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Folks in many parts of the world must be wondering what on earth is going on in Nigeria. From an ailing president to the fragile peace in the Niger Delta, there appears to be a relentless stream of bad news coming out of Africa’s most populous country. Last week, at least 100 people were killed in sectarian violence in Jos, a north-central city about 800 kilometres from Lagos. Among the dead were children and women who were ambushed and beaten to death in their homes while they slept. Many of them were were later buried in mass graves.

The perpetrators, according to the police, were herdsmen on a purported revenge mission after a similar attack left 100 of their own dead in January.

When will the cycle of violence end? In February, journalist Sunday Dare wrote an article, “From peace home to killing fields,” published in a number of Nigerian newspapers. The article was about this same Jos—the place of his childhood and former home. At one time, Jos was among of Nigeria’s four fabled cities—the others being Lagos and Port Harcourt in the south, and Kano in the north. The city’s coal and mineral wealth, temperate climate, and lush vegetation has lured many of the country’s nouveau rich to its environs over the years, people who subsequently acquired large tracts of land in the Mambilla plateau region for farming and leisure.

But Jos, like the other fabled cities, appears to have lost its innocence. The family home of the journalist, Dare, was set ablaze in January’s sectarian violence. His elder brother was hacked to death as he tried to flee. And now we have new violence this month, leaving scores more dead, maimed, and homeless in its wake.

After the outbreak of violence in January, Human Rights Watch issued a report that, among other things, urged the Nigerian government to “investigate and prosecute those responsible for the killing of at least 200 people during the violence, the latest in the deadly outbreaks in Nigeria, and address the underlying causes.” To be sure, Nigeria has never been short on investigations to discern the causes of social violence. There have been eight such commissions of inquiry between 2001 and 2009. And after the last outbreak of violence in November, two different panels were set up—one an investigative panel by the Federal Government; the other a judicial panel by the State government. Read the rest of this entry »

Afghan President Ahmed Karzai amended a law governing the country’s Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), much to the chagrin of the Obama administration, which has been turning up the pressure on the Karzai administration to clean up corruption within the Afghan government. Karzai’s amendment will put the ECC, a formerly independent watchdog, under control of the office of the president, which will now have the power to appoint all five of the commission’s members. A Karzai spokesman defended the move, saying: “With foreigners in the commission it was not a national body, nor it was an Afghan body. So to Afghanise the process, the president changed some articles of the law.” Previously, ECC members were appointed by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Court of Afghanistan, and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Before this latest move, many observers considered the ECC to be one of Afghanistan’s most independent bodies. During the country’s presidential election last August, it threw out more than half a million votes cast for Karzai, charging that hey’d been tainted by fraud. Now, however, such an act by the ECC seems somewhat less likely. “This is bad news for democracy,” said a former U.N. political adviser in Afghanistan. “Basically, if President Karzai wishes it, this could prevent free elections ever being held in Afghanistan.” The first test of the new ECC may come this September, when the country goes to the polls for parliamentary elections.

Nigeria’s ailing president, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, returned home from Saudi Arabia yesterday after a three-month medical leave, receiving treatment at a hospital in Jeddah for a heart condition. During Yar’Adua absence, the Nigerian government fell into a constitutional crisis, largely because Yar’Adua failed to hand over the reins of government temporarily to his vice president, Goodluck Jonathan. In January, after a series of street protests erupted throughout the country calling for Yar’Adua’s resignation, Nigeria’s Federal High Court in Abuja intervened, declaring Vice President Jonathan constitutionally empowered to serve as acting president. Despite Yar’Adua’s return to Nigeria yesterday, Jonathan has continued to serve as the country’s premier. Yet, even if Yar’Adua does eventually return to his post as president, his extended absence may spell political discord for the country in the lead-up to its 2011 presidential elections. Already, a coalition of northern politicians is insisting that because of Yar’Adua’s incapacitation, Nigeria’s next president should hail from the north. In a power-sharing agreement between northern and southern Nigeria, the office of the presidency rotates between the two regions. Yar’Adua comes from the Muslim north, while Johnson comes from the Christian south.

Public and private sector unions in Greece held strikes on Wednesday to protest the pending austerity measures that the government is planning to undertake in an effort to close the country’s budget deficit. The measures, which would raise the country’s retirement age, freeze public wages, and increase taxes, are most unpopular with a large swath of Greece’s middle class and working poor, many of whom would bear the brunt of the hardships. In a rally today, the head of one private sector union told a crowd, “Today, Europe’s eyes are turned on us, today we are demonstrating for hope and our future … to cancel the measures.” Yet while the changes remain unpopular with many Greeks, some polls indicate that about half of the population supports the government’s austerity interventions. The measures under consideration by the Greek government will hopefully salvage Greece’s membership in the Eurozone.  The European Monetary Union mandates that all countries using the euro ensure their budget deficits remain below three percent of GDP. Greece’s budget shortfall reached 12.7 percent this year.

It’s all coming along very nicely—the recent efforts to arrest war criminals and the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Who would have thought during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, or in the midst of the dark days of the Rwandan genocide that the hand of international justice would be reaching out to arrest the patrons of criminal activity, trying and imprisoning them? At some point, we may even see the architects of torture in the recent U.S. administration of George W. Bush investigated.

Global recognition of the importance of international criminal justice has been marred by fits and starts throughout most of the twentieth century, gaining momentum only recently. After the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials in 1945 and 1946, there was a hiatus in the pursuit of international justice–a lapse that was finally broken when, in 1975, most of the world signed the Convention Against Torture. Twenty years later, the world community went even further, crafting the Convention Against War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in June 1998. More commonly known as the Rome Statute, the Convention Against War Crimes is indeed a momentous document, the first of its kind to take as its mission the need to “to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators” of the world’s most serious crimes, “and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes.”

The aftershocks of this latest convention were immediately felt by the world’s worst dictators, its principles being invoked by domestic courts throughout the world. A few months after the Rome convention, for example, Scotland Yard arrested the former dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, in London. After long court hearings, for the first time anywhere a high court declared that sovereign immunity must not be allowed to become sovereign impunity. Alas, he was released on humanitarian grounds two years later, and died of a heart attack in 2006 without ever being brought to justice.

Since that time, the ball has only rolled with gathering speed. Just last month, a London judge issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former prime minister of Israel and a current leader in the Knesset. She was indicted for her role in last year’s Operation Cast Lead, which authorized the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip. Ms Livni avoided arrest by cancelling a pending trip to Britain. The British government was embarrassed, but could do nothing.

Read the rest of this entry »

France, Japan and Spain sharply curtailed operations of their embassies in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a on Monday after the United States and Britain closed down their facilitiets entirely. France’s decision to close their embassy to all public visits and the moves by Japan and Spain to restrict access were also triggered by reports that began circulating of a planned attack by Yemeni-based elements loyal to al Qaeda. A recent statement released by the group read: “We call on all Muslims … to throw out all unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula by killing crusaders who work in embassies or elsewhere … [in] a total war on all crusaders in the Peninsula of [Prophet] Muhammad.” This statement comes in the wake of the failed Christmas Day attack on board a Detroit-bound airplane, which was the brainchild of Yemeni militants. Since that incident, Yemen has emerged as a country of growing strategic importance to the West in its battle against al Qaeda extremism, with experts predicting increased Western attention to the country and its struggles in the upcoming months.  Until recently, most attention to al Qaeda has focused on the group’s South Asian affiliates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In related news, on Monday Yemeni authorities released a statement claiming to have killed two militants associated with al Qaeda in a government crackdown.

For a photo portfolio of Yemen and its refugee problems, see the Fall issue of World Policy Journal.

The leader of the military junta in Myanmar announced that the country will hold elections this year, its first in 20 years. In an open letter, General Than Shwe said that the current government’s road map is “designed for [the] emergence of a peaceful, modern, and developed nation” that will “transition to democracy.” Than’s letter went onto say that “plans are under way to hold elections in a systematic way this year. In that regard, the entire people have to make correct choices, then.” Myanmar last held elections in 1990, but the results of that effort were dismissed by the country’s military, whose generals have remained in power ever since. Following the release of Than’s letter, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that  “planning for these elections must be a priority, and how it is monitored is something to be discussed and analyzed.” She added that “what’s important is getting some confidence that these will be free, fair, and credible elections. Otherwise, the Burmese leadership and the results of the election will not have international legitimacy.”

A spate of violence in central Somalia and a piracy attack offshore on Monday refocused international eyes on the tenuous stability of the East African nation. The pirates hijacked a British cargo ship off the Gulf of Aden. The carrier, which was transporting automobiles to Saudi Arabia, has now been rerouted to Somalia. Meanwhile, fighting broke out in an area of central Somalia between rival Islamic factions, leaving at least 30 dead so far. One of the warring factions, al Shabaab, is a Somali militia that controls a large amount of territory in the central and southern regions of the country. Al Shabaab has declared itself an opponent of the Western-backed Transitional Federal Authority, the nascent government in Mogadishu that controls very little land within Somalia itself, but retains the support of the United Nations. This weekend’s fighting highlights the emergence of Islamist factions in Somalia that may be in a position to challenge the authority of al Shabaab in its strongholds.

A substantial oil spill that took place in northwest China last Wednesday has now reportedly spread to a tributary of the Yellow River, threatening to pollute one of China’s largest water sources. BBC News reports that the oil spill occurred when a construction accident caused a leak in a fuel pipeline monitored by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), a state-owned company. Some 40,000 gallons of diesel oil spilled into the Chishui and spread to the Wei, a tributary of the Yellow River. While more than 700 emergency workers battle the spill, attempting to prevent further water contamination, state officials warn people to stay clear of river water. At the moment, a water shortage is not a threat since underground aquifers serve as back up supplies for river water. However, if the pollution continues to spread, up to 140 million residents, including factory workers and farmers may face water shortages. For more information on water problems, see the latest issue of World Policy Journal on Water Wars.

According to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, U.S. plans to build an anti-missile shield in Europe are responsible for the recent standstill in nuclear arsenal reduction talks between the two countries. Since the recent expiration of the Cold War-era Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991 (dubbed “Start I”), the United States and Russia have been working to create a successor agreement that would address issues of arsenal reduction. But this week, Putin asserted that the United States’s plans to build a sea-based missile defense shield in Europe were throwing a wrench in current arms negotiations. At a recent press conference, when asked about the greatest problem hindering the adoption of a new Start treaty, Putin said, “The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one. By building such an umbrella over themselves, our [U.S.] partners could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the balance.” Putin added that “to preserve the balance, we must develop offensive weapons systems.” Earlier this year, the Obama administration withdrew U.S. plans to build a land-based missile defense system in Eastern Europe after Russia voiced its displeasure. However, the United States has remained committed to developing a sea-based system. Throughout recent Start negotiations, Russia has pushed for more explicit language linking offensive and defensive systems, the topic of which was part of a joint declaration delivered by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this past July in Moscow.

On Wednesday, tens of thousands of government supporters in Iran marched in cities throughout the country in a show of solidarity with the current regime and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The marches, which were reportedly orchestrated by the government itself, were meant to counter last weekend’s anti-government protests, in which eight people were reportedly killed. In response to last weekend’s protests, the Iranian government released a press statement claiming, “The offensive [anti-government] slogans have made the pious Iranian nation sad and the Zionist world happy and in practice they, as pawns of the enemies, have furnished a red carpet for the foreigners who are aiming at the nation’s security.” At Wednesday’s pro-government rallies, attendees reportedly chanted “Death to opponents!” in response to earlier anti-government chants of “Death to the dictator!”

The Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has reportedly set up camp in Sudan, in the country’s western region of Darfur. According to a statement released by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a political entity that governs Sudan’s semi-autonomous southern region, members of the LRA have been spotted in the southern Darfuri province of Bahr-El- Ghazal. In a press release, the SPLA said: “The LRA is re-grouping and training in Sudan in Dimo in Southern Darfur. This is a fact known to the intelligence community—in the area of Kaskagi in the northwest of Darfur.” News of the LRA’s migration into western Sudan comes amid reports by Ugandan military personnel, in which the Ugandan government claims to have reduced the manpower of the LRA over the course of 2009 through targeted assassinations and rescue missions designed to free the rebel group’s captive prisoners. However, the Ugandan military’s achievements were unable to stop much of the destruction wreaked by the rebels over the past 10 months: according to the latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the rebel group was responsible for 1,200 deaths and 1,400 abductions, most of which happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo, just across the Ugandan border.

Violence erupted in Iran this weekend as demonstrators turned to the streets to protest political suppression by the government. While foreign media are barred from covering public unrest in Iran, a number of websites have reported the deaths of several protesters at the hands of the Iranian police, including the death of the nephew of Mir Houssein Moussavi, the opposition leader who unsuccessfully challenged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s presidential elections this past summer. Reports also claim that several aids of Moussavi have been arrested. This weekend’s demonstrations were orchestrated by Iran’s political opposition to coincide with the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura, which commemorates the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein. A journalist at the government-sponsored Iran Daily criticized the demonstrations, arguing that “this is the wrong place and the wrong time for the reformist camps to ask their supporters to get to the streets, because this is a very important religious day for the whole of the nation.” A former member of the Iranian parliament countered this sentiment, saying that “Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain. Killing people on Ashura shows how far [Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests.” Over the past week, Iran has seen an increase in political tensions following the death of an influential dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri. Iran’s political opposition, which is denied the right of public protest by the state, reportedly chose the holy day of Ashura to hold its demonstrations given the cultural prohibitions against killing during the weeks surrounding the holiday.

The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Eritrea for its alleged support of armed rebel groups in Somalia. The sanctions—which are the first imposed by the council since 2006 (when it levied restrictions against Iran)—place an arms embargo on Eritrea, and a travel ban on the country’s top political leaders and military brass. The Security Council “demand[ed] that all Member States, in particular Eritrea, cease arming, training, and equipping armed groups and their members including al-Shabaab, that aim to destabilize the region.” Eritrea’s ambassador to the United Nations was quick to respond to the sanctions, calling them “ludicrous punitive measures” that threatened “engulfing the region into another cycle of conflict as it may encourage Ethiopia to contemplate reckless military behavior.” Eritrea has been accused of arming militant Islamic groups that seek to overthrow Somalia’s embryonic Transitional Federal Government, a coalition authority that has the support of the UN Security Council. Security analysts who study the Horn of Africa note that Eritrea’s involvement in Somalia is part of an ongoing proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which has simmered since the birth of the Eritrean state in 1993.

Starting this week, Thailand will begin to repatriate approximately 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers to Laos, despite protests coming from the United States, several European countries, and a number of humanitarian organizations. These Hmong refugees are all that remains of a Thai-based refugee community that once swelled to 1.5 million people, many of whom fled persecution and conflict in Laos and Cambodia in the mid 1970s. Over the past three years, Thailand has refused to allow international organizations and foreign governments to interview Hmong refugees within its territory, a refusal that comes amid allegations of human rights abuses committed by Thai authorities against Laotian Hmong. According to a statement released last year by Medecins Sans Frontieres, the last major aid organization to leave the Thai-based Hmong encampment, “We can no longer work in a camp where the military uses arbitrary imprisonment of influential leaders to pressure refugees into a ‘voluntary’ return to Laos, and forces our patients to pass through military checkpoints to access our clinic.” In response to this week’s pending deportation, a spokesman at the U.S. State Department said, “We also urge the Lao People’s Democratic Republic to treat humanely any Lao Hmong who are involuntarily returned, to provide access for international monitors, and facilitate resettlement opportunities for any eligible returnee.” Many observers fear that the repatriated Hmong will face severe repercussions at the hands of the Laotian government for their cooperation with the United States during the latter years of the Vietnam War.

Over the past few months, a public opinion firestorm has ravaged the German government as the weight of a tragic event in Afghanistan continues to press down hard on the collective conscience of the nation. The impetus for the current uproar was the bombing of two trucks in Kunduz, Afghanistan on September 4, which was ordered by German forces and resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians (estimates range from 17 to 142). Yet, what seemed to be an ugly but collateral blip on the nation’s broad foreign policy radar has turned into a veritable crisis of the first order for the lawmakers in Berlin, with the future of Germany military engagement in Afghanistan at stake. The debate could not come at a more embarrassing moment for the government.

When Germany initially committed itself to sending troops to Afghanistan, it did so wanting to be the “good guy” in the war effort—the country that would “stabilize” Afghanistan with its contingent of soldier-humanitarians while the Americans did the majority of the fighting. But now, with its soldiers both in harm’s way and inadvertently doing harm, the presence of German troops on Afghan soil has become infinitely more difficult to justify to a skeptical public at home, a majority of who now want a complete withdrawal. Moreover, there’s a growing perception within Germany that the government no longer even pulls its own strings, having recently re-committed its 4,400 troops in Afghanistan to another year of duty, while lacking a significant voice either in Washington or at NATO headquarters.

Still, the new strategy proposed by President Obama is promising for those in Germany who have a political stake in the intervention. The more hawkish voices within the German government have held that domestic security and freedom are being defended in the Hindu Kush. But this argument has gained little traction lately, especially among a populace that is now so ill-at-ease about Germany’s role in Afghanistan—a role that appears to be moving toward full-fledged participation in a war not of its own making.

Thus, it is welcome that the new American strategy is placing greater focus on the Afghan people and society. Likewise, the military components embodied in the upcoming Afghan “surge” seem to be more rational and targeted than under Bush, while the civil programs are stronger and likely to be less scatter-shot than in the past. But even with some good news coming out of Washington these days, Berlin still needs a clear humanitarian and civil society mission to bolster the legitimacy of its involvement in the conflict. Unfortunately, new signals from both the American and German governments are blurring the lines.

First, there’s the insistence on the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, as again reiterated by General Stanley McChrystal in the halls of the U.S. Congress on December 8, 2009. But of what use is such a goal, whether as part of the broader Operation Enduring Freedom or as related to policies against Al Qaeda? This goal is profoundly unpopular in Germany, both due to the lack of a clear rationale and the echoes of President Bush’s bellicose ideology. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Cup may be six months away, but soccer fans in some African countries may already be playing the match of their lives against fear and prejudice. These days, unfortunately, it’s hard to tell which side will win. After a series of xenophobic attacks erupted in South Africa in May 2008, the country’s ability to convince its continental brethren that this is, indeed, not just South Africa’s, but “Africa’s World Cup” suddenly got all the more difficult. The image of the burning Mozambican man and those of hundreds of immigrants fleeing their neighborhoods tend to linger on the brain.

The authorities in South Africa will, of course, argue that they are doing more than talk to bring healing and turn the page. Resettlement programs and national soul-searching are ongoing. In the spirit of true African brotherhood, the legendary Cameroonian footballer, Roger Milla, was in the spotlight during Friday’s draws in Johannesburg. (Cameroon is among the handful of African countries to qualify for this year’s 32-nation tournament, along with Nigeria, Ghana, Algeria, and Cote d’Ivoire.) When the competition finally gets under way, thousands of policemen will be deployed to make the streets safer, while special event visas will be available to cope with the influx of an estimated 480,000 fans.

But a star-guest appearance and more policing will not necessarily make the event a continental celebration. The feeling outside South Africa that those responsible for the xenophobic attacks were handled with kid gloves—when punished at all—leaves many with a sense of foreboding. The attacks, which left over 62 foreigners dead and thousands homeless, sparked concern among ordinary Africans as to whether there is, indeed, such a thing as African unity. Those who think that soccer offers any hope of brotherly redemption must have been shocked during the qualifying rounds in November when violent clashes between Egyptian and Algerian supporters in Zamalek, Cairo, left 35 people seriously wounded.

As sports often imitates politics, the search for unity may be just be as elusive to fans in Cairo as it is to the Beninese trader who has to cross at least 63 checkpoints before he arrives in neighboring Nigeria to sell a basket of fruit. As for the Nigerian who wants to travel to South Africa for the World Cup, she might have better luck reaching Aburdistan than securing a bona fide South African visa. Only last month, a Nigerian traveler to South Africa set a Nigerian-based discussion forum ablaze with tales of his “woeful” experience at the hands of immigration officials in Johannesburg. The officials, he said, seemed more interested in preventing him from crossing the border than in whether or not he had the correct entry papers. It reminded me of an incident a few years back, in July 2005, when Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka was detained for nearly eight hours by immigration officials who didn’t seem to care one bit about the difference between a laureate and a loony.

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By all accounts, it appears President Barack Obama is planning to send more troops to Afghanistan. The only question now, it seems, is how many. According to a New York Times report, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton support a proposal that includes at least 30,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan. President Obama plans to consider four final options today as part of his ongoing deliberation over a new path for U.S. Afghan strategy. Three of the options include additional troop levels of 20,000 to 40,000. The number of troops in the fourth option has not been reported. British prime minister Gordon Brown, who has recently spoken with the U.S. president, told Parliament he believes President Obama will announce his decision “in a few days.” The pending decision comes as a new poll shows a majority of Americans, 56 percent, are against more American boots on the ground. A middle-of-the-road troop increase, which most analysts are saying Obama will choose, would push American troop levels to around 100,000.

Tuesday’s naval skirmish between the two Koreas will not affect an American decision to send an envoy to North Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday. Speaking from Singapore, Clinton confirmed that the United States will still send Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, to meet with North Korean officials, as had been announced on Tuesday. Bosworth was slated to visit Pyongyang “in the near future” to try to persuade it to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, which are currently at an impasse. But heightened tensions in the region, following an exchange of shots between the navies of North and South Korea along their disputed Yellow Sea border, cast doubts on whether the trip would proceed. Clinton, however, emphasized that the United States was moving ahead with its plans to send Bosworth. “We are obviously hoping that the situation does not escalate and we are encouraged by the calm reaction that has been present up until now,” Clinton said of Tuesday’s clash, the first gunfire exchanged between the rival Koreas in seven years. “But this does not in any way affect our decision to send Ambassador Bosworth. We think that is an important step that stands on its own.” Bosworth is expected to make the landmark trip before the end of the year.

Cambodia rejected Thailand’s request to extradite former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Wednesday, further straining diplomatic relations between the neighboring countries. Thaksin, who was ousted from his position as Thailand’s prime minister in a 2006 coup and convicted on corruption-related charges shortly thereafter, arrived in Cambodia Tuesday to begin a new post as economic adviser to the Cambodian government. Thai diplomats handed extradition papers to Cambodia early Wednesday. But Cambodia said it would not consider the request, as it views the charges Thaksin faces in Thailand to be politically motivated and therefore not covered by the two countries’ extradition treaty. “Thaksin’s conviction (was) caused by the coup in September 2006, when he was the prime minister of Thailand whom Thai people voted in with an overwhelming majority in accordance with democracy,” Cambodian foreign minister Hor Namhong told reporters. But Thailand has indicated that it may terminate its extradition treaty with Cambodia if Thaksin is not returned to serve his sentence, which could aggravate relations that are already deteriorating. Thailand has already withdrawn its ambassador from Cambodia over the Thaksin row, and has now decided to scrap plans for joint trade and oil ventures. Other countries, such as Indonesia, have called on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to help resolve the two nations’ disputes. “This spat, this division has to end,” Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters Wednesday. “We must return to the usual path, which is friendship within ASEAN.” Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is due to chair a meeting between ASEAN leaders and U.S. President Barack Obama later this week.

After a five-month delay, the Lebanese unity government held its first meeting and won support from governments around the world amid hope that the coalition would bring stability to the country. Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri has been trying to form a functioning government since elections in June gave the Hezbollah opposition a share of the government. President Michel Suleiman finally approved the cabinet, which gave Hezbollah the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are currently no plans for the organization to demilitarize, but UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement urging the country to comply with a Security Council resolution calling for it to disarm Hezbollah’s militia. Both Iran and Syria, who back Hezbollah, said they hope the new governing coalition will stabilize Lebanon, and Hamas said it hoped the government would improve conditions for Palestinian refugees in the country.

For most of the world, the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed an amazing, unexpected new beginning. It was that, of course. But it was also an ending—the end of an unprecedented period of awakening and hope in East Germany.

At the time, I was living in West Berlin and working with members of a dissident East German environmental group. They were welcoming, curious, funny, and unabashedly nonconformist. Because they questioned official taboos and published “secret” information like the extent of pollution in East Germany, their telephones and homes were bugged, they couldn’t travel to the West, they were tailed and harassed and kept out of universities or fired from their jobs. Occasionally they went to jail. I admired the quiet courage that allowed them to place their security on the line for their beliefs—to risk the safe, if stifling, cocoon of socialism for a self-determined life.

Yet brave as they were, East Germany’s dissidents were a lonely handful with little influence. They couldn’t mobilize a whole country, like Poland’s Solidarity (a Polish trade union). East Germany’s government was rigidly ideological, and its people were traditionally obedient to authority. Plus, East Germany bordered on West Germany, which regularly siphoned off dissidents: East Germany could always banish uncomfortable critics to the West, which was more than happy to take them in. A few among the dissatisfied and frustrated were even permitted to emigrate. The small number of dissidents who preferred to stay and encourage change from within seemed like hopeless dreamers.

By the spring of 1989, Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev’s influence was being felt across Eastern Europe. In Poland, Solidarity took part in a round table with the government. Hungarians commemorated the anti-communist uprising of 1956. East Germans, too, were getting restless, but the ossified regime refused to budge. Local elections were rigged. Demonstrations in Leipzig, in the south, were broken up violently by the secret police. The government praised China’s handling of Tiananmen Square, suggesting it might do the same. Change seemed further away than ever; leaving the country, hard as it was for average East Germans, seemed the only option. In summer, East Germans looking for a way out began streaming toward Hungary. There and in Poland, freedom was in the air. An East German dissident friend and I watched a demonstration in Warsaw that was escorted by one small police car. He couldn’t imagine that happening in East Germany. Like many of his compatriots, he didn’t believe East Germans would ever rise up in protest.

The Hungarians opened their border with Austria in September, and East German refugees inundated West Germany. But the East German government just clamped down harder.

And then came October. East Germany prepared to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its founding on October 7, with Gorbachev expected as a guest. The regime went all out: a military parade, flags everywhere, a carnival atmosphere—a celebration of communism.

But that night it all changed. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in the center of town and surged outward, catalyzed by Gorbachev’s presence. I had come over to East Berlin to observe events and was sitting in a café with the same friend I’d been with in Warsaw. We watched in disbelief, tears in our eyes, as protesters passed us yelling “Join us!” and “We’re staying here!” It was a defiant cry: rather than going to the West, they would stay and change things. Suddenly that didn’t seem so hopeless. We heard reports of demonstrations in other cities as well. East Germans had risen up after all.

That night, we soon found out, many protesters were detained and beaten. But two days later, a demonstration by 70,000 people in Leipzig became the turning point. The government could have used force. Truckloads of police lined the side streets, and rumor had it that hospitals had been prepared for casualties. People were frightened. But they went out anyway in nonviolent protest, and the regime backed down. Instead of fighting that evening, the police and soldiers found themselves arguing politics with knots of demonstrators. Words had trumped guns.

After that, everything was different; now the East German air felt free, too, and a surge of hope gripped the country. No one spoke of leaving anymore. Everyone wanted to be part of the changes that were so obviously beginning. A public conversation emerged for the first time in decades. People found their voices, and everywhere they talked and talked. Taboos vanished. Discussions and events were too numerous to follow. Political groups sprang up like mushrooms, and government newspapers began hesitantly reporting on them. Non-government newspapers and magazines appeared. East Germans engaged in impassioned debates with government officials. They insisted that police officers who had beaten demonstrators be punished. They demanded the right to leave their country, and soon everyone knew it was just a matter of time before that would happen, too. The prime minister, Eric Honecker, and various Politburo members resigned.

And on November 4, the first-ever officially sanctioned demonstration, for freedom of speech, attracted nearly a million people to downtown East Berlin. Amid a sea of creative, funny, passionate signs and banners, East German artists, writers, and politicians spoke of their hope for a new beginning. No one talked about unifying with the West; perhaps naively, even many dissidents advocated building something new and indigenously East German, just as the Poles and Hungarians were doing in their countries. Hope, energy, enthusiasm, passion, the sense that anything was possible—that was October 1989, and a bit of November, in East Germany.

And then, around midnight on November 9, returning home from East Berlin after a day of translating for a foreign journalist, I found a line of East Germans waiting to cross to the West. The Wall had opened, more suddenly than anyone expected. The next day, hundreds of thousands of East Germans went shopping and sightseeing in West Germany and discovered that what they really wanted was to be able to afford normal things and live like normal people. For a time, euphoria was the predominant mood, but it didn’t take long before it waned. West Germans got annoyed at the influx from the East, and East Germans’ recently acquired confidence gave way to uncertainty. Anxiety and tension replaced relief and joy. No one knew what to expect. The assertive East German cry “We are the people!” changed to “We are one people!”; the dissidents’ hope of creating something new was overtaken by a more widespread wish for the security of tried and true West German prosperity. Unification a year later was the ultimate result. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the fact remains: when the wall came down, it spelled the end of a very special chapter in East German history, in which East Germans felt in control of their own destiny. October was over. A new period, dominated by West Germany, had begun.

Belinda Cooper, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-founder of its Citizenship and Security Program, is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. Cooper, the editor of War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg, teaches and lectures on human rights, international law, and the “war on terror.”