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LONDON – During the difficult years that preceded the British handover of Hong Kong to China the Chinese government’s intense antipathy to opium and the still fresh memories of the evil that eighteenth century buccaneering Britain had inflicted on China and Hong Kong added an extra emotional charge to what, anyway, was a most complicated transition. Without opium there would have been no Hong Kong. The British only acquired it because of the Opium Wars, and the city’s early economic success was built on the opium trade. It was the British who fed the Chinese propensity for opium. Historians point out that the Chinese would have found it elsewhere, even grown some of it themselves. But the truth is the Indian-grown opium was the brand the Chinese smokers savoured and the British East India Company marketed it with commercial élan. Today the Chinese authorities regard opium as a singularly bad...

Sent på hösten 2001, ett par månader efter terroristattackerna den 9 september besökte jag Washington. “Alla” talade om den planerade attacken mot Irak. Det var visserligen bara rykten, men journalister och mina vänner i fredsrörelserna var övertygade. I kongressen svarade de politiska rådgivarna att ett anfall mot Irak inte var beslutat men inte var uteslutet: “På något sätt måste vi ju visa vår beslutsamhet och styrka Jag kunde inte förstå grunden till ryktena. USA hade utsatts av svåra terrorattacker av en grupp saudier, baserade i Afghanistan. Varför skulle det leda till en attack mot Irak? Ingen kunde ge ett trovärdigt svar på vad man ville åstadkomma. Följderna skulle uppenbarligen bli negativa för USA. Jag trodde att något så oförnuftigt skulle Bush-regeringen inte göra. Jag hade fel. Nu gäller ryktena Iran. Under det senaste året har det kommit flera analyser och rapporter om ett möjligt anfall mot Iran. I en färsk...

Hoppets och lugnets tid i Bolivia Är Evo hemma? Ett fönster står på glänt på andra våningen i Palazio Quemado, presidentens formella villa 1875, då rebeller satte eld på huset för att störta presidenten i en av Bolivias 180 kupper och motkupper sedan självständigheten 1825. Bor Evo Morales överhuvud där, Bolivias förste indianske president, som sänkt sin lön och föredrar att gå klädd i traditionell aymaraindiansk tjocktröja framför kostym och slips? Förmodligen inte. Evo Morales valdes till president den 18 december 2005 med överväldigande majoritet, 54 procent i den första valomgången. Morales leder partiet MAS, “Moviemento al Socialismo”. Alla jag möter talar om Evo, inte om president Morales. Stora förhoppningar förknippas med honom. I Bolivia råder dessa första månader 2006 en hoppets och lugnets tid efter decennier av kaos. Men Morales svårigheter är enorma. Om han sviker de folkliga förväntningarna får han snabbt folket emot sig. Om han “uppfyller” förväntningarna...

LONDON – When nine years ago the British lowered the Union Jack on their last remaining important colony, Hong Kong, Chris Patten, the governor, buried his face in his hands for the entire world to see and felt the profoundest sentiment a proud and ambitious politician could experience – failure. It was indeed a personal failure to be added to his other great misfortune, the timing of elections back home in Britain that made it impossible for him to become prime minister and to fulfil his other ambition, to take Britain into the euro zone. But on that damp evening it was the people of Hong Kong, those who knew him well could tell, that pierced his conscience. The British had let them down. They were giving up a colony having unaccountably failed not to leave it a functioning democracy. In every country except Palestine in 1948 – when the...

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Peace Antenna Interview with Sabine Lichtenfels, Director of the Institute for Global Peace Work – Institutes für Globale Friedensarbeit (IGF) – Co-founder of the Tamera peace village, and nominated as one of the 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005.  In 2005, Sabine Lichtenfels – a theologian and political activist -was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as one of the 1000 Women for Peace – a project aimed at gaining public recognition of the relentless efforts made by women across the globe to promote sustainable peace and social justice. Sabine Lichtenfels is a political activist and peace worker dedicated to bringing peace to the Middle East and to teaching young people to “think and act responsibly and with commitment”. She is the director of the Institute for Global Peace Work (IGF) and is the co-founder of the Tamera peace village, Portugal, a model settlement dedicated to researching the concept of non-violent,...

LONDON – Perhaps one needs to be a medieval theologian to understand the shifting nuances of Taiwan’s relationship with mainland China. Not one of Taiwan’s reigning, recent or likely future leaders is consistent for long. China’s leaders have long blown hot and cold. It would not matter if Taiwan were simply a small island of 23 million people. But since it is the largest single investor in mainland China, the present principal source of China’s technological revolution and is claimed by Beijing as being part of China, it is probably the world’s most dangerous potential flashpoint. If Taipei and Beijing spark each off, as they did in 1996 when the U.S. sent two carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait, then the U.S. could be drawn into a war with China. Washington is irrevocably committed to Taiwan’s autonomy, as long as that is what its people want. China, as its...

LONDON – If the debate in Taiwan about its political future has descended to the level of birds and animals it must have some meaning. Perhaps it is nothing more than an expression of impotence, although an unnecessary one. This country, threatened and claimed by China, corralled into submissive behaviour by the United States, is forced to make its main point by any means at hand – that it should be free to exert its own will. “Taiwan has stood up,” said President Chen Shui-bian on the day of his first inauguration six years ago and most people here believe that, even as they differ as to how to put it into practice. But how you fight this struggle perhaps needs more nuance and restraint than Chen gives it. Two days ago the government announced that it was refusing the gift of two pandas offered by Beijing in a peace-making...

LONDON – The much-heralded council of war between President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair begins at Bush’s Texas ranch on Friday. Whatever else is in the headlines on that day, the tight focus of the discussion will be on whether or not to go to war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This must be the most complicated, multifaceted, decision that any Western political leader has made since Truman’s decision to go to war against North Korea. Yet, even if one concedes the ultimate right of any country to take preventive action against another, which might use nuclear weapons against it, the argument for a new war does not stand up. Despite America’s overwhelming military might, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Until now the U.S, by its bold and resolute, if misconceived, war in Afghanistan has proved the doubters wrong on one important point. The...

LONDON – “Charles Taylor came to Nigeria on his own free will,” President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria explained to me on the phone yesterday. “He was not arrested and he has not been detained”. Thus what on Saturday – the imminent deportation of Taylor to the newly democratic Liberia and from there on to the UN-backed War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone – had seemed very clear has become rather cloudy. But whoever said arraigning war criminals – in this case one who in his time as a rebel leader in Liberia and then president was responsible for some of the worse and most savage mass killings ever witnessed by mankind – was easy? In Yugoslavia, it took years before Serbian politics shifted through enough gears that it was able to send Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague for trial, and even today Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two evil...

Claus Kold har netop udgivet en sammenfatning af sin banebrydende PhD-afhandling, Krigen er slut – konflikterne fortsætter på Frydenlunds forlag. Få udenforstående er kommet så tæt ind på livet af den danske soldat på international mission; hans undersøgelse bygger på feltstudier i Kosovo og på enorme mængder af litteratur, teoriudvikling, forskning og undervisning i de seneste 25 år. Herunder gengives en af hans kronikker for nyligt offentliggjort i Politiken. I den viser Kold hvor dårligt det danske forsvar er klædt på til de fredsskabende opgaver det fører sig frem som eksperter i. 22. marts, 2006 Hvis en slagteriarbejder besluttede sig for at blive hjertekirurg, vil vi nok forvente, at han gennemgik en uddannelse og i øvrigt anskaffede nye redskaber. Når forsvaret får den nye opgave at skulle skabe fred i stedet for at gå i krig, kunne samme forventning opstå. Men sådan er det ikke for forsvaret, når det overgår fra at...

LONDON – Say what you like about the U.S. State Department’s mastery of foreign affairs, its annual report on human rights practice remains a beacon of precise, honest and clear thinking. Published two weeks’ ago it rightly chided China for going backwards after years of progress. And here in Turkey its sharp critique has been well covered in the press, giving the country a chance to see itself in the round. Despite phenomenal progress in improving the parameters of free speech and beginning to confront the legitimate demands of the Kurds, Alevites and other minorities in recent years, Turkey still has not faced up to its two big outstanding historical questions – what has it done with all its Jews and Christians? – a very big question since Istanbul was the seat for centuries of the Byzantine Church and the Ottoman Empire was the principle place of refuge for the...