MASS DISASTER

Bosnian war criminal Milan Lukic arrested in Argentina

Good news, but there are more still at large. The worst being Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic who were involved with the Srebrenica massacre.

The Hague's indictment describes a number of other atrocities, including Lukic entering a furniture factory and forcing seven Bosnian Muslims to walk to a riverbank where he shot them at point-blank range.

In Buenos Aires, the police spokeswoman said authorities had been following Lukic's movements for days and arrested him on a street in a posh Buenos Aires neighborhood.

... via Reuters.

Leaders plead for calm as Sudan riot toll rises to 130

Via the Guardian Unlimitied...

The trouble in Khartoum and other cities, sparked by the death of the vice-president, John Garang, exposed the racial and religious tensions that threaten to divide the country, which has just come out of a lengthy civil war.

Calls for peace and national unity were issued yesterday by both President Omar al-Bashir and former rebel leaders of Mr Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

... full text here.

Is al-Bashir really a man who can honestly call for "national unity" ?

With the backing of Hassan al-Turabi, the fundamentalist leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF), the General al-Bashir immediately took steps to 'islamicize' the state. Al-Bashir dissolved parliament, banned all political parties and shut down the press. He also stepped up scorched-earth campaign in the south while courting his fundamentalist supporters. All opponents were dismissed as 'agents imperialism and Zionism'.

... read more.

John Garang background...

The SPLA was formed in 1983 when Lieutenant Colonel John Garang of the SPAF was sent to quell a mutiny in Bor of 500 southern troops who were resisting orders to be rotated to the north. Instead of ending the mutiny, Garang encouraged mutinies in other garrisons and set himself at the head of the rebellion against the Khartoum government. Garang, a Dinka born into a Christian family, had studied at Grinnell College, Iowa, and later returned to the United States to take a company commanders' course at Fort Benning, Georgia, and again to earn advanced economics degrees at Iowa State University.

... via Global Security.org.

AFRICA: The next 15 years

If you are interested in Africa - it's many problems and it's future, you should read the following article which summarizes the results of a conference sponsored by the National Intelligence Council (of the United States). It is chock full of predictions and analysis running the spectrum from terrorism, corruption, democratic growth, economic trends, religious conflict, AIDS impact and more.

Remember that these are predictions. But they are based on a broad knowledge of how Africa is today and has been in the past, so it can serve as a consise and dispassionate window into the "big picture" for anyone seeking to familiarize themselves with the issues. The link goes to the Vanguard - a Nigerian site - so the title is about Nigeria, but the article itself deals with Africa as a whole.

Patterns of Conflict

Africa was the site of much of the military conflict in the world in the 1990s and there is no reason to believe that its share of world violence will change appreciably in the next 15 years. As in the past, most African conflicts will be internal, although the pattern of outsiders intervening in civil wars, either to help one of the protagonists or to protect themselves from the fallout of the conflict, will continue. African governments and rebels will continue to take advantage of the international market for basic weapons and, increasingly, logistics and higher-order military functions such as aerial reconnaissance.

... full text via vanguarddngr.com.

IVORY COAST: Witnesses describe Ivory Coast massacre

Witnesses claim that the nightime attack was staged by two to three hundred "traditional hunters" from the north. All 3000 of the villagers apparently fled following the massacre.

WARNING: ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS

Charred corpses, including children, lay in a village in western Ivory Coast after attackers with machetes and guns went on a killing spree on Wednesday.

... full article via CNNInternational.com.

IVORY COAST: 41 killed in nighttime massacre

Despite a tentative end to the country’s long raging civil war in April ethnic violence still plagues the cocoa growing region of Duekoue…

… 41 dead, shot or knifed, and 11 (of them) were burnt," Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jules Yao Yao said, adding 64 people were wounded in the attack.

Witnesses say homes were smashed and burnt, with petrol canisters lying outside the ruins.

"People were sleeping and they were surprised. Armed men poured petrol on the homes. I saw broken and burnt homes," said Daniel By Smith, a bailiff who spoke to Reuters by telephone from Guitrozon.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the latest attack in the world's top cocoa grower, which has been divided by civil war since rebels tried to oust the president in September 2002 and seized the north.

… via ABCOnline.com.

GOOD NEWS: A world less at war, believe it or not

The Centre for International Conflict and Development will publish the third in a series of reports aimed at debunking the myth that the world is becoming a more dangerous place (in terms war) with each passing day. This is something I’ve believed for some time, at least in the per capita sense.

Of course this doesn’t mean things won’t change – as the report is reported to point out – or that the actual conflicts now in progress are less severe. The extremes on both sides of the political spectrum use the bogeyman of ever escalating wars to whip people up. It would be refreshing to read some well researched documents that disprove this corrosive popular opinion.

Not surprising is one of the reasons why people believe that violent conflicts are on the rise…

Even as the number of wars and military spending has constantly decreased, the amount of reporting on both national and international conflict has ballooned.

Some interesting stats…

In the 20th century, which featured two World Wars, a person had a 2% chance of dying in war, but as of today, the chance of dying in a car wreck is three times greater than in any type of war. (The World Health Organisation backs this up. WHO says that in 2000, for example, there were 300,000 people killed in combat or war-related incidents, including even disease untreated because of the conflict, while 1.2 million died in traffic accidents.)

The report says that warfare peaked in 1991, when there were 51 conflicts. In 2000, there were 26 armed conflicts. Then came the Sept 11 attacks, more war reporting than ever before, the invasion of Afghanistan; but in 2002, there were 25 armed conflicts including the new ones sparked by the terrorist attacks on the United States.

Today there are 20 armed conflicts around the world, counting southern Thailand and the invasion of Iraq.

… via bangkokpost.com

… CIDCM website here.