Ethnicity

Today, someone I was interviewing here in the Georgian capital mused: "If the Americans bombed Belgrade to stop violence against Albanians in Kosovo, why wouldn't Russia bomb Tbilisi to stop violence against Ossetians?" The question made a bit of sense and, increasingly today, it appeared to be something that weighed on minds here.

In the war between Georgia and its renegade provinces, Russia is cooking up its own soup.

The Georgian president wanted to finally fuflfill his dream when he sent his troops in last week on a mission against South Ossetia. Ever since Michail Saakaschwili came to power in November 2003 through the "Rose Revolution," his priorities have been clear: more important than economic reform, joining NATO and the fight against corruption were the reconquest of the renegade provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. ...

Interview with Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, by Mumin Shakirov for Liberty Radio (in Russian)
Excerpt translation by Irina Gotman

Polish journalist Zygmunt Dzieciolowski has been reporting from Georgia for the last two weeks, including an interview with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. ...

Read the Full Article in Russian

I'm here in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, working on a larger project that is looking at the ways in which Russia deals with internal conflict issues. Georgia's two hot spots, the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, have both attracted a great deal of (almost neo-colonial, some say) support from Moscow in recent years and Georgia has increasingly been referring to their separatist conflicts as being directed by Russia, who use the Abkhaz or South Ossetian de facto governments as pawns.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh's July declaration that the four-year, stop-go guerrilla war in the northern province of Saada was "over" took everyone in Yemen by surprise.

Now, rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has agreed to come down from the mountain.

In a letter publicised by Yemen's state-run media today, al-Houthi accepted Saleh's peace terms. The rebels will surrender their strategic mountaintop positions and hand over their heavy and medium weapons to the authorities.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. Its 22 million-strong population is set to double by 2035 at the current rate of growth, but it's fast running out of water – and oil. Yemen's state structures are weak and incomplete, and the country faces substantial development challenges.

I reported from Yemen for a year – from 2006 to 2007 – and now I'm back to see whether recent reforms are diffusing social, political and economic pressures in this fragile state.

At the new headquarters of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), some 10km north of Juba town, signs mark the finance, administration and operations directorates.

Laminated name plates with Southern Sudan's official colours line the desks in the new air-conditioned offices. Laptops and internet service are coming soon.

It is a new look, and a new way, for the former rebel movement that fought for liberation in the forests of Southern Sudan for two decades.

Forced by civil war to flee her village in Southern Sudan, Rebeka James Galwak found her way to the northern capital of Khartoum and lived there until the conflict formally ended.

With a peace agreement signed in Nairobi in January 2005, Galwak thought her Nuer village in Jonglei state would be safe enough for her to return. But within a year of returning, she said, fighters from the Murle community attacked her home.

I had been in Sudan one week when I set off up north to see just how widespread neglect in Sudan really is. One of the reasons behind the problems in Darfur, of course, is long-standing marginalization of the area. Darfurians are mostly black Africans and the government is dominated by Arabs.That is often portrayed as part of the reason for their neglect. Other ethic groups - Christians and animists in the south and the Beja in the east - have also complained of marginalization. But nobody ever hears about the Arabs in the north. I guess the assumption is that they are in good hands, since many government ministers come from the far north. I went to see just how true that assumption is.

For days, there has been talk of a million-man protest that was to take place today on the streets of Khartoum, in opposition to the International Criminal Court prosecutor's decision to pursue the Sudanese president for genocide and crimes against humanity. Police, journalists and UN had been awaiting the massive rally, which was to put all the other protests that have taken place almost daily to shame.

From what I've heard, 10 people showed up.

In an upper-class neighbourhood of the Sudanese capital, three men sit on a rooftop patio, talking politics between spoonfuls of ice cream and sips of espresso.

"I see the government as good - among the best governments we've had," one says.

Another pipes in: "This government solved the two biggest problems in Sudan - peace in the South and the discovery of oil." He goes on: "Of course, it has a lot of disadvantages: It still hasn't solved poverty, problems of education, job opportunities, unemployment ..."

When I decided to come to Sudan, I specifically chose not to focus on Darfur in my reporting because I felt it was already widely covered in the media (unlike other areas of Sudan). Everyone already knows about this, I told myself, let's look at something else. Even as a journalist, sometimes I focus too much on the logical reasoning (ie. "Is this really news? Haven't we already heard this before?") and forget that most basic instinct of wanting to hear and understand another human being's experience and suffering.