It is worth asking ourselves whether the international presence in Afghanistan would be more effective with a more political formula, backed up by military actions, in the same vein as the one applied in Chad in 2004. Perhaps this is the model to support: assistance from the rear, leaving the leadership of the most arduous combat tasks to the country’s regular troops.

• Who is counting the dead in Afghanistan? Another war lost
  por Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

The twenty first century has brought with it an outlook very different from the one of happy optimism present in the 1990s; we are looking at a new phase of power redistribution, in which there are already points of possible conflict among the hegemonic powers.

The author contends that the Bush Administration’s approach to the war on terror has relied too heavily on force, and that a deeper understanding of the true nature of Islamic radicalism indicates a mushroom phenomenon in the making. He proposes a realistic, multifaceted strategy, in which political and socio-economic approaches predominate, and force is only employed as a last resort.

By and large the war in Afghanistan has been met with a chronic state of ambivalence by the international media after the onset of the war in Iraq. The situation grows direr every day and the author questions whether the objectives set forth by the U.S government are working or could have ever worked.

Muslims are the biggest ethnic group in the Philippines, and more than half of the population of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao is poor, and the area is thus a breeding ground for civil unrest. The author wonders whether the government can (and should) negotiate with a decentralized terrorist group like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and denounces President Arroyo’s brokering of deals in secrecy. He maintains that the lives of the Muslims must be improved, since economic and social development on Mindanao is necessary to achieve peace.

A giant like Russia cannot be threatened with retaliation by its Western neighbors, above all because the energy that makes the European countries run comes in a large part from Gazprom, the most important oil company in the world. The author says that by merely understanding Moscow’s historic need to have a safety line, a stable relationship between the Russian bear and its Western neighbors can be achieved.

Find out why the crisis in South Ossetia has constituted a tough international setback for Russia and the Slavophile and pro-Oriental positions that the new president Medvedev and his prime minister Putin defend. However, should Europe expect some type retaliation by Moscow in terms of energy?

From Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Cambodia, Afghanistan and Colombia, a large number of countries have been –and continue to be– afflicted with serious conflicts over the control of natural resources (oil, diamonds, hardwood, cocoa beans, cocaine and opium). Although some conflicts have come to an end, others are still ongoing and it is possible that many more will arise in the future if the matter is not addressed, from both within and outside of the borders of the war-afflicted countries, in an efficient manner.

• Climate Change: A New Source of Armed Conflict
  por Mabel González Bustelo
• The dispute for African Oil
  por Eloísa Vaello Marco

Now that Pervez Musharraf has finally resigned as Pakistan’s president, the author analyzes his legacy, and attempts to pick apart the unstable coalition currently ruling Pakistan. Read on to discover why the Pakistani people gradually turned against a man they initially trusted, and why a poor civilian government is always better than a poor military one.

• Islamabad’s Next Steps
  por Sohail Mahmood
• Assessing the creation of the new civilian government in Pakistan
  por Sohail Mahmood