U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is accompanying President George W. Bush on his tour of the Middle East, has arrived in Baghdad for previously unannounced talks with Iraqi officials. Rice came from Saudi Arabia, where Bush is on the latest stop in his regional trip. Immediately after her arrival in Baghdad on...
By Sumedha Senanayake In what is being trumpeted as a major political accomplishment for the Iraqi government, the Council of Representatives on January 12 unanimously passed the Accountability and Justice Law, which revises the de-Ba’athification order passed under the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003. Under the de-Ba’athification law, thousands of Ba’athists were dismissed from...
By Jeffrey Donovan The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has lodged a formal request with the Kyrgyz government to provide more detailed data on the troubling incident that unfolded in the last days of 2007. But an IAEA official has told RFE/RL that the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog is still awaiting an official reply...
By Ron Synovitz The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, William Wood, on January 13 met with Mullah Abdul Salaam, the former Taliban commander who recently defected to the side of the Afghan government and now heads the Kabul-backed administration in Musa Qala. Wood traveled to Musa Qala with the goal of clearing the obstacles that...
By Andrew Tully 2007 was a bad year for freedom, according to a prominent rights-advocacy organization that has registered a global decline in political rights and civil liberties for the second consecutive year. In its annual “Freedom Of The World” report released today, the New York-based group Freedom House found that one-fifth of the...
By Golnaz Esfandiari An Iranian student detained in the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan Province has died in prison under circumstances described by his family and human rights activists as “suspicious,” Radio Farda reported. On January 15, nine days after Ebrahim Lotfollahi was detained in front of Payame Nur University in the provincial capital, Sanandaj,...
By Claire Bigg The winter holidays are a difficult time for the many families that lost relatives in the hostage drama that struck the small North Ossetian town of Beslan in September 2004. For the Voice of Beslan, a victims’ group led by women who lost children in the siege, this year’s holidays brought...
By Bruce Pannier The art of political assassination is alive and well in Kyrgyzstan — or so says Edil Baisalov. Until a month ago, the 30-year-old democracy activist was considered to be one of the Central Asian country’s most promising young politicians, a social democrat with verve and a modern vision for Kyrgyzstan. But...
By Breffni O’Rourke Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have reached an agreement to settle all outstanding matters relating to Iran’s nuclear program in four weeks’ time. IAEA chief Muhammad el-Baradei secured the agreement in talks in Tehran at the weekend. But the United States has already said the accord does not...
By Farangis Najibullah She’s lived in Iran her entire life, but Siddiqa Rezai can’t call it home. Rezai, 20, is the daughter of Afghan refugees who fled war in their homeland 25 years ago. Until now, her family of eight has lived in the town of Boen-Zahra in Qazvin Province, west of Tehran. Rezai...
By Kathleen Ridolfo The so-called awakening councils that have been formed in Iraq to fight terrorists are finding themselves under increasing threat from rival political and security groups and terrorists keen on curbing their power. Popular support for the councils, which have been formed in nine of the country’s 18 governorates to defend the...
U.S. President George W. Bush, in a keynote speech in the United Arab Emirates today, focused on hopes for democracy in the Middle East, while harshly criticizing Iran’s leaders. Bush said the actions of the Iranian leadership are threatening security around the world. “Iran is today the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” he...
By Bruce Pannier If the world needed reminding of the ongoing threat posed by nuclear materials left unsecured and scattered across the former Soviet Union, it’s got it now. On January 9, Kyrgyz officials announced that they had taken possession of a small load of a radioactive substance discovered aboard a train bound for...
By Ron Synovitz For years, Afghan officials including President Hamid Karzai have extended an olive branch to moderate Taliban to lay down their arms and back the government. But their overtures have been largely rejected — until now. On January 7, the Afghan government announced that a former Taliban commander who switched sides before...
By Bruce Pannier Five convicted criminals in southeastern Iran have received the seldom-used form of punishment of amputation. The amputation sentences were carried out in Zahedan, the capital of Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province. The five men were found guilty of armed robbery, hostage taking, and firing at police, though officially they were convicted of...
December 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) — When U.S. forces detained more than 30 employees of Iraqi legislator Adnan al-Dulaymi last week on charges of terrorism, it briefly appeared that the lawmaker, long accused of supporting terrorism, might face intense scrutiny over suspected wrongdoing. Instead, al-Dulaymi spent one day under house arrest, after which he was...
December 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) — A U.S. congressman who once traveled with mujahedin fighters as they battled Soviet forces in Afghanistan says Pakistan has been exerting a negative influence on stability in the region. In an interview at RFE/RL’s broadcast headquarters in Prague, Dana Rohrabacher (Republican, California) said he thinks U.S. policies on Afghanistan...
By Faraj Sarkouhi November 26, 2007 (RFE/RL) — The swift move by Iran’s Islamic Culture and Guidance Minister to ban a newly published novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez has once again put the spotlight on the phenomenon of censorship in Iran. The ban on “Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores,” published in Iran...
By Robert Coalson December 2, 2007 (RFE/RL) — There is an “election” going on in Russia. Not an election, but an “election.” This is not an election that falls short of international standards. It is not a democratic, a flawed democratic, or even a pseudo-democratic process. According to a recent RFE/RL poll, nearly two-thirds...
By Robert Coalson November 30, 2007 (RFE/RL) — On the one hand, the Kremlin’s plan for the legislative elections seems to be proceeding smoothly. Election commissions, local officials, the police, the courts, and the pseudo-opposition parties all seem to be doing their part to ensure that the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party wins in a...
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