6 November 2013 Congo: A Good Start By Gwynne Dyer Can it really be as easy as that? Get Rwanda to stop supporting the rebels in eastern Congo, pay the soldiers of the Congolese army on time, send in a United Nations force that actually has orders to shoot, and presto! The bad guys surrender …
24 June 2013 World Population: The African Exception By Gwynne Dyer The news on the population front sounds bad: birth rates are not dropping as fast as expected, and we are likely to end up with an even bigger world population by the end of the century. The last revision of the United Nations’ World …
11 April 2013 Somalia Come-Back By Gwynne Dyer There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won’t be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) who have elected a new president, and the new government actually now controls a significant part …
4 November 2011 The Palestinians’ New Weapon By Gwynne Dyer The Palestinians have finally come up with a strategy that may produce some results. But only by accident, so to speak. They were fed up with nineteen years of “direct negotiations” with Israel that never made any progress towards a final peace settlement, and Palestinian …
28 October 2011 The African Population Disaster By Gwynne Dyer According to the United Nations, the world’s population will pass the seven billion mark at the end of this month, and there will be much tutting and shaking of heads over its prediction that we will be ten million by the end of the century. …
12 September 2011 Palestine: The Vatican Option By Gwynne Dyer “We will go to the United Nations (to request the recognition of Palestine as a state) and then we will return to talks,” said Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas early this month. But he is actually going to the UN because there are no peace talks, …
31 August 2011 Libya: Is Force an Instrument of Love? By Gwynne Dyer Somebody (perhaps a Jesuit) once said: “Force is an instrument of love in a world of complexity and chance.” I’d be grateful if someone could tell me where that comes from, but it has stayed with me for a long time because …
29 March 2011 End-Game in Ivory Coast By Gwynne Dyer “The general offensive has begun,”said Seydou Ouattara, the military spokesman of the man who claims to be Ivory Coast’s legitimate president, Alassane Ouattara, on Monday. “We’ve realised that this is the only way to remove [the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo].” On the same day Ouattara’s …
20 March 2011 Today Libya, Tomorrow Syria? By Gwynne Dyer Last Friday saw the first nationwide protests against the Baath regime in Syria. If these protests develop into a full-scale revolt, the regime’s response may dwarf that of Colonel Gaddafy in Libya. The last time Syrians rebelled, in the city of Hama in 1982, President …
14 August 2010 The Mavi Marmara Inquiry: Denying the Obvious By Gwynne Dyer They are all lying, of course. The pro-Palestinian activists who said that the flotilla of ships that tried to breach the Israeli blockade and bring aid to the Gaza Strip had purely humanitarian goals were lying, and so are the Israeli officials …