The End of US Hegemony?
The United States National Intelligence Council has just issued its latest global trends report. The document attempts to envisage the state of the world in 2025 and to consider how the international relations of the future will affect the US. The most significant finding of this latest report is that American power is undoubtedly on the wane. Whilst the country that Niall Ferguson called ‘Colossus’ will remain the most significant national actor on the international arena, it will be less dominant in future, according to...
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Vision Terudo - IDP camps, Katakwi
Bumping up the dirt tracks through Uganda’s Kumi and Katakwi districts, past the vast wetlands, I was trying to prepare myself for my first sight of an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp. When we reached Amusla Omaju camp I was immediately struck by the permanence of the buildings. I had expected more temporary, tent-like structures. However, the camp residents live in thatched houses not dissimilar to those of farmers in the neighbouring districts. The major difference between the camps and regular settlements was the close proximity between the...
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Karamoja: Uganda’s Cattle War
In the summer of 2007 International Affairs Forum committee member Max Doherty travelled to Uganda to lead a film project on the civil conflict between cattle herder tribes in the east of the country. Doherty has been a frequent visitor to Uganda; on this project he worked with the Ugandan People`s Defence Force, World Food Programme, NGOs and missionaries to produce an unprecedented insight into one of the world`s unreported conflicts.
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Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan
Nestled amongst some of the highest mountains on earth, a land where glacial streams weave through lush meadows alive with unique flora and fauna, the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir must surely boast some of the most tranquil and breathtaking scenery in all of Asia. Many of its majority Muslim population still live a subsistence agricultural lifestyle. Taking a trip through one of the region’s hillside towns the visitor can experience elements of a culture preserved for millennia and resilient against numerous would-be conquerors. But Jammu and Kashmir is now one of the most heavily militarised areas on the planet...
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Negotiating with ETA
On June 5 2007, the Basque separatist group ETA (’Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’, Basque for ‘Basque Fatherland and Freedom’) declared its ceasefire with the Spanish government officially over after a year and three months. The group has been fighting and organising violent attacks since 1959 in pursuit of Basque independence from the rest of Spain...
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Reconsidering Democratisation
Neo-conservatism, in its array of incarnations, seems a somnolent ideology; exhausted and fragmenting after a turbulent decade. Although some core proponents of the movement survive sheltered under the limp wings of the Bush administration, they appear to be on the decline within both American and global systems of governance. They...
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