Month: April 2010

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2010
04

A Revolution in Kyrgyzstan?

As I write this, there is an uprising in Kyrgyzstan. I strongly suspect that about 24 hours from now, it will be a revolution. Kyrgyzstan isn’t a country that most people know much about. It’s located in Central Asia, a region that doesn’t get much attention, and it’s one of the smaller, less prosperous Central Asian countries. Kyrgyzstan has about 6 million people and it’s mostly made up of mountains. The economy is based primarily on growing cotton and sending migrant workers to neighboring Kazakhstan.

Inside the Nigerian Cabinet Shake-Up

Yesterday, in a bid to assert his authority, Nigeria’s acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a new cabinet. Jonathan officially replaced President Yar’Adua in February, after the latter fell ill and had been too sick to govern since last November.

The “Decisive Dozen” of START Ratification

Obama and Medvedev will sign the new START treaty at a ceremony in Prague on Thursday.  But will the United States Senate ratify the treaty?  Doing so requires 67 votes and in the the current political environment that seems like a stretch. 

Amid ongoing conflict, Somali refugees recruited to fight Al-Shabaab

With the security climate in Somalia showing no signs of improvement, hundreds of thousands of Somali citizens have been displaced since early 2010. The UNHCR estimates there are currently 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia, and this trend is on the increase. The ongoing fighting in Mogadishu and other locations has caused nearly 170,000 residents to flee since the beginning of the year, according to the UNHCR.

What to Think of the Nuclear Posture Review (Plus, How to Navigate the Next Six Weeks of Nuclear Diplomacy)

These next few weeks are a marathon of activity in nuclear security and non-proliferation.  The new American Nuclear Posture Review dropped today, which for the first time specifically renounced the development of new nuclear weapons and as their use as a deterrent against chemical and biological attacks (though there were broad exceptions carved out for states like North Korea and Iran).  In an email to UN Dispatch, Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares