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2411. PAK-TURKEY RELATIONS: On the Common Ties

Author:
Munir Hussain
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
After a decade of stagnant relations, Pakistan-Turkey relations seem to be improving in the right direction. Both countries have traditionally enjoyed close and cordial relations. The manifold commonalties between the two countries have been reinforced by the firm resolve of their leadership to further deepen mutual cooperation in all fields.
Topic:
International Relations, International Affairs, and History
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Turkey, Middle East, and Asia

2412. Perceptions Of The War Against Terrorism (WAT): A Malaysian Case Study

Author:
Abu Daud Silong, Zaharah Hassan, and Steven Eric Krauss
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Though terrorism has existed for more than 2,000 years, the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. brought international repercussions unlike any previously experienced. In response to the attacks, the U.S. immediately attempted to build a broad-based anti-terrorism coalition in what is known as the “War against Terrorism” (WAT) or “War on Terrorism.” Malaysia has its own experiences with terrorism, such as during the 'communist emergency' of the 1950s. In light of Malaysia's unique history in overcoming terrorism and the present-day WAT, this study aimed to explore Malaysian's perceptions of the WAT. Findings from the study indicate that Malaysians hold mostly negative views on the WAT, i.e.: they doubt the intentions of the US government; they view the WAT as a fight against Muslims and as a means for US control; they view the military approach as ineffective; they perceive a conscious effort to link terrorism to Islam; they view the Western media as being insensitive to non-Westerners and they believe that the WAT has had little impact on reducing terrorism due to hidden political agendas. Qualitative findings from the study stress the need for counter-terrorism policy makers to identify the root-causes of terrorism in order to develop appropriate socio-economic programs for the poor, marginalized, discontented and discriminated groups in societies.
Topic:
Civil Society, Demographics, Poverty, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States, Malaysia, and Asia

2413. The Philippines: The Collapse of Peace in Mindanao

Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
On 14 October 2008 the Supreme Court of the Philippines declared a draft agreement between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippines government unconstitutional, effectively ending any hope of peacefully resolving the 30-year conflict in Mindanao while President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo remains in office. The Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD or MOA), the culmination of eleven years' negotiation, was originally scheduled to have been signed in Kuala Lumpur on 5 August. At the last minute, in response to petitions from local officials who said they had not been consulted about the contents, the court issued a temporary restraining order, preventing the signing. That injunction in turn led to renewed fighting that by mid-October had displaced some 390,000.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Asia and Philippines

2414. Global Panic, Local Repercussions: Exploring the Impact of Avian Influenza in Vietnam

Author:
Stacy Lockerbie
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Despite deliberately marked and guarded political and cultural boundaries, the current global state is one where epidemic is the norm and disease travels across the globe through the transnational movement of people and international trade. While developing countries or countries receiving foreign aid are at the centre of disease fatality and transmission, the rhetoric of blame serves to strengthen socio-economic divisions that divide East from West and North from South with adjectives like “modern” and “primitive,” “hygienic” and “unhygienic.” Using chicken as a metaphor, this paper draws attention to the paradoxes and misconceptions of avian influenza in Vietnam and through the exploration of local voices, comes to a better understanding of how the disease rhetoric has affected the social and cultural landscape. This research is situated in the discipline somewhere between the anthropology of infectious disease and the anthropology of food, while also incorporating themes from anthropological theory pertaining to borders, hegemonies and race. Moving beyond the epidemiological study of avian flu, I draw attention to the phenomenology or lived experience in a state of disease as residents voluntarily omit chicken, a valuable source of protein, from their diet in order to stay healthy.
Topic:
Globalization and Health
Political Geography:
Asia and Vietnam

2415. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought

Author:
John M. Hobson
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Working at the interstices of International Relations and International History, Cemil Aydin has produced an exceptionally detailed account of the rise and development of pan-Asian and pan-Islamic thought from the early nineteenth century through to World War II. The background theoretical hook might be summarized as a critique of Eurocentrism as well as (relatedly) Samuel Huntington's ''clash of civilizations'' approach. Aydin sets out to challenge popular assumptions that non-Western ideological movements are always hostile to Western values, on the one hand, and that such movements emerge as a function of either anticolonial struggles or conservative and religious reactions to global modernity, on the other. Rather, he reveals that these movements were often sympathetic to the West. And, crucially, when they did become critical they did so not in terms of rejecting Western values, but rather in terms of holding the West to account, on the grounds that its imperial and racist practices contradicted its earlier ''progressive'' universalist (Enlightenment) ideals.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Asia

2416. North Caucasus Weekly: Rebels Reportedly Kill Dozens of Servicemen in Ingushet

Author:
Mairbek Vatchagaev
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Following the capture of the foothill villages of Muzhichi and Yandare in Ingushetia on the evening of October 16 (North Caucasus Weekly, October 16), militants from the Ingush Jamaat “Shariat” carried out another series of high-profile actions against Russian troops. According to various sources, more than 50 Russian military personnel were killed and wounded in two assaults by the militants on the Galashki Highway on October 18, which would make this the most audacious attack by the jamaat members in Ingushetia to date. According to the media reports, the attack on the Russian military motorcade took place on the Alkhasty-Surkhokhi road in Ingushetia's Nazran district at ten in the morning. According to Ingush Prosecutor General Yury Turygyn, only two soldiers were killed and five were wounded in the attack. All of them were from Interior Ministry detachments based in the village of Alkhasty (RIA Novosti, October 18) According to Turygyn, the assault was carried out by members of “illegal armed formations” with the purpose of destabilizing the situation in the region. Turygyn, however, was apparently referring to the casualties in an attack on another column of servicemen that had occurred earlier on October 18, and the Regnum News Agency quoted a source in the Interior Ministry department forIngushetia's Sunzha district as saying that all the soldiers in the column targeted in the second attack were killed except forone and that the total number killed was around 50. The surviving serviceman was transported to the Sunzha Central District Hospital, the source said (www.regnum.ru/news/1071507.html). Thus, according to the Ingush police, two attacks took place, not one, as the Ingush Prosecutor General's Office claims.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

2417. Azerbaijan: Defence Sector Management and Reform - Europe Briefing N°50

Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Azerbaijan wants to create a strong army to regain Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, either by improving its negotiating leverage with Armenia or going back to war. It has exponentially increased its military budget, though it has not so far gained clear superiority over Armenian forces. If the new military is to be not only stronger but also better governed, however, it needs deep reforms to make it less corrupt and personality driven, more transparent and better directed. So far there has been insufficient political will either to do the part that should involve increasing democratic and civilian control or to break the habit of treating the army as above all an instrument with which to protect elite interests.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, and NATO
Political Geography:
Asia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan

2418. Preventing the Tragedy of the CO2 Commons: Exploring China's Growth and the International Climate Framework

Author:
Peter J. Wilcoxen, Warwick J. McKibbin, and Wing Thye Woo
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Under reasonable assumptions, China could achieve parity in living standard with Western Europe by 2100, and India by 2150. Climate change, however, may be a key obstacle preventing such a convergence. The business-as-usual (BAU) growth path of the world economy might increase concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases to unsafe levels and cause significant negative environmental feedback before China achieves parity in living standards with the OECD countries. We use a dynamic multi-country general equilibrium model (the G-Cubed Model) to project a realistic BAU trajectory of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and we find it to be even above the CO2 emissions from the high-growth scenario estimated by the Energy Information Agency in 2007. This outcome is a reminder that it has been usual so far to underestimate the growth in China energy consumption.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, and Markets
Political Geography:
China, Europe, India, and Asia

2419. The Russian World—Changing Meanings and Strategies

Author:
Valery Tishkov
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Gorbachev's liberalization brought the opening of Russia to the outside world and with it interest in and contact with the Russian 1 diaspora. After the dis- solution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the problem of the diaspora evolved quickly, when it was transformed into a political and even a humanitarian challenge.
Topic:
Civil Society and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

2420. The Struggle for a Civilised Wider European Order

Author:
Michael Emerson
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Europe's two crises – the Georgia-Russia war of August and the ongoing global financial and economic crisis – point to huge challenges for the organisation and policies of the European Union. The present paper concentrates on the risks that the crises represent for one of the EU's prim e objective, to achieve a civilized wider European order. At least the current episodes show that with leadership the EU can act fast in both diplomacy and finance. But the next question is how to follow through, beyond a passing moment of an effective six-month presidency of the EU. This is the subject of the present note, which advocates a comprehensive upgrading of the EU's policies in the wider European area, and contributes ideas for the revision of the European Security Strategy currently being prepared. The aim would be to strengthen EU policies towards South-East Europe, East Europe and Central Asia, and defuse the current confrontation between a normative Europe and an aggressive Russian realpolitik; better still Russia might, after reflecting on what the two crises mean for its fundamental interests, conclude that the time had come for a more genuinely cooperative understanding with the EU.
Topic:
International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Central Asia, Asia, and Georgia