Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
The U.N.-backed Cambodia tribunals opened in February and have been fraught with challenges, many of which stem from the fact that the crimes being investigated were committed over 30 years ago. The New York Times published an interesting overview of the trials thus far, noting these hindrances but also highlighting some of testimony of the defendant currently on trial – Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch, who was the commandant of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where at least 14,000 people were tortured and killed. An excellent video accompanying the news report provides additional background on the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 through 1979, when an estimated 1.7 million people were killed.
The New Republic’s Barron YoungSmith offers a frank assessment of President Obama’s Special Envoy to Sudan, pulling together video clips and quotes from a number of Special Envoy Gration’s recent statements that indicate he “is fashioning his Sudan policy around an ideological attraction to carrots and an aversion to sticks–when everything we know about Sudan tells us that this is precisely the wrong tactic.” As YoungSmith notes, the approach Gration has put forth thus far is being viewed as a “genuine cause for worry” by many Sudan watchers.
It would’ve been hard to miss the feature story on the front page of last Sunday’s New York Times about the American recruits to the Shabaab militant group in Somalia, but if you didn’t take a look at the special features related to the article, especially this video about the Shabaab movement and its appeal to young Somali Americans, they are worth checking out. Professor Ken Menkhaus, who has authored the past three Somalia strategy papers for Enough, makes an appearance in the video and offers some interesting analysis about Shabaab’s intentions toward the United States.
And from the streets of Mogadishu, alJazeera brings this startling footage of the ongoing block by block battle for control of Somalia’s capital:
New Yorker columnist Steve Coll recently returned from Chad, and he filed a few blog posts from the road, beginning with the one here. Always interesting insights from Coll, and I especially liked this one.
The Enough Team contributed to this post.