24 July 2006 Horn of Africa: The Perfect Storm By Gwynne Dyer It has the makings of a perfect storm extending right across the Horn of Africa. The fifteen-year war of all against all in Somalia is threatening to morph into an international war bringing chaos and disaster to the rest of the region, and …
6 June 2006 Nigeria: Not the Indispensable Man By Gwynne Dyer What kind of country would hold a census in which the enumerator recorded your sex but not your religion, your age but not your ethnicity? Those were the rules for the Nigerian census whose results are due out this week — and they were …
2 January 2006 Haiti: No Easy Way Out By Gwynne Dyer “We are not going to participate (in the election) without Aristide,” said Father Gérard Jean-Juste, whom many Haitians see as the natural successor to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the priest-president who was overthrown by the United States in 2004. “It’s going to be like the election …
16 June 2005 Africa: Debt, Aid and Race By Gwynne Dyer “We are very sorry and apologise to viewers and other people who felt offended,” announced the Japanese cosmetics firm Mandom early this month, but mass ritual suicide would have been a more appropriate form of apology. The company had aired a TV commercial that …
13 January 2005 Pandora’s Box in Sudan By Gwynne Dyer If the peace agreement signed in Kenya on 10 January really ends the 21-year-old Sudanese civil war, the killing will stop and millions of refugees will be able to go home — but the deal carries a big risk for Africa. As “The Nation” put …
9 January 2005 Aid, Trade and Reason By Gwynne Dyer It’s good that people have given from their hearts to the tsunami victims in Asia, and that governments (although they don’t actually have hearts) have pledged even larger sums in aid. But the devil, as usual, is in the details. “I do think there are …
25 October 2004 A (Much Resented) World Language By Gwynne Dyer Predictably, the French were furious. A national commission looking into the future of the French education system recommended last week that English, which it called “the language of international communication,” be made compulsory in French schools, and the usual suspects erupted in outrage. It …
12 September 2004 A Large Splodge of Wonga By Gwynne Dyer Simon Mann, heir to the Watney’s beer fortune, graduate of Eton and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, former co-founder of Executive Outcomes, a leading mercenary outfit in Africa in the 90s, currently resident at Chikurubi maximum security prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, believes that …
23 May 2004 State of War By Gwynne Dyer The worst killing in the world this month was in Nigeria, which isn’t officially at war. Nigerian police routinely underestimate the number of people killed in fighting between Muslims and Christians, believing that the true numbers will just encourage revenge killings elsewhere, but at least 600 …
19 February 2004 Why Is Haiti Cursed? By Gwynne Dyer Haiti’s trip to the brink of civil war began last September, when Amiot Metayer, the leader of a gang of street thugs called the Cannibal Army that enforced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s will in the northern city of Gonaives, threatened to reveal details of the murder …