Last month, violent clashes erupted in the Central African Republic (CAR) after the killing and beheading of a 19-year-old Muslim in Bambari, allegedly by members of the Christian and animist militias known as the anti-Balaka. One year after African Union efforts in CAR were rolled into a United Nations mission, sectarian violence remains common, pointing to the urgent need for reforms to ensure stability ahead of general elections in October this year.
The ongoing protest in the Moldovan capital Chișinău is posing a fresh test of Russian state-controlled media’s ability to project Kremlin geopolitical preferences.
Regional analysts assert that Moscow is viewing the protest as another Western-orchestrated, Euromaidan-like disturbance that constitutes a threat to Russian national interests. Not surprisingly, then, Russian broadcasters and print outlets are striving to shape a news narrative in which the protest is an expression of the population’s discontent with Moldova’s European Union integration efforts.
Not everybody would agree, but it seems increasingly likely that Kim Jong Un and his administration (whatever that means) are executing a careful set of market-oriented reforms. These reforms bear some similarities to what the Chinese leadership did in the 1970s, though they are significantly less radical in many regards.
On 23rd of April 2014, Fatah and Hamas signed in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp the latest of a series of reconciliation agreements. Hopes were not particularly high, as a number of similar agreements had been signed in the past (Sana’a 2008, Mecca Agreement of 2008, Cairo Agreement of 2011, and Doha Declaration of 2012) but were incapable of overcoming the factional divide in practice. The Shati agreement had the potential to be different. The parties indeed proceeded to form a Government of National Consensus (GNC) and thus gave proof of significant political will.
According to recent press reports, the Pentagon’s Inspector General is investigating whether officials from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) have skewed intelligence assessments to show more progress in the fight against the Islamic State than the facts would justify. Allegedly, these politicized assessments have made their way to senior officials right up to the president.
We do not yet know the full truth but these are serious allegations; politicization is one of the most profoundly unethical acts that intelligence officers can engage in. If the charges are substantiated, this will not be the first time that the U.S. military has cooked the books on a war. In 1967, the U.S. Intelligence Community produced Special National Intelligence Estimate 14.3-67, “Capabilities of the Vietnamese Communists for Fighting in South Vietnam,” which is available at the CIA’s Freedom of Information Act website. The sordid story of this estimate encourages us to take a hard line on politicization. It also reminds us, however, that intelligence is an inherently uncertain business.