Comment & Briefs

Georgia was a constituent republic of the former USSR. In 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the independence of Georgia. In turn, the autonomous regions of Georgia, namely South Ossetia and Abkhazia, attempted to break away from Georgia, resulting in civil strife in the early Nineties. These conflicts were settled with Russian involvement with the United Nations Mission in Georgia deploying in a peacekeeping role in Abkhazia and a Russian peacekeeping force deploying under a Joint Control Commission in South Ossetia.

Will Taiwan ever participate in the United Nations? Pessimist views have started flowing after the rejection of Taiwan’s fresh bid for ‘meaningful participation in international agencies’ at the UN on September 18, 2008. This proposal was submitted by sixteen “diplomatic allies” of Taiwan to the UN Secretariat on August 14, 2008. Blocking Taiwan’s new attempt, a UN subcommittee decided that it would not let the 63rd UN General Assembly (UNGA) consider their request for permission to join ‘UN activities’.

The military commander most associated with executing President George Bush’s ‘troop surge’ in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, handed over command of US forces to Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno on September 16, after completing nearly 18 months of duty at the helm. He had taken over from the then commander Gen. George Casey in early February 2007, at a time when rising American and Iraqi civilian casualties threatened to engulf the whole region with its attendant negative consequences.

The year 2008 has witnessed yet another disastrous flood in North Bihar. Floods in Bihar have been almost an annual phenomenon. Though the capacity of the river flow was well below the danger line this time around, the situation was in fact aggravated by a breach in the Eastern embankment. Estimates indicate that around thirty lakh people have been displaced and their livelihoods devastated in sixteen districts of north-eastern Bihar. At the same time, around 50,000 people have been affected in Sunsari district of Nepal.

Let the fact speak for itself. China was not happy about India gaining the waiver in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and it played the role of a spoiler till such time it could. The Indian Government now feels betrayed. Perhaps India expected China’s reciprocity in exchange for its gracious support for the successful tour of the Olympic Torch. Indeed, it was naiveté that led India to believe Chinese rhetoric.

The Russian military blitzkrieg to counter the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s dispatch of his Israeli and US trained and equipped forces to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia on August 7, 2008 took many by surprise. Moscow brazenly took the war straight into the Georgian heartland routing the Georgian forces in South Ossetia and expelling them from the other main Georgian separatist region of Abkhazia.

After prolonged political and diplomatic negotiations between Iraq and the United States, President George Bush announced on September 9 the decision to withdraw around 8000 troops by the end of February 2009. The withdrawal would be done in a phased manner - a Marine battalion by November 2008 and an Army brigade by February 2009.

Africa is no longer a distant region that can be ignored by the United States. As articulated in the US National Security Strategy, the need to expand and ensure America's access to energy resources, prevent the spread of terrorism in weak states, and address transnational health and environmental concerns has transformed Africa from a strategically remote part of the world into a priority region for US economic, political, and military interests.

The recent American plan to transfer control of the Awakening Movement’s tribal militias to the Iraqi Army is fraught with risk for the future of Iraq. The improved security situation in Iraq has been attained by maintaining a precarious balance between several countervailing forces. Care has been taken to isolate radical Shia movements like Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish al-Mahdi and prevent it from having any share of power in the Shia-majority government led by Nouri al-Maliki.

The outcome of the deliberations at the September 1 Extraordinary European Council meeting held to discuss the Russian-Georgian conflict was not very dramatic. Gordon Brown penned a scathing article in The Observer and attempted to set a high pitch for the meeting by presenting the conflict as ‘naked aggression’ by Russia and advocating that the EU review ‘root and branch’ its relationship with Russia.