On the last day of January 2019, the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) announced in Port Moresby that it recognized that West Papua was in a state of war with Indonesia and supported the OPM’s military wing, the National Liberation Army of West Papua (TPNPB) is its own declaration of war against Indonesia early in 2018. […]
Tag Archives: war
Danis Dragovic’s ‘No Dancing, No Dancing: inside the global humanitarian crisis’ (Odyssey, 2018) is an important reflection on the aid and disaster industries, revisiting sites of previous aid work – South Sudan, Iraq and Timor-Leste – to discover what, if anything, has remained of earlier aid efforts and, where there has been failure, to seek […]
It’s fair to say that no-one who understands the basics of international relations believes that President Donald Trump also understands how they work. His latest statement – sorry, Tweet – that ‘talking is not the answer’ regarding tensions with North Korea is a glaring case in point. Trump’s threats and ‘show of force’ over North […]
The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that left almost a quarter of a million people dead and led to the worlds largest emergency aid program had a profound impact on two wars being fought in the region. In Aceh, Indonesia, it contributed to the end of three decades of bloody conflict; in Sri Lanka, the tsunami […]
It had elements from the outset, but the war in Syria is looking more like a war by proxy between outside interests. It may be that it can now only be resolved from outside. Most wars are proxies to some extent, perhaps the most notorious recent war being the three-cornered contest in Cambodia between 1978 […]
Tensions between India and Pakistan are escalating as troops from each country have again clashed across the Kashmir Line of Control, with two Indian soldiers being killed. India claims Pakistani soldiers took advantage of misty conditions yesterday to cross the 1949 Line of Control dividing Kashmir into Indian and Pakistan controlled areas about 220 kilometres […]
Among the many claims that about ‘boat people’ that are made in order to fulfil particular political agendas, one is that when a war is officially concluded then people who live in the once afflicted area have nothing more to worry about. As a result, they do not have a legitimate claim for protection against […]
Presentation to the Asia-Pacific Civil-Military Centre for Excellence, 8 November 2011. In putting a case against the involvement of civilians in military operations at an event hosted by the Asia-Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence is bit like placing Christians before lions and then having a debate as to whether the lions are hungry, and I […]
The leaking of more than 91,000 US military intelligence files on the war in Afghanistan via the whistleblower website Wikileaks has, in all, told us some of what was known, much of what was suspected and all of which was feared by citizens of the states that are contributing to the war. What might have […]
It is usual to look forward to a new year with a degree of hope and optimism but, so far as much of Australia’s region is concerned, there is little chance for that. Given the conflicts that continue at varying levels of intensity in our part of the world, 2010 will probably go down in […]