CIAO DATE: 12/2014
Volume: 30, Issue: 1
March 2013
Beyond Borders (PDF)
David A. Andelman
Civilization marks its beginnings to the moment, more than 14,000 years ago, humans first gathered into settlements, leaving behind their days as nomadic hunters and gatherers. Known as sedentarization, this phenomenon likely debuted in the Fertile Crescent of the Levant, followed by the Yangtze and Yellow River basins two millennia later, and eventually in Mexico, South America, and finally the eastern shores of the United States. At each point sprang up villages, cities, and, eventually, nations. Over thousands of years, fixed boundaries were codified and defended, often at great cost.
The Big Question: How should borders be drawn? (PDF)
Bonnie Glaser, Tsuneo Akaha, Aarthi Rao, Ruairi Nolan, Peter Taylor, Howard Eissenstat, Eun- Ju Kim, Anssi Paasi, Henk van Houtum, Richard Schofield
Boundaries define nations. Across Europe and Asia, through Africa and Latin America, old frontiers are being challenged. The primacy of the state is under increased scrutiny as the telecommunications revolution erases once impermeable divides. We have asked our panel of global experts how borders should be drawn on land, on sea, and in the blogosphere.
Map Room: Borders on Top of the World (PDF)
Mark Terry, Adam Scholl
PRINCE OF WALES STRAIT, Northwest Territories—A century ago, traversing the Northwest Passage was a grueling effort that often took years. Explorers frequently perished as their boats sunk or got trapped in the abundant pack ice. Today, these waters are mostly ice-free during the summer, and ships can sail through with ease.
Throwing Down the Gauntlet (PDF)
Carol Bellamy
President Barack Obama has thrown down the gauntlet with his call for "a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity." It's a bold move for a mainstream politician. Across the world, and particularly in rich countries that are bobbing in the wake of the global financial crisis, politicians are running scared on immigration. Catcalls about immigrants sound especially tuneless here in the United States, where some 40 percent have at least one ancestor who arrived at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. Indeed, the wealth of this country has been built by risk-takers who had the courage to launch themselves into the unknown.
Anatomy: World's Most Isolated Countries (PDF)
World Policy Journal ranks the top 10 most isolated countries based on a weighted series of criteria including number of countries directly connected by plane, the percentage of individuals on the Internet, the number of foreign visitors, the percentage of the total population that are immigrants, and imports per capita in dollars.
Making a State a State (PDF)
Courtney Brooks
S UKHUMI, Abkhazia—Angie loves traveling, dancing, and peach juice. She doesn’t like boundaries. That’s because this young human rights worker is from Abkhazia, a self-declared independent territory claimed by Georgia. The 26-yearold, who works for the organization World Without Violence, survived a war, and it has left her with some strong opinions. “I have this habit not to trust Georgians, except those I know long and well,” she says. “There isn’t a family in Abkhazia which doesn’t have a victim from those days. This is terrible, and it’s really hard to forget.”
Moving On: Iberia's New Muslims (PDF)
Marvin Howe
LISBON-Mamadu Indjai has given up on Europe and is heading home to the former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau. The 55-year-old West African has spent the past 19 years in Portugal. Yet all he has to show for his labors are the house he was building for his family back in his ancestral village of Caio. "I haven't got the strength to struggle anymore," Indjai sighs.
Linking People, Crossing Borders: A Conversation with Mo Ibrahim (PDF)
Hunger: The Price of Rebellion (PDF)
Veejay Villafranca
MINDANAO, Philippines—The Badjao people have inhabited this island since at least the 16th century. Traveling in their handbuilt boats, they scattered as far as Malaysia and northern Borneo. They remain the largest Muslim group in the largely Catholic nation of the Philippines. For 10 years, I have covered brutal conflicts on this beautiful island, and since I began photographing here, I have hoped that one day Mindanao will once again live up to its name, the Promised Land.
Notes from the Underground: The Rise of Nouri al-Maliki and the New Islamists (PDF)
Ned Parker, Raheem Salman
BAGHDAD—It was December 2010, and Nouri Kamal al-Maliki sat in a faux palace, erected by Saddam Hussein, on the Feast of Sacrifice, one of the most sacred days in the Muslim Calendar. The politician, who had just secured his second term as prime minister of Iraq after an eightmonth stalemate, sat in a gilded, thronelike chair, surrounded by members of his Shiite religious Dawa Party. Former enemies walked into the hall to congratulate him, and Maliki rose to embrace them. To his left was a founder of his party, the oldest surviving Dawa member, who had been tortured under Hussein and was now spending his golden years in quiet retirement near the Shiite shrine of Imam Khadim in western Baghdad. There were others like him, who basked in the pageantry like a balm for the jail, death, and humiliating exile they endured. Their grip on power, a feverish dream during decades abroad putting out tracts and plotting, now seemed permanent.
Dave Eggers' Roundtable: Arabia Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (PDF)
David Eggers, Mamdouh al-Harthy, Hasan Hatrash, Haifaa al-Mansour
Last year, the San Francisco-based author Dave Eggers published his book, A Hologram for the King, a vision of Saudi Arabia where the Western world of holograms and the Internet comes up against the hard realities of today’s Saudi Arabia. Eggers, whose novel was nominated for a National Book Award, spent weeks in the Kingdom researching, meeting an extraordinary Saudi filmmaker whose first feature, Wadjda, premiered at the Venice Film Festival to considerable acclaim, and two Saudis who inspired key characters. World Policy Journal assembled Haifaa al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia’s first female film director; Mamdouh al-Harthy, a brilliant journalist and documentary producer, cast in Hologram as a driver who leads the narrator into the depths of the Saudi mind and spirit.
The Euro Crisis: Mission Accomplished? (PDF)
Zsolt Darvas
BRUSSELS—High unemployment, bleak economic outlook, high public and private debts, dysfunctional banks, weak competitiveness, and an unfavorable external environment are just a few of the challenges facing southern members of the euro zone. Despite these hurdles, the ever-optimistic European Council and other leaders said in January that the euro crisis had bottomed out. Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, proclaimed, “The worst is behind us, in particular the existential threat to the euro.” Then there was Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), who declared that “the darkest clouds over the euro area [have] subsided.”
Russians Go West (PDF)
Khristina Narizhnaya
MOSCOW—A seven-story cube of glass, concrete, and solar panels rises out of a grassy field on the outskirts of Moscow. Dubbed “the Hypercube,” it’s the first completed building of the Skolkovo Innovation Center, intended to serve as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley. In less than two years, throngs of creative workers are expected to fill the Hypercube’s offices, ice rink, and nearby cafes. The original plan even provided for a weather-controlled dome rising over the complex, though it was eventually deemed too expensive and scrapped.
Nearer, My God, to Thee (PDF)
Damaso Reyes
BARCELONA-Los Pentecostales de Barcelona is located on a nondescript street near the city's convention center. Twenty minutes before the evening service, the sounds of prayer and soft singing waft down from the second floor sanctuary. The lights have been dimmed, and some two dozen congregants are scattered throughout the large room, some on their hands and knees whispering prayers at their seats. Others hold hands in small groups and sing joyously.
Global Libra (PDF)
David A. Andelman
PARIS-As a New Year's gift to those who elected him, France's new president, François Hollande, mired in a seemingly intractable economic malaise and about to embark on a war in an old colonial territory of Francophone Africa, made an announcement, which the French daily Le Monde carried as an urgent bulletin. He would put an end to the practice of every ex-president becoming a Davi d A . A n d elman Global Libra member of the Conseil Constitutionnel, the final judicial appeal of French citizens. Beginning with himself, though not extending to his hated predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, no exiting president would have the inalienable right to a seat on France's highest court. It was a campaign promise, one of 60 that Hollande made, as French presidents are wont to make in the heat of battle but rarely expected to remember, let alone keep.