A heap of interesting news articles and blog posts were published last week. Here is a few to enjoy with your monday morning coffee.
Rape As A Weapon Of War
Michel Martin of National Public Radio spotlights UN efforts to combat rape as a tactic of warfare. She interviews Margot Wallstrom, the Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict–the first person to hold the position. “If we can ban cluster bombs, we can ban rape as a weapon of conflict.”
In Praise of Aerial Bombing
Ever since the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey cast doubt on the efficacy of aerial bombardment in World War II, and particularly after its failure to bring victory in the Vietnam War, air power has acquired a bad reputation. Nowadays, killing enemies from the skies is widely considered useless, while its polar opposite, counterinsurgency by nation-building, is the U.S. government’s official policy. But it’s not yet time to junk our planes. Air power still has a lot to offer, even in a world of scattered insurgencies.
Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics, and Foreign Policy: Session Three: Foreign Policy
This session was part of a CFR symposium, Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics, and Foreign Policy, which was cosponsored with Science Magazine.
Have Helmand troops been told to lie low during election?
Britain has not lost a soldier in Afghanistan since the day after Gordon Brown called the general election – that’s more than three weeks.
UN Evacuates Some Staff From Embattled Kandahar: What About Those Left Behind?
The awful reality is, national staff are far more vulnerable than their international colleagues, especially in deteriorating places like Kandahar. They must live amongst their prospective killers, without the physical protections afforded to expatriates. I believe that, if a situation is dangerous enough for internationals to be evacuated, national staff should at least be given the option of leaving as well, even if that could mean them resettling elsewhere permanently. I hope the UN is giving its national staff in Afghanistan this choice. Does anyone know if it is?
Mass Sickness of Afghan Schoolgirls Raises Poisoning Fears
Since April 21, at least eighty Afghan schoolgirls at three schools in the increasingly violent northern city of Kunduz have mysteriously fallen ill after reporting a strange smell in their classrooms. Most of the affected girls have been hospitalized briefly and released, but the sudden, mysterious epidemic of fainting and nausea is raising fears of poisoning by opponents of girls’ education.
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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