For those who want to inform themselves of the situation in Darfur (Western Sudan), I’ve put up a report from the International Crisis Group (PDF file). , via Sudan: The Passion of the Present.

This opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof is also worth reading.

Clearly this is one of the biggest disasters happening in the world at present, and we should all be concerned about it. I want to learn and think more before committing myself, and my very limited resources of persuasion, to a particular course of action, but time is short. glucophage xl side effects

Now that the inevitable peace deal between the American forces and Sadr’s Mahdi army appears to have been reached, amounting to restoration of the status quo ante

, can anybody provide a coherent rationale for Bremer’s decision to drive Sadr into revolt in the first place, by closing his newspaper and arresting his supporters? The assault on Fallujah was bound to be a disaster, but it’s not surprising that the Americans felt impelled to take some drastic action in response to the killing and mutilation of US contractors there. But the attack on Sadr seemed gratuitiously stupid, even more so than the disbanding of the army and the banning of the Baath party.

Tacitus, still taking the view that “failure is not an option in Iraq” is naturally furious about the deal . But any realistic analysis of the planned election must recognise that Sadr has enough support to make him a powerful force. He may not be a particularly attractive character, but he’s no worse than dozens of other world leaders with whom we deal for want of any better alternative. The notion that a military option with a June 30 deadline could take him and his movement out of the picture was never more than a delusion.

Whether you think, like Tacitus, that the attack on Sadr should been pushed through to its bloody conclusion, or like me that it should never have started, this is another appalling stuffup on Bremer’s part. Even at this late stage he ought to take responsibility and resign or, failing that, be sacked.

Below the fold is my draft review of Gil Merom’s How Democracies Lose Small Wars. Comments and criticism much appreciated.

UpdateAs regular readers will know, I have a habit of making small mental slips, and this post had two, with a reference to the downfall of Charles II following the English Civil War and to Saddam’s actions following the First Gulf War. Within hours of this post going up here and at Crooked Timber, four different people pointed these errors out to me in email and comments, in the nicest possible way (they’re fixed now)

It’s really great to know that I have so many attentive readers for a long, and rather academic post. And of course, it’s very helpful to have these errors picked up in Ozplogistan where errors are rife and correction is easy, before committing them to the unforgiving permanence of print.
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While the world’s attention (and mine, I admit) has been focused on Iraq, events that matter far more are happening elsewhere. As regards weapons proliferation, it’s obvious that North Korea and Pakistan are far more dangerous than Saddam ever was. And for a problem that cries out for some sort of humanitarian intervention, there’s none more urgent than that in Sudan. Although I’ve been aware of this for a while, it’s very hard to get the kind of information needed to motivate action, even as little action as writing a blog post. A new website Sudan: The Passion of the Present helps to fill that gap (link via Chris at CT).

From an NYT story on “ghost” prisoners in Abu Ghraib

The memorandum criticizing the practice of keeping prisoners off the roster was signed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and a James Bond, who is identified as “SOS, Agent in Charge.” Military and intelligence officials said that they did not know of a Mr. Bond who had been assigned to Abu Ghraib, and that it was possible that the name was an alias.

Abu Ghraib prison is to be demolished. Obviously, I welcome this news and hope that this symbolic measure will be accompanied by the substantive changes it should represent, including the abandonment of the policy of detention without trial.

In an earlier post , I suggested it was startling to find that the Daily Mirror has more stringent standards of personal responsibility than the Blair government in relation to the dissemination of falsehoods about the war in Iraq Looking at parallel cases in the US[1], Jack Shafer at Slate is surprised but in the opposite way, saying that until NYT editor Bill Keller publishes an apology for the bogus WMD reports published by Judith Miller

we’ll be occupying a bizarro world in which the secretary of state is more accountable than the New York Times.

Pardon my naive idealism, but isn’t the government in a democratic society supposed to more accountable than any newspaper. Still, it does seem rather alternate-universe that the Daily Mirror should be the only actor in this whole drama to uphold traditional standards of responsibility.
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The report that abu Musab al-Zarqawi personally committed the brutal murder of Nicholas Berg raises a number of thoughts for me. The murder and the knowledge of its videotape were bad enough (I’ve seen the still photos published in the papers, but have not looked for the video or for photos showing the actual murder). Giving the murderer a name seems to make things even worse, though it’s hard to say why this should be. There are, though, some important issues that need to be raised.
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