The 54th state in Africa – South Sudan – gained its independence on July 9. This oil-rich, landlocked country has many immediate challenges ahead of it, not least among them food security. The following sites provide a great deal of information and facts about this newest sovereign land: The New York Times (linked overview, slide shows, and pointers to external sites); the BBC (country profile, biography of the president, facts, picture of the flag, state of the media, and a chronology of events from the 19th century); the Guardian( “Eight things you need to know about South Sudan,” including lyrics to the national anthem); and The Washington Post. Maps can be found at this site, and very detailed maps of the ten provinces (some sources call them “counties”) are located at the Ministry of Land, Housing and Public Utilities page. The transitional constitution is already available as well as laws and legislation. Major think tanks have also weighed in, among them: Chatham House, Brookings Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Current news can be garnered from the Sudan Tribune, the Juba Post (Juba is the capital), the Sudan Radio Service, and Gurtong (come here for a definition of the term). This last news source contains a wealth of information: many key documents, profiles of the ethnic communities in South Sudan, entries on South Sudan political parties, and other hard-to-find data. And do not forget this report from CRS: The Republic of South Sudan: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa’s Newest Country.
Archive for Foreign Relations
Civil War in Ivory Coast
Since a 2002 civil war, political, religious, and territorial tensions have been a constant backdrop in this West African country. The escalating violence has drawn in both France and the United Nations in an attempt to broker a peace and has caused mass migrations to Liberia which is itself in a chaotic state of affairs. The recent upheavals can be traced to the refusal of Laurent Gbagbo to cede the presidency to the legitimate winner of last November’s election, Alassane Ouattara. Further exacerbating the situation is that Gbagbo’s supporters are primarily Christians who reside in the south while Ouattara’s adherents are Muslims from the north. Human Rights Watch has accused Gbagbo’s forces of commiting the vast majority of abuses in this conflict while the highly respected NGO International Crisis Group states that Gbagbo bears the primary responsibility for the massacres of civilians taking place in the city of Abidjan, the intellectual and political center of the country, and home to nine million people. Ongoing news coverage is provided by The New York Times, BBC (including live coverage and Twitter reports), The Washington Post, AllAfrica.com, and Time. Background information can be garnered from: The World Factbook (CIA); Country Study: Ivory Coast (Library of Congress); Background Note: Cote d’Ivoire (State Department); Ivory Coast Country Profile (BBC); Country Profile: Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire)(UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Foreign Information: Cote d’Ivoire (University of Colorado); and Cote d’Ivoire Page (University of Pennsylvania). Additional information is at: Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House.
What is the Muslim Brotherhood?
In these volatile political times, any involved organization is subject to partisan appraisals. Even in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday, February 10, DNI James Clapper described the Muslim Brotherhood as a secular group, only to have a “clarification” issued later by his PR chief stating that Clapper is aware that the Brotherhood is not a secular organization. All sides do agree that the Muslim Brotherhood (or “Brotherhood” or “MB”) was founded in the 1920s in Egypt, is the source of Hamas and al-Qaeda, and holds 88 seats in Egypt’s parliament. Opinions vary from The New York Times’“…the Muslim Brotherhood has been by far the most muscular and influential of Egypt’s dissident organizations” to the Brookings Institution’s “The Egyptian Brotherhood renounced violence years ago, but its relative moderation has made it the target of extreme vilification by more radical Islamists” to “The Muslim Brotherhood has provided the ideological model for almost all modern Sunni Islamic terrorists groups” from Report on the Roots of Violent islamist Extremism and the Efforts to Counter It: The Muslim Brotherhood as submitted to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Besides The New York Times and Brookings sites, which both provide ample writings/reports, additional sites providing information include: Muslim Brothers (Federation of American Scientists); The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Mt Holyoke College -very informative! contains timeline, founder biographies, sources, etc); Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (Harvard International Review, May 2006); Factbox: What is the Muslim Brotherhood? (Reuters); Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen: The Muslim Brotherhood (Military Review, July/August 2003); Muslim Brotherhood (Berkley Center, Georgetown University - describes many of the Brotherhood affiliates); Explaining Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (NPR); Muslim Brotherhood Egypt Videos (AOL); Backgrounder: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (Council on Foreign Relations); Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Lurks as a Long-Term Threat to Freedom (Heritage Foundation); Profile: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (BBC); Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process in the Arab World: Exploring the Gray Zones (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations (CRS); Al Qaeda and Affiliates: Historical Perspective, Global Presence, and Implications for U.S. Policy (CRS); and IkhwanWeb (The Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website).
WikiLeaks Releases Thousands of Secret U.S. Government Cables
Over the next few months, WikiLeaks will be publishing well over 200,000 secret diplomatic cables between U.S. embassies and the State Department that were generated between 1966 and 2010. They are seachable via country of origin, creation date, tags, and classification type. More information can be found at: New York Times, Spiegel, and the Guardian. These documents give the reader an unprecedented look into the operations of the U.S. foreign service. For those of you gentle readers who are not familiar with the apparently confusing jargon and acronyms of diplomatic cables, this guide will come in handy.
President Obama’s Iraq Speech
You can watch the speech at C-SPAN; read the full transcript; and peruse coverage/commentary from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, BBC, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Heritage Foundation, The Atlantic, and Time.
The Lockerbie Letters
For those who wish to read the Lockerbie correspondence which resulted in the release of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, you can read the UK Ministry of Justice collection, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office files, and documents from the Scottish government. The BBC has extensive coverage of this case, as does The New York Times.
FBI Interviews with Saddam Hussein
From the esteemed National Security Archive comes this new release: transcripts of twenty interviews and five “casual conversations” with Saddam Hussein between February and June 2004. Also, peruse their Saddam Hussein Sourcebook. See early mentions of Hussein in the Foreign Relations of the United States. More than two thousand references to Hussein can be found in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States.
Obama’s Speech to the Muslim World.
Read the transcript of the speech; view a video of the speech as well. And read the reportage from the BBC, New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.
Lifting of Some Sanctions Against Cuba
With NJCU being the only four-year institution of higher education in New Jersey classified as an HSI(Hispanic Serving Institution), with New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez being the son of Cuban immigrants, and with Jersey City being in close proximity to two municipalities which have significant Cuban populations( 12% in Union City and 17% in West New York), President Obama’s relationship with the government of Cuba sparks great interest. The Jurist carries a great deal of background information on this topic, while USNews.com provides links to many other news publications discussing this easing of sanctions. The BBC has a good country profile on Cuba as does this Library of Congress site. A good place to find additional information on Cuba is the Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC). These CRS reports should also be consulted: Cuba: Issues for the 111th Congress and Cuba: U.S. Restrictions on Travel and Remittances. Working papers in the social sciences on Cuba can be retrieved from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) while current monographs can be found at the University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions. This Brookings paper should also be consulted as well as this site from the Council on Foreign Relations.Those who wish to delve deeper into the past may consult the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) through 1960; succeeding volumes of the FRUS dealing with Cuba(the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis) are here.
North Korea and Missiles
To say that the recent launching of a missile from North Korea ramped up the tensions in that part of the world would be an understatement judging by the reactions of many other countries. The U.S. Policy Regarding North Korea was issued on Saturday, April 4, the U.N.Security Council has met in an emergency session, Japan has issued its own statement, and other nations have issued statements over this missile launch. That the United States has been involved in Korea over the decades is manifestly made obvious by perusal of the Foreign Relations of the United States (notice that the earliest mentions of Korea are spelled “Corea”). Additional news reporting can be accessed from The New York Times, CNN, BBC, and the Guardian. A chronology of North Korea’s missile program is available coutesy of the AP. For additional information, please consult: Country Profile: North Korea (Library of Congress); Country Study: North Korea (Library of Congress); North Korea: Nuclear Standoff (PBS) North Korea (Council on Foreign Relations); North Korea (Brookings Institution); Hot Topics: North Korea (RAND Corporation); North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program (CRS); North Korean Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (CRS); North Korean Ballistic Missile Program, North Korea’s Military Threat: Pyongyang’s Conventional Forces, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles, and North Korean Foreign Relations in the Post-Cold War World (all from Strategic Studies Institute); Addressing the North Korea Nuclear Challenge (Stanford University); and Dealing with North Korea: “Diplomatic Warfare” Ahead (Columbia University);
China’s Military Power
This annual report to Congress highlights China’s burgeoning military growth. Compare this to previous reports issued by the Department of Defense. For additional information, please consult: China: Pentagon Military Report Distorted (CNN); Central Military Commission (globalsecurity.org); China’s National Defense in 2008 (Information Office of the State Council of the PRC); China Military Statistics (CIA World Factbook); Country Profile-China (Library of Congress); U.S.-China Military Contacts, China Naval Modernization, U.S. Conventional Land Forces and Nuclear Deterrence: A China Case Study, and China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles:Policy Issues (all CRS); Backgrounder: China’s Military Power (Council on Foreign Relations); China Responses to U.S. Military Transformation and Implications for the Department of Defense, Modernizing China’s Military, and The United States and a Rising China: Strategic and Military Implications(all RAND Corporation); Russia, China, and the United States in Central Asia, The “People” in the PLA: Recruitment, Training, and Education in China’s Military, Right-Sizing the People’s Liberation Army, and China’s Nuclear Forces (all Strategic Studies Institute); Chinese Military Power (Commonwealth Institute); and China Military Guide (globalsecurity.org);
