Afghan women gathered in the streets of Kabul yesterday to protest the newly signed family law that stipulates wives cannot refuse sex to their husbands. The crowd of about 300 young women drew a larger protest of some 1,000 men, who threw pebbles at the women, condeming them as un-Islamic. Riot police eventually stepped in and only one injury was reported. The law, which only applies to the Shia minority, stoked international outrage over the blatant rejection of women’s personal rights, although reaction in Afghanistan is mixed. Supporters of the legislation argue the measure is a reflection of the messages in the Koran.
The Russian president announced an end to the ten year counterterrorism operation in Chechnya yesterday, adding that up to 20,000 troops will be removed in the coming months. The move by Dmitry Medvedev was hailed as a success by Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov who praised the region’s progress toward sustained peace and economic growth. Chechens actively pursued independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the land-locked region met great resistance from Russia, resulting in two full-scale wars and years of sporadic conflict. The move will ideally lead to future prosperity and openness for the Muslim-majority area, including a possible international airport designation.
Tea drinkers around the world will be spending more for their daily cup in the coming months as droughts in Kenya, India and Sri Lanka curtail this year’s harvest. The average price of tea rose to $2.33 per kilogram last year—almost 60 cents higher than 2007. Experts expect the price of tea to soar above the 2008 peak price of $2.70/kg as the drought continues to cut production sharply. The situation is complicated by the global recession because many countries are responding to even small cost increases by cutting the amount of tea imports. Kenya, a leading producer of tea, predicts a hard year for the three million people who work in the tea industry.
Considered the world’s largest exercise in democracy, India’s month-long general election began today with a bloody start. Maoist rebels, otherwise known as Naxalites, killed at least seventeen people, including a dozen police and paramilitary officers, in an effort to disrupt the voting process and discourage Indians from casting their choice. The country has up to 2.1 million security personnel in place for the mass polling. The Maoists, however, reportedly have a strong presence in 170 of India’s 602 administrative districts. Some 714 million people are registered to vote at almost 830,000 polling stations. Some consider India’s politics fragmented as ever, while others see it as “the natural evolution of democracy in country with 22 official languages, six main religions, and hundreds of different ethnic groups.” The results of the election are expected in mid-May.
And the next chapter for Thailand begins. As protests recede it seems as though Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s coalition government has wrestled back control. But the country is still reeling, buffeted by eyewitness accounts as well as the government’s official pledge that “after the lifting of the state of emergency people will be free to express their opinions peacefully, but that must be done without any attempt to incite unrest.” The struggle now, some think, is in the propaganda. Both sides are looking to place this latest round of unrest in the most favorable light for their respective interests. While the country waits to see how things settle, one thing might be certain–that competing histories of recent events will only contribute more ammunition to the next round of Thailand’s dangerously escalating and wholly unresolved political conflict.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has had great successes in turning his county’s security and economic situations around with heavy-handed policies, but does that mean he should run for an unprecedented third term? In South America’s oldest democracy, Colombia’s 1991 constitution prohibited presidential reelection, but that was repealed in 2005 to allow Uribe’s second term. Now an “additional amendment has been proposed to allow a third term” for the “Colombian strongman.” His support from the populace is high despite a few stumbles (70 percent favorability), but the global financial crisis and a forth-quarter contraction in the economy might prove to be obstacles to his remaining in power. Uribe acknowledges that democracy by a sustained one-man rule is not ideal, but “he argues that a new, untested leader will be unable to sustain his successful military campaign against the FARC insurgency.” In either case, Uribe’s polices would have to stay in place even with a new leader, since while these policies are not at issue. Uribe’s democratic legacy is another question.