Ethiopia has started work on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a massive project which, when completed, will house the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa. The dam, which will deviate the course of the Blue Nile, has raised a great deal of concern in Egypt and Sudan. Egypt gets well over half of its water […]
Japan and Russia move closer to peace treaty, but why now?
Japan and Russia never concluded a peace treaty at the end of the Second World War. The USSR’s seizure of a group of islands (called the Southern Kurils in Russia, and the Northern Territories in Japan) in the war’s final days became a rift in bilateral relations that no pair of leaders since then has […]
Negotiations between Colombia and FARC yield major reforms
Peace talks in Havana between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have yielded a sweeping agreement on agrarian reform, according to the Colombian press. The civil war, which has lasted half a century and affected millions of lives, had its roots in peasant uprisings over land ownership. If successful, these […]
Violence in Iraq: prelude to dissolution, or re-birth pains?
Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy looks at the violence threatening Iraq’s tenuous integrity, dismissing claims that the conflict can be reduced to “sectarian hatred” or spillover from Syria’s civil war. But the real driver of violence in Iraq is arguably Baghdad’s over-centralization of power, which came too soon and was […]
Afghanistan and Pakistan clash along border
The Durand Line was drawn by British authorities in 1893 to separate British India from Afghanistan. Since that time, very few Afghan governments have recognized the border’s legitimacy. In the post-invasion Karzai era, rejection of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is perhaps the only thing all parties and factions can agree upon. This month, however, tensions seem […]