The Institute of War and Peace Reporting has launched a important new project – the Women’s Reporting and Dialogue Programme. To receive emails, please subscribe here. IWPR Director Anthony Boden explains the new venture.
Middle East Democracy
Go here here to listen to a discussion between Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway editors of Uncharted Journey, a new collection of essays on democracy-building in the Middle East. (AJ)
Iraq Directory is reporting that “Japan will spend $100 million to build a power
plant in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa where some 600 Japanese troops provide humanitarian assistance. (AJ)
Scott Peterson in The Christian Science Monitor writes on the fight by Iraqi women to defeat moves to Islamisise Iraqi society.
Go here for CNN interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari who talks about the regional autocracies that fear the new democratic Iraq will work. Yet another case of the anti-democrats understanding better than the democrats what is at stake in Iraq.
Read ‘The End of Secularism in Iraq’ at the Open Democracy site. (AJ)
A major military corporation is now producing cranes and electrical cables instead of missiles and bombs. (AJ)
The New York Times has obtained a copy of the 2000 page confidential file of the US Army’s criminal investigation into prisoner abuse – torture – at Bagram, Afghanistan. To watch Tim Golden’s interactive report on his investigation into the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram go to the New York Times site and click on ‘The Bagram File’. (AJ)
The New York Times (registration required) is reporting that “The Iraqi government publicly acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that Iraq was the aggressor in 1980 when it touched off a bloody eight-year war with Iran”. (AJ)
The IFTU posts an excellent article by John Lloyd reporting from Iraq on the struggle for equality of Kurdish women. (AJ)