International politics

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

DSK resigns from IMF

The IMF has issued three press releases on Dominique Strauss-Kahn since his arrest last week, but none more resonant than the latest. It contains this statement from their now former-Managing Director: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board, It is with infinite sadness that I feel compelled today to present to the Executive Board my resignation from my post of Managing Director of the IMF. I think at this time first of my wife—whom I love more than anything—of my children, of my family, of my friends. I think also of my colleagues at the Fund; together we have accomplished such great things over the last three years and more. To

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The Law vs Gaddafi

Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court has said that Colonel Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and spy chief Abdullah al-Sanussi have the greatest responsibility for the “widespread and systematic attacks” on civilians in Libya. The prosecutor has therefore asked the ICC to issue warrants for their arrest. The move comes as rebels claim they now have full control of Misrata and scored victories in Zintan, south-east of Tripoli. A senior officer told me he thought Colonel Gaddafi would be toppled in less than six months. But if he does not fall, the ICC move may become problematic. For if  warrants are issued, the Libyan dictator has little way out but

Monday

Daniel Korski

Could a Briton run the IMF?

With Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK, undertaking scientific and forensic tests to determine if he sexually assaulted a hotel maid, the International Monetary Fund will be run by its No. 2 official, John Lipsky. A former banker, Lipsky was appointed “first” deputy managing director in 2006, and was expected to step down later in the year. But the change at the top will bring the former Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development, Minouche Shafik, into the limelight. She recently left London to take up a post as deputy managing director at the IMF; she will now take Strauss-Kahn’s place at a meeting with Europe’s finance ministers in Brussels

Daniel Korski

The ISI chief must be sacked

The US-Pakistani relationship has always been fraught, but it is particularly fractious right now. It is highly likely that the US will conduct more Abbottabad-type raids following the killing of Osama Bin Laden. According to sources in the US government, several locations were under surveillance alongside Bin Laden’s compound. And that was before the CIA snatched the “motherlode” of information from the Bin Laden raid, which will give hundreds of new leads. People like Ayman al Zawahiri, Abu Yahya al Libi, and Saif al Adel will be sleeping a little less soundly these days. Regrettably, the Pakistani government has done little to prepare its population for the likelihood of new

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The Arab Spring stalls in Syria

With more than 800 people thought to have died in Syria, the situation is getting more and more serious. President Bashar al-Assad has clearly decided he cannot allow any challenge to his regime and has rejected even the advice of friends like Turkey and Qatar to step back from the brink. The military — principally the loyalist 4th and 5th divisions — has now perfected their anti-protest tactics. People in Hama and Homs are fearing that what was visited upon Deera — where the regime cut off water, electricity and telephones before assaulting the city — will happen to them. Yet, for all this, it would be wrong to think

Friday

David Blackburn

Bin Laden strikes from beyond the grave

And so it starts. The news that suicide bombers have attacked the military base at Shabqadar, northern Pakistan, sounds a chilling note. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attacks, committed in retaliation for the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Security experts and politicians warned that it would be so. It is, we are told, inevitable that similar atrocities will be attempted closer to home. There will also be concern that this may aggravate the already strained relations between the US and Pakistan, which would only strengthen the terrorists. Perhaps Bin Laden has become a more potent force since his death. The sight of a squalid man sitting in

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Baleful Bosnia

Bosnia has been getting more attention recently, as analysts predict gridlock (or worse) in the coming weeks. The reason is a move by the country’s Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, to challenge parts of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the hard-fought war in 1995. Few people outside Bosnia know who Dodik is. Those who knew him during the Bosnian War or immediately afterwards saw him as a moderate businessman-turned-politician. But since then, Dodik has either changed or shed his cover. Now he wants to hold a vote next month on whether to reject Bosnia’s federal institutions, especially the war crimes court. He has accused the court of bias. A

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Libya: Bombing does not preclude preparing a Plan B

The PM is looking to intensify the military campaign in Libya. Losing is not an option. Just think about it. The US gets its man; Britain gets angry, bombs a bit and then goes home. The dictator lives on in infamy: very Clintonesque. To avoid such an ignominious end, a delegation from Benghazi has been called to London in order to hatch a plan with Britain and her allies. But at the same time it may be prudent for someone in government – quietly and out of sight, of course – to look at a Plan B. Not for execution now, but ready in case the time comes. Why a

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Osama bin Laden at home

They may be mostly silent, and their content is rather mundane, but the five Osama bin Laden “home videos” released by the Pentagon today are still some of the most astonishing documents to emerge during the past week. The deceased al-Qaeda leader is shown watching himself on television; preparing his ranting-head diatribes against America and the West; and even with his greying beard dyed black all over. You can watch the full selection, with Al Jazeera commentary, above.

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Is Chris Huhne proving coalitions don’t work?

This country’s not used to coalitions. So when we got one we were sceptical. When it worked, we remained sceptical. When it worked really well, taking decisions that a majority Labour government dared not take, we began to come around to the idea. Most people seemed to accept that they could live with a coalition; that it had a certain utility. Now, we don’t know what to think following the spat between George Osborne and Chris Huhne. Is this proof that the coalition cannot work or merely an example of the way coalitions work? There are certainly worse examples of inter-coalition war in countries that often have coalition governments. German

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Meanwhile, in Libya…

The death of Osama Bin Laden may be a very arresting punctuation mark in the conflict against tyranny — but the conflict continues nevertheless, not least in Libya. The latest news from the country is that the rebels are maintaining their fragile hold on the port town of Misrata, although Western agencies are still struggling to send in aid and relief supplies. “We have seven ICU beds and eleven cases,” is how one hospital worker puts it to Channel 4’s Alex Thomson. “What is Nato doing? What is the world doing? If any more people come here they will die.” In political terms, there has been one significant development today:

Peter Hoskin

CIA director blasts Pakistan’s intelligence service

“It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets.” There have been few blunter, nor more high-profile, condemnations of Pakistan’s intelligence operation than that made by Leon Panetta, the CIA chief, in interview with Time magazine today. And there are plenty of other noteworthy nuggets in the article as well: among them, Panetta’s claim that the US has seized an “impressive amount” of raw intel from Bin Laden’s compound. And how about this: “Intelligence reporting suggests that one of bin Laden’s wives who survived the attack has said the family had been living at the compound since 2005, a

Jonathan Jones

How the Canadian elections panned out

The votes have been counted, and the results of the Canadian federal election are in. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives Stephen Harper’s Conservatives performed much more strongly than many expected, securing their first majority since 1993 by 13 seats. The New Democratic Party’s vote did indeed hold up: they took 31 per cent of the vote (almost exactly as the latest polls predicted), and won 102 seats, beating the Liberals by a wide margin to become the official opposition. The Liberals had their worst election result in their 144-year history, returning fewer than half the MPs they had going into the election. The Bloc Québécois had a disastrous night too, also suffering

Peter Hoskin

Pakistan responds

The covers of our newspapers are emblazoned with Bin Laden this morning — but it is an article in a US newspaper that really catches the eye. Pakistan’s President, Asif Ali Zardari, has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that defends his country’s role in the struggle against Al-Qaeda. It’s a defence that has four components. 1) Sympathy: “Pakistan … joins the other targets of al-Qaeda in our satisfaction that the source of the greatest evil of the new millennium has been silenced.” 2) Credit-sharing: “We in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.” 3) Defiance: “Pakistan has

Monday

Daniel Korski

Bin Laden died in Cairo<br />

The world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, was shot Sunday morning in Pakistan by US special forces. But in reality he had died months ago. On the 25 of January 2011 to be exact. Or that is at least when Bin Laden’s power ended. For on that day millions of protesters — predominantly young Muslims — took to the streets of Cairo and demanded the overthrow of the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and succeeded. With this act, they gave, for the first time since 9/1 and arguably for three decades, the Muslim world a more easily-understood and persuasive narrative than the one of anti-US resistance Al Qaeda

Jonathan Jones

A brief guide to the Canadian elections

Today Canadians go to the polls for their fourth general election in seven years, after Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government fell to an unprecedented motion citing it for contempt of Parliament. The story of the campaign has undoubtedly been the meteoric rise of Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party. Until now, the centre-left NDP had been the third party nationally — and, in fact, fourth in number of seats, due to the regional strength of the Bloc Québécois. However, they have enjoyed a steady surge over the past three weeks, with the election-eve polls putting them on about 31 per cent — more than 10 points ahead of the previously second-placed

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the US pulled it off

The veil is being pulled back on how the United States tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden. The New York Times reveals that the intelligence trail started with information obtained from a Guantanamo Bay detainee about the courier that Bin Laden used to pass and receive messages to the outside world. This is proof that the public debate about the utility of Guantanamo is far too glib. This courier was then tracked down last August to the compound, in Abbottabad which was so secure and grand that the Americans realised that it could well be Bin Laden’s hide-out. These suspicions were reinforced when it became clear that this million

Peter Hoskin

What Obama said about Bin Laden and Pakistan before he became President

After the events of today, the video above has fresh resonance. It is from the first presidential debate in 2008, and features Barack Obama defending his previously stated view that “if the United States has Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, top level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out.” Turns out, in this case, he was true to his word.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The world’s most wanted man becomes the world’s most wanted photograph

Will we see pictures of the dead Bin Laden? When Saddam’s sons were killed, pictures of their corpses were released by the American military, on the grounds that it was crucial for Iraqis to believe they were no more. This time, we’re told that Bin Laden has already been buried at sea, the Saudis having refused to repatriate his body. The CIA say they have pictures from yesterday’s assassination, and that the pictures of Bin Laden circulating right now (which have been picked up by some of the British media) are fake. It’s unclear whether they intend to release the real pictures. Bin Laden’s body was identified by some members

Peter Hoskin

A map that raises questions

Here’s a map that I’ve put together of the area where Bin Laden was discovered and killed. The red point is his suspected residence, the blue and green points are Pakistani military centres. You can, of course, zoom in, out and around the image, as well as click on the points for captions: View A map that raises questions in a larger map