The violence of the paramilitaries in Colombia does not decrease – despite President Uribe having started the alleged disarmament of these illegal units in such a full-bodied manner. The Peace Village San José de Apartadó is particularly affected by the difficult political situation in Colombia. San José is a Peace Village of Colombians, mostly expelled farmers who joined about ten year ago. Despite the extreme persecution the inhabitants decided to live a life of non-violent resistance in truth and solidarity.

The plight of Iraqi refugees is grave but is the tip of the iceberg of Iraq’s gathering humanitarian crisis. The (grossly under-reported) plight of those still in Iraq is even more worrying. Despite the insecure environment and numerous constraints, humanitarian intervention in Iraq is ongoing, possible and greatly needed.

What is exceptional about the violence of the government-backed Janjaweed militia in Darfur, is less its scale than the intense - if belated - international attention it has received.

Almost entirely missing from the debate about how to win the "War on Terror" is a concept of what "victory" would actually look like. The traditional notion of winning a war is fairly clear: defeating an enemy on the battlefield and forcing it to accept political terms. But what does victory -- or defeat -- mean in a war on terror? Will this kind of war ever end? How long will it take? Would we see victory coming? Would we recognize it when it came?

Moments of crisis are also moments of opportunity. Sudan at the present has all the dimensions of an imminent crisis that could unravel the major achievements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the uncertain progress towards democracy.

Appalling daily casualties that would be considered unacceptable elsewhere have become routine. The country is confronted with a grave failure to ensure respect and protection for the lives and dignity of millions of civilians not taking part in the ongoing violence.

This problem is adapted from an article entitled "Responding to Iraq’s Ever-Deepening Violence," originally published by the Forced Migration Review, in their special Iraq issue, August 2007.

The U.S.-led coalition was unable to transform an overwhelming military victory in 2001 into a stable postwar political situation because of several factors, including Afghanistan's fractious politics and shattered economic, state, and civil society infrastructures; a minimalist American approach to committing military forces and foreign aid; Pakistan's failure to crack down decisively on Taliban forces that have taken refuge in Pashtun tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; and the Afghan government's failure to expand its authority and deliver services to rural Afghans.

Forum topic related to:

The general ignorance of American people about the culture and long abiding fundamentalist religious views of the area has created this situation. I agree with your basic suggestion that we pull out of Iraq and let the culture and the people find its own way. We should not be recreating another "British Empire" through our arrogance and ignorance. We need to free ourselves of our dependence on oil or be honest about it and take over the oil fields

Forum topic related to:

I agree that there is a culture of fear growing in the US. I see it in Pat Bucannan's post on this site about the end of the US as we know it due to mass immigration from Mexico. I also see it in the way we abuse antibiotics for fear of catching some alien bug. There's another post here from Phyllis Schlafly about students in public schools being forced to get a human pampiloma virus vaccination.

Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it very well in an op-ed for the Washington Post on March 25, 2007: