed reforms and spooked markets. "I hope the party in question will evaluate this outcome very well and get the message it should get,” warned chief justice Hasim Kilic in his ruling. "The verdict on cutting treasury aid has been given because of members who decided that the party was the hub of anti-secular activities but not seriously enough [to close the party].” The subtext was clear: the court had decided to spare the party – and spare the country months of political turmoil – but now expected the AKP to steer clear of more provocative moves such as the headscarf law.

The ruling is good news for Turkey’s path to the European Union. EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said that "despite everything, this is a good day for Turkey and for Europe … There is a vast majority among the Turkish people who are in favour of European values. I'm sure this played a role, as stated by the president of the Turkish constitutional court."

It should also allow the AKP to take up a long delayed reform program on free speech and democratization. “Today’s decision by the Constitutional Court not to close down the ruling Justice and Development Party has averted a political crisis in Turkey,” says Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The ruling party should honor its election promises now and revive the long-stalled reform of human rights in Turkey.”

Israel Reacts to Obama's Private Prayer

2008-07-29T16:50:59Z

By Kevin Peraino

Nearly a week after Barack Obama made a brief campaign stop in Jerusalem, Israelis are still shaking their heads over the aggressive reporting of their local news media. Last week the Israeli daily Ma'ariv published a photo of the prayer note Obama tucked between the stones of the Western Wall--a common tradition among Israelis and foreign tourists. "Lord -- Protect my family and me," said the note, which was written on the stationery of the King David Hotel, where Obama was staying. "Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will." (Obama's spokespeople later declined to confirm or deny that the prayer was his.)

The theft--by a student at a local yeshiva--was quickly condemned by the religious figures in charge of the wall. "The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker," Shmuel Rabinovitz, the rabbi who manages the site, told a local radio station. "It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them." Rabinovitz and his colleagues do occasionally round up the notes to make more space, but those prayers are then buried unread on the nearby Mount of Olives. In Obama's case, the yeshiva student ultimately returned the note, but by then newspapers around the world had published its contents.

Among Israelis, ever conscious of their country's image abroad, and especially in the United States, the theft continues to generate criticism in the local blogosphere. On the Web site of the Jerusalem Post over the weekend, one reader complained that the theft was a violation of Jewish religious law and demanded a public apology. "Just hope that Obama will refrain from suing the jerk, even though he deserves it," the reader wrote. Others called for a boycott of Ma'ariv for publishing the note. Still, other Israelis dismissed the theft and view the prayer note primarily as a savvy campaign ploy. "He wrote the note knowing it may very well become public," said one. "Obama is not stupid."

Brazil's Gross National Hubris

2008-07-28T19:29:30Z

There are many ways to measure a society's fortunes, from per capita income to gross national happiness. In São Paulo perhaps the best thing to check is the skyline. High over this Brazilian hypercity, where office towers pierce the smog, helicopters swarm. Ferrying corporate rainmakers over the gridlocked streets, they light on rooftops and bank away again, steel dragonflies pollinating a stone jungle.

Brazil today boasts 1,100 privately owned helicopters (half of them in São Paulo), the world's third largest fleet and growing at the clip of 15 percent a year. For those below, condemned to battling one of the worst rush hours on the planet (on a bad day, traffic pileups can run to 160 kilometers or more), the view isn't so inspiring. But like the crowded skies, the clotted streets are emblems of the remarkable new moment in a nation that has hoisted itself from the ranks of chronic underachiever to emerging market upstart. (Read this week's magazine story, Weathering the Storm.)

The new bullishness has taken many by surprise. For half a century Brazil has been flirting with greatness, aiming for the clouds and then flaming out. At its loftiest the country has charmed a host of believers, but their convictions have wavered. Fleeing Europe to Brazil ahead of World War II, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig famously declared his adoptive country “the land of the future” but then lost hope in the world and downed a lethal dose of vironal in 1942, in the middle of carnival, at that. The future would have to wait. Charles DeGaulle looked down his spacious nose at much of the world, but the Brazilians always took personally his generic snub that "Brazil is not a serious country."

It's poetic justice of sorts that the Brazilians are looking down on much of the serious world today. In the quarter century or so I've been keeping an eye on this country, this is the first time I can recall that the dark talk of "crisis" refers not to some domestic debacle but to the mess beyond national borders. "Hey, Bush, we've been waiting 20 years to grow," scolded president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in an impromptu speech the other day, referring to the global spillover from the U.S. subprime credit crunch. "Get your act together."

Except for on the football pitch or the catwalks, such hubris is new for this chronically underperforming country. Maybe it's the currency. When I first arrived in Rio, in the early 80s, with inflation topping three digits, the greenback was almighty. Converted into wads of pink and green cruzeiros or cruzados or new cruzeiros (pick your perishable banknote), a hundred U.S. dollars could buy you a week on the town. Now and then the officials in Brasília tried to do something about it, lopping three zeros off the currency and decreeing drastic price freezes, so bringing only a flicker of stability. It wasn't as bad as Bolivia, where I once saw them weighing money instead of counting it in the Chapare district, but it left the continent's biggest country dysfunctional, all the same.

I keep a box in my drawer stuffed with inflation memorabilia from those days. Lost in the rubble of half a dozen versions of soiled bank notes and a kilo or so of useless coins, there's a small paper chit with the number 2147 stamped on it. It's the waitlist number I drew for the São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro air shuttle, which thanks to the price freeze during the so called Cruzado Plan, of 1986, cost $38, about half the current bus fare. When prices are kept steady, goods tend to disappear, and the Cruzado Plan was no different; Brazil's airports became flop houses as stranded passengers waited hours for an available seat.

It's not always easy to pinpoint a nation's turning point, but 1994 has to be a modern Brazilian watershed. That was the year of the Plano Real, a radical new stabilization plan named for the eponymous currency, backed this time by fiscal discipline, not a price freeze or any of the other "heterodox" hocus pocus of former plans. Brazilians were skeptical and who could blame them, after a quarter century of band-aid reforms and Monopoly money?

Today, with foreign investors tripping over themselves to pour money into Brazil, the real has outgunned the world's top 16 currencies, from Euro to Yen, gaining 13 percent against the dollar this year alone, and nearly 60 percent since 2004. To my knowledge Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen never actually turned down work for U.S. dollars, but when the rumor that she had went viral in Brazil I knew the earth had shifted in this part of the hemisphere. Now it's outbound Brazilians changing their reals into wads of greenbacks and having the time of their lives in Paris or Disney World.

You don't have to go that far to watch them frolic. The boom that has seen Brazil's economy soar has also deepened pockets. The country now boasts 20 billionaires on the Forbes list (up from just four in 2003) and 140 millionaires, a 19 percent rise year to year, against a 6 percent rise for the rest of the world. Boutique banks and private asset managers have decorated the skylines with their logos and heli-pads.

The bonanza is not just for those commuting in choppers. Climbing wages (overall payroll is up 16 percent year to year), a flood of consumer credit (growing by 30 percent yearly) and plenty of new jobs (1 million this year, 7.3 million since 2004), have hoisted countless poor into the consuming classes. Much is made of how China's surging economy has lifted tens of millions out of poverty. In fact, Dragonomics has increased the wealth gap, while Brazil has managed to reduce inequality at the same it booms. Brazil's poorest ten percent have seen their wages grow by 57 percent in real terms between 2002 and 2006, against a nine percent rise for the richest tenth, says economist and poverty scholar Marcelo Neri of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, a business school.

And while the middle class in the developed world moans about slipping downmarket, Brazil's just keeps on rising. Some 20 million Brazilians have moved up to the middle class in the last decade, and are now putting 800 new cars a day on the road in São Paulo alone. Sound exaggerated? Check out rush hour.

Jerusalem: An Unnerving Spate of Attacks

2008-07-22T16:07:06Z

By Kevin Peraino

In the first three years after I moved to Jerusalem, there were virtually no high-profile attacks in the city. When I arrived, in January 2005, Yasir Arafat had just died, and the second intifada seemed to be coming to a close. Suicide bombers still managed to strike from time to time in Tel Aviv or Israel's south. Yet over the next few years, Israelis were increasingly puzzled about the militants' inability (or unwillingness) to strike in Jerusalem, as attackers did frequently during the height of the intifada. Conventional wisdom held that the controversial wall Israel was building around--and through--the city was having at least some effect at stopping would-be bombers from crossing into Israel from the West Bank.

Something seems to have changed this year. Three times already in 2008, attackers have gone on rampages in the heart of the city. In March a Palestinian from East Jerusalem opened fire at a yeshiva at the entrance to town, killing eight students. Earlier this month another East Jerusalemite began attacking drivers on a busy West Jerusalem thoroughfare with the bulldozer he was driving, killing three Israelis. Then today, in an apparent copycat attack, a third Palestinian from East Jerusalem used a backhoe to flip and smash cars on one of the city's busiest intersections. Nobody was killed except the attacker, who was quickly shot dead by bystanders, and there are no signs at this stage that the incidents are anything other than random. Still, the cumulative effect of the bizarre wave of violence in the city center has had an unnerving effect on city residents--not to mention the campaign staff of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who was due to check into a hotel just up the road just a few hours later.

I learned of the attack today before the news hit the wires, the same way as the other two: the wail of dozens of emergency sirens converged in the air over Jerusalem from all over the city. I walked down to the scene, which is just around the corner from my apartment. The attacker lay dead on the sidewalk, stripped to the waist, his torso riddled with bullet holes. The windshield of his bulldozer was pocked with the white coronas of several gunshots. Photographers clambered up a tall olive tree trying to get a better view. One car lay upside down, resting on its hood, windows smashed. Another small white car was crumpled like a tin can. A crowd of right-wing settlers from Hebron began to chant hawkish slogans over the din of the sirens.

In nearby Liberty Bell Park, I bumped into a young Israeli paramedic named Yerach Tucker, who I first met at the scene of the yeshiva shooting in March. "It's the very, very, very center of the city," he said, shaking his head. The first responder had told me back in March that, despite the attacks, he favored direct negotiations with Hamas. This time he conceded that talks with the Islamists are somewhat beside the point in these cases, when the attackers are coming from East Jerusalem rather than Gaza or the West Bank. "I think it's just random, but it's very frightening," he told me. "They're coming from Jerusalem. You can't trust anyone now."

The McCann Murder and Britain's Tabloids

2008-07-21T18:09:26Z

After 14 months, the cloud of suspicion over Kate and Gerry McCann has lifted. The British couple are no longer officially considered suspects in the disappearance of their four-year-old daughter Maddy from a holiday complex in Portugal. The police inquiry is shelved. According to a statement from the country's attorney-general there is no evidence linking the parents to any crime.

That may come as little suprise to the British media, which throughout the affair never hesitated to dress up speculation as proof. This was the story that was simply too good to drop: a missing child, good-looking parents and a mystery that defied solution. Basic reporting standards were forgotten in pursuit of attention-grabbing headlines.

Is the media now ready to mend its ways ? Already the McCanns have won an a libel settlement from one leading newspaper group for suggesting that they were to blame for their daughter's death. And last week their fellow British suspect Robert Murat--also cleared by today's ruling--won £600,000 in libel damages for 11 British papers. Trouble is the tabloid media has no collective conscience. Reporters blame editors; editors shift the blame onto their readers readers supposedly clamoring for news when none exists: an explanation but not an excuse. Certainly, a glance at Britain's tabloids suggests no new regard for facts above rumor. The McCanns say they won't be celebrating today's news. Nor should the press.

The Arrest of Malaysia's Anwar Raises the Political Stakes

2008-07-16T20:46:24Z

By Jonathan Kent

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is again under arrest on charges of sexual misconduct that appear to be politically motivated. Police detained him today in Kuala Lumpur before he was to appear voluntarily to face questioning over new charges that he violated Malaysia’s anti-sodomy law with a political aide. Days before his latest arrest, Anwar told Newsweek that the new charges against him were “disgusting” and said elements of the current government had framed him.

Although officials deny it, his case indeed has the markings of low politics and appears to be linked to the charismatic Anwar’s unexpected staying power in Malaysia. In 1998, Anwar was arrested for sodomy and corruption, triggering widespread anti-government protests. He was convicted of both crimes and served six years in prison before Malaysia’s current leader, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, ordered him to be released in 2004 (the sodomy conviction was later overturned). Anwar was freed, analysts said at the time, because Prime Minister Abdullah deemed him a spent force more dangerous inside than outside prison. But Anwar’s intelligence and dynamism – juxtaposed with the dearth of either quality in the ranks of the ruling coalition – have made him as popular today as he was in the mid-1990s when he served as strongman Mahathir Mohamad’s deputy and erstwhile successor. In March, the loose opposition coalition Anwar now leads chalked up a major election victory, winning control of five states and nearly tossing the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition from power.

There's reason to believe that the new charges of sexual misconduct won't derail Anwar's political career. Unlike 1998, no ruling party leader commands nearly the obedience or fear Mahathir did a decade ago. Abdullah’s government, having suffered the worst drubbing the ruling coalition has experienced since Malaysian independence in 1957, is also unpopular. And Malaysia’s long-fractious opposition has united its ethnic Malay, Chinese and Indian communities to great effect. Indeed, the March outcome showed disgruntled Malaysians that they have the power to oust the current government at the ballot box.

Anwar’s arrest rachets up the political risk to both sides. The opposition needs to tread carefully because the government could seize on any outbreak of violence as an excuse to declare emergency rule. It did so in 1969 after bloody race riots, setting Malaysia’s democratization back a generation. Nonetheless, peaceful “people power” demonstrations would put huge pressures on the government and potentially cause several disaffected minority partners to break away from the ruling coalition. Before his arrest, Anwar was aggressively wooing them to switch sides and help his opposition allies for a new government.

Prime Minister Abdullah’s government is also in a tough spot. Treating Anwar harshly would surely damage its relations with western powers. Uncertainty (a condition in no short supply) has already begun to scare foreign investors in Malaysia. Just as in finance, going back to the trumultuous 1990s is a worst case scenario for Malaysian politics.

Sudan: the International Court's Big Test

2008-07-16T03:16:33Z

By Jonathan Tepperman

Since the International Criminal Court decided to indict Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, for war crimes earlier this week, the chorus of criticism has grown deafening. Khartoum, with support from Beijing and Moscow, is outraged by what it sees as a flagrant invasion of Sudan’s sovereignty. U.N. and African Union bureaucrats and aid workers worry the charges will imperil the safety of peacekeepers and aid workers in the country (and with reason; AU troops there have increasingly become targets of late, scarcely able to protect themselves let alone the people of Darfur). Meanwhile, pundits opine that the indictment represents another instance of overreaching by an international body, and will make any peace settlement in Sudan even harder to achieve (by reducing Bashir’s incentives to cooperate). The old debate over whether it’s better to seek justice or peace (which may mean offering amnesty to the worst malefactors) has been taken up once more.

There are several problems with these arguments. As for sovereignty, that’s a nonstarter. Since Nuremberg, the international community has recognized that certain laws and norms have universal jurisdiction, applicable everywhere. And a new principle of international law adopted by the Security Council in 2006, known as the responsibility to protect, holds that local governments can now effectively default on their sovereignty when they egregiously abuse their own citizens--as Khartoum most certainly has. The case for overreaching is similarly thin. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, is no cowboy, and didn’t undertake this indictment on his own initiative. He was doing his job. The Security Council itself (including Raussia and China) first ordered him to investigate the Sudanese government in 2005, and the indictment was a natural conclusion of that process.

The big question is whether the charges will make any difference in Sudan. In terms of the peacekeepers, the real problem is that most countries who have promised to send troops haven’t done so. It’s taken five years to deploy just 9,000 soldiers there, and those units are undermanned, underequipped and unable to function effectively. As for Bashir, this isn’t the first time a head of state has been indicted by an international tribunal--that precedent was set with Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor. But the trick will be getting Bashir in the dock. Given Sudan’s record of defying the international community, that’s unlikely to happen short of regime change in Khartoum, which is also unlikely. Remember that Moreno-Ocampo has no police force to make arrests, and Russia and China will surely block any further action by the United Nations.

Will the indictment actually make things worse, however, by reducing the likelihood that Bashir will deal? Again that’s unclear, but it seems unlikely. First, remember that there currently is no peace process underway, so the charges won’t disrupt anything. Second, as Richard Goldstone, former prosecutor for the Yugoslav tribunal, argues, indictments during the Balkan wars in the 1990s actually made things easier by removing some of the most notorious hardliners from the bargaining table.

On balance the depressing reality is that the real impact of the indictment will probably be minimal, at least in the short term. And that could prove to be the real problem. While the charges won’t make things worse (or better) for the people of Sudan, the credibility of this fledgling court is on the line. If it flubs its first major case, that could have negative repercussions in similar instances of genocide and abuse further down the line. So the stakes are high; and while the outcome of the court case is far from clear, the circumstances don’t seem encouraging.

Afghanistan’s Growing Refugee Crisis

2008-07-10T14:48:17Z

Refugees International researchers were surprised when they showed up in Taghi Naghi, an area in northwestern Afghanistan in June to assess one of the country’s 11 “land allocation schemes” for returning refugees. What they found differed sharply from the government’s plans for the hundreds of thousands of people returning from exile in Pakistan and Iran. Despite UN objections, the shelters had been built in the desert, an hour’s trip to the nearest city of Herat. A water pump was hooked up to a dry well, but an NGO trucking in water said their contract was going to run out soon after the visit. Only 12 families were occupying the more than 200 shelters that had been built, none of whom had any means of finding employment. According to one man living at Taghi Naghi, he might be forced to move his family to Herat despite being unable to pay its high city rents, since it was becoming increasingly difficult to feed his children.

The floundering Taghi Naghi project, one of 55 planned across Afghanistan, cost $2 million, and is just one example of how the refugee situation in Afghanistan is bad and growing worse, according to a Refugees International (RI) report published July 10. Since things started looking up for Afghanistan in 2002, the largest-ever refugee homecoming brought more than 5 million Afghan refugees back into the country, some of whom had been living in exile for three decades as their country weathered war with the Soviets, Taliban rule, and the NATO invasion. But over 3 million people are still stranded in exile, RI says, while many of those who have returned are ill-equipped to deal with Afghanistan’s harsh land and security crises. Deteriorating conditions in recent months due to a food crisis and an insurgency again on the rise have further complicated matters, while an impending Pakistani threat to bulldoze camps in their country by the end of 2009 has contributed an added time pressure to deal with the problems.

“The situation in Afghanistan is worsening, and we’re running the risk of losing the gains we’ve made in the past few years,” said RI advocate Patrick Duplat, who produced the report after traveling with a colleague for a month to meet with refugees in Pakistan and returnees in Afghanistan. “Of course, the situation in general in Afghanistan is quite dire. From 40 to 60 percent of the country is inaccessible, so all Afghans are vulnerable. But that being said, a large percentage of the population--5 million people--are particularly vulnerable.”

The report blames a lack of planning and coordination on the part of both Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government and its international backers, who provide over 90 percent of the country’s budget. While billions of dollars have been invested in reconstruction projects in Afghanistan since 2001, too few have made their way to real development projects, RI contends; large-scale infrastructure and counter-insurgency efforts have sapped most of the funds.

As a result, RI is calling on donors to coordinate and fund their efforts in Afghanistan at a joint UN and Afghan conference in Kabul in November. “What we’d like to see is the returnees being integrated into the mainstream national programs,” said Duplat, cautioning that a failure to act could lead refugees to either try their luck at returning to Pakistan or swell the ranks of Afghanistan’s urban poor. A lack of resources is not the problem, he says; the international community just needs to put its money where its mouth is to integrate refugees without forcibly displacing them, whether they want to come back to Afghanistan or stay in Pakistan permanently.

The G8: Butting Heads on Climate

2008-07-07T17:07:59Z

Finding ways of capping carbon emissions is on the agenda for this week’s G8 Summit, which begins today on the pristine Japanese island of Hokkaido. But if anything is getting capped, it’s expectations for a meaningful agreement on climate change.

A competing jumble of climate change negotiations have turned the forum itself into a debate topic as polarizing as the carbon markets and global targets being proposed. Not one, but two extra groups have joined the G8 at Hokkaido, each with the potential to reach its own set of conclusions. The G8 + 5 group brings major developing emitters like China and India into the fold, and the Major Economies Meeting (MEM), George W. Bush’s brainchild, adds three other big carbon emitters—Indonesia, Australia and South Korea—into the mix. Together, the groups account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Washington would prefer to settle the major points at the MEM before tackling the unwieldy 200-country United Nations gatherings, which are coming up against their deadline for a post-Kyoto treaty to be approved in Copenhagen in December of 2009. Coming out of Hokkaido empty-handed will make pre-Copenhagen talks this fall just that much messier.

Still, while none of the three groupings at Hokkaido will likely produce a major consensus on emissions caps, they are producing a lively diplomatic chess match. E.U. members, who want the group to commit to steep cuts in carbon emissions by 2050, are butting heads with Bush over his unwillingness to commit to numerical targets. Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is trying to broker a compromise. With a more green-friendly Obama or McCain administration only months away, Fukuda apparently believes that a tussle with Bush is counterproductive. Instead, he’s pushing for agreements on less-polarizing issues, such as encouraging carbon capture and storage technology for coal power plants, promoting nuclear energy and lowering tariffs on clean technology.

“There are some folks out there who think the rest of the world can settle on their own agreement and expect the United States to then come and join under a new administration,” said Council on Foreign Relations environmental expert Michael Levi on a recent press conference call. “But the Japanese understand that, regardless of substance, the United States is going to have to be part of creating whatever agreement happens if there’s any chance that the U.S. will end up being part of that agreement.”

A Refugee in Holland

2008-06-24T16:31:57Z

By Friso Endt

When Morgan Tsvangirai held a press conference on Sunday to announce that we was withdrawing from Zimbabwe’s presidential runoff election slated for Friday, he sat next to Dutch ambassador Jos Weterings. Afterwards Tsyangirai left in Weterings's car, flying Dutch flags, and rode straight to the embassy in Harrare, where the Dutch received him as a political refugee. “The Dutch embassy in Zimbabwe has been guaranteed by the authorities that our diplomatic immunity will be respected,” the embassy said in a statement. Tsvangirai said on Dutch radio early Tuesday morning that he feels “safe” and thanked the Dutch for their hospitality.

What happens next? Bert Koenders, the Dutch minister of “Overseas Development Policy,” expects Tsvangirai to ask for a United Nations investigation into who initiated the violence against voters and opposition members in Zimbabwe. He will also ask for help in insuring “honest organized elections” in Zimbabwe. According to Koenders, Tsvangirai’s decision to withdraw was intended to be an “instrument to empower international pressure at Mugabe.” Sources in The Hague say that the Dutch government had been meeting over the weekend to discuss the Zimbabwe problem and Tsvangirai’s request for asylum. The Dutch are said to have consulted the U.S. embassy in The Hague and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington, but neither the Dutch nor the U.S. embassy would confirm the rumors. On Tuesday morning Tsvangirai said in an interview with Dutch radio reporters that he expects that he can leave the embassy “soon”.

Bottoms Up in the Beer World

2008-06-20T12:25:15Z

By Mac Margolis

If you want a crash course on globalization, belly up to the bar in the United States. The lesson is not so much in what you'll hear from the idled legions, whose jobs were outsourced to some distant nation, but in what you can drink.

From Tsingtao to Lowenbrau, "foreign" beer is everywhere. In a thirsty country like the U.S., where palate generally trumps nationalism, that is nothing new. For all the exotic labels, you could always count on solid, and eminently pronounceable U.S. brands. A Bud was a Bud was a Bud. Until now, that is.

In mid-June, the huge multinational beverage maker InBev made a hostile takeover bid for Anheuser-Busch, the maker of iconic beer Budweiser. Big companies swallowing other big companies is the American way, of course, but this move was particularly jolting to the land of the King of Beer. InBev, the world's No. 2 brewer, is based in Belgium, a place most U.S. citizens know best for mussels and damp weather. It also sells Stella Artois, a beer that, unlike Budweiser, is famous around the world. One of the selling points of the merger, in fact, was InBev's proposal to hoist the King of Beers into a truly global brand. To add insult to injury, the CEO of InBev (like most of his top staff) is Brazilian, a country best-known in North America for football (oops, soccer) and small swimwear.

For the good people of St. Louis, Mo., home of Anheuser-Busch, this went down badly. Apart from bad puns ("Brewers at Lager Heads" and "Brew-Ha Ha over Budweiser" are two recent headlines), the $46 billion takeover play has provoked indignation, street protests and stout political opposition in Missouri. No matter that InBev pledged not to tamper with Bud's recipe or close any breweries, much less shut down the St. Louis head offices. "It's a bad idea. I don't want you to buy it. The people of Missouri don't want you to buy it," Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, told InBev chief Carlos Brito, reportedly over a cold Bud. "I will do everything I can to stop this sale from going through."

Having long scolded poorer nations for squandering their resources and ignoring the lessons of Western-style capitalism, some people in developed countries now seem stunned and wounded when the envoys of those same, now upstart, countries come shopping for home-grown assets. The world was supposed to be flat, not upside down.

"I'm worried, I'm annoyed, I'm mad as hell and I don't know what to do about it," Richard Haskayne, a Canadian energy executive, told me not long ago, after the Brazilian mining conglomerate CVRD bought the historic Canadian nickel producer Inco for $18 billion in 2006. With all the new carpetbaggers afoot, he feared, Canada's economy was in danger of losing "all the decision-making and corporate infrastructure of national businesses to places like Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Moscow."

Now the consternation has reached the clubby world of beer-making. But Bud is not the only Yankee brew under siege: Not long ago, the U.S.'s other famous brewing town, Milwaukee, was rocked by the purchase of its most cherished brand, Miller, by the South African Brewing company. Known now as S.A.B. Miller, the Johannesburg-born company, which keeps its headquarters in London, is now the biggest brewer in the world.

Like it or not, the anything-goes reality of corporate competition is shaking up America's cozy idea of the world order, not to mention its happy hour, and Americans probably have little choice but to kick back, crack open a new Bud and enjoy it.

Danger in African Skies

2008-06-11T19:16:07Z

By Andrew Ehrenkranz

A single-engine Cessna carrying two Kenyan government ministers crashes into the Masaii Mara hillside about 100 kms (60 miles) from Nairobi, killing everyone on board. In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, a Sudan Airways Airbus A-310 en route from the Syrian capital of Damascus explodes on landing at Khartoum International Airport. Miraculously, almost half of the passengers survive and manage to escape the burning fuselage. And this was just yesterday, Tuesday, June 10.

Africa is, far and away, the world’s most dangerous place to board an aircraft. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the number of major accidents per million takeoffs in Africa amounted to 4.31 in 2006, compared to a worldwide average of only 0.65. According to Giovanni Bisignani, the head of the IATA, Africa's accident rate is still nearly six times the global average. This sorry record has led to the European Union including 74 African airlines on its 91-strong global blacklist of planes barred from EU air space. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the country's vast size and severely-limited road network makes it heavily dependent on air cargo, all 54 of the country's airlines are banned. With 20 crashes since 1996, including a Hewa Bora Airways DC-9 that killed 40 people, including 37 on the ground when it overran the runway in the east Congolese city of Goma on April 15, the D.R.C. has the worst safety record in sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States, only two African airlines qualify for landing rights.

What causes the crashes? A combination of poor aircraft maintenance, old fleets, short runways and harsh weather environments all contribute. African governments are starting to fight back: in June 2007, a group of continental leaders approved AFRO-CAA, a Windhoek, Namibia-headquartered aviation agency designed to monitor and enforce air safety standards across the continent. The year-old body is modeled after the American Federal Aviation Agency and Europe’s Aviation Safety Agency. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but AFRO-CAA clearly has its work cut out if there are to be fewer of yesterday's nightmares in Africa.

What's Bush Doing in Rome?

2008-06-09T18:23:34Z

By Barbie Nadeau

Italians are dusting off their antiwar banners, which typically means one thing: George W. Bush is coming to town. The U.S. president will be in Italy from Wednesday evening through Friday morning as part of a one-week trip to Europe. While in Rome he will meet with Italy’s president, its prime minister and Pope Benedict XVI. He will also likely be dodging the thousands of protesters who are planning to block his motorcade and fill the piazzas.

And even though he’s now in the lame-duck phase of his presidency, his visit here could generate some real—and unwelcome—news for pacifist Italians. Topping the agenda with Italy’s new-again prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who once called himself “George Bush’s best friend,” is bulking up Italy’s troop presence in Afghanistan. Following France’s pledge of 700 additional soldiers, Bush is reported to be hoping to get Berlusconi to as much as double this country’s 2,600 troops, currently based in Kabul and western Afghanistan. Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has already been negotiating changes in NATO’s combat constraints, which he told Italy’s Corriere della Sera would mean more “battlefield flexibility against the Taliban.”

Frattini also indicates that Berlusconi is considering sending Italians back into Iraq. When former prime minister Romano Prodi narrowly knocked Berlusconi out of office back in 2006, Prodi’s first order of business was to bring home the troops that Berlusconi had originally sent to Iraq to support Bush. Prodi left some 50 advisers in Iraq, who have trained thousands of Iraqi police; Berlusconi may send as many as 200 more. Redeployment of larger forces remains a point of speculation, but no one from Berlusconi’s office will confirm or deny any immediate plans. The addition of trainers, however, is very likely, as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has formally asked Italy to send more. Frattini simply said, “We believe it is important to show the Italian people that we are meeting our responsibilities working with our friends.”

Berlusconi may also speed up the controversial expansion of the Caserma Ederle American military base in the northern city of Vicenza. Back when he was prime minister from 2001 to 2005, he struck a secret deal to expand America’s military presence in Vicenza by authorizing the construction of a new Dal Molin base, which will be America’s largest European military base. The new base is highly contested; protesters have been camping out in tents along the construction site for the last three years. The new base is being constructed less than a mile from Vicenza’s famous Palladio cathedral in the central Piazza dei Signori. American military personnel in Vicenza number around 2,800, most of whom carry out operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Locals worry that these and any additional troops would likely be instrumental in any American military action against Iran, making Italy a potential retaliation target.

What will Italy get in exchange for helping America now instead of waiting to see who wins the White House in November? First, Bush might be able to secure a spot for Italy on the so-called five-plus-one, the group comprising the five permanent U.N. Security Council members, plus Germany. Italy desperately wants a position in this group, which seeks to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Italy’s prospects have been undermined by Germany’s complaints that Italy’s state-run oil and natural gas company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) has lucrative contracts with Iran to develop the Darkhovein oil fields along with other trade partnerships with Iran. Bush has already indicated that he will back Italy’s bid to convert the five-plus-one into the five-plus-two. In an interview with RAI television that aired across Italy on June 6, Bush promised his support and said, “Italy can be an effective voice in sending a message to the Iranians, and that you don’t have to choose isolation,” he said. “Italy can be a critical part of that.”

And Bush might also give Berlusconi credibility with the next U.S. president, say Italian political analysts. Berlusconi may be something of a cipher to Barack Obama and John McCain, but pundits here believe that any deal with Bush will give Berlusconi a higher profile with the two White House contenders. “I know him well, I trust him, I like him,” Bush said of Berlusconi on RAI. “I find him to be one of the really interesting world leaders.” Berlusconi must certainly hope that sentiment will last through the next U.S. administration.