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| Hope ahead? In December, a Palestinian walks past a section of the wall in Jerusalem erected to protect Israelis from suicide
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Global flash points: How to spot signs of peace
Monitor correspondents and experts suggest what to watch for in eight international conflicts.
from the January 3, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 3
TURKEY
THE CRUX: In a bid to restore public support in Turkey's Kurdish southeast, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has escalated its violent campaign for greater Kurdish cultural and political rights.
THE STATUS: Turkey, which fears it could lose territory to any eventual Kurdish state, has mobilized 100,000 troops along its border with Iraq's Kurdish north, where Turkish planes have fired on PKK targets. The conflict has drawn in the US, which is allied with Turkey but also dependent on the support of Iraqi Kurds in its reconciliation efforts in Baghdad.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR:
• A relatively calm winter, with snow in the PKK's mountain hideouts making military operations difficult. Experts expect clashes to resume in the spring.
• During the winter respite, possible progress on the diplomatic front. In November, Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) proposed talks between the KRG, Turkey, Washington, and Baghdad.
• Moves toward amnesty for PKK rebels, which experts say is requisite for any eventual peace.
COLOMBIA
THE CRUX: A decades-long civil war, though tempered in recent years, still simmers between right-wing paramilitaries aligned with the government and leftist guerrillas.
THE STATUS: Some 30,000 paramilitaries have demobilized, but Colombia's largest left-wing rebel group, the FARC, is holding some 45 high-profile hostages whom they're leveraging for political recognition. Numerous negotiations have failed, and international pressure is growing on the hard-line administration of President Alvaro Uribe to strike a humanitarian deal.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR:
• Release of some hostages as the FARC seeks a public-relations upper hand against Mr. Uribe's government.
• The resumption of preliminary peace talks with the smaller, leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) – a process that fell apart when Uribe fired Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as negotiator. "If they can ... find another third party to mediate, significant progress could be seen in six months," says political analyst Gerson Arias at Ideas Para La Paz, an independent think tank in Bogota.
• The first convictions of top right-wing paramilitary leaders who demobilized in exchange for reduced sentences.
• New right-wing paramilitary groups. While the government has dismissed them as criminal gangs tied to drug trafficking, Mr. Arias says that they are recruiting members of the paramilitary groups to train them.
DARFUR
THE CRUX: The five-year-old conflict has largely centered on fighting between black African rebel groups and the government-supported janjaweed militia drawn mainly from Arab tribes. Casualties are estimated at more than 200,000. More than 2.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes.
THE STATUS: On Jan. 1, the beleaguered African Union force that has failed to bring peace gave up their green berets for the blue hats of an expanded hybrid force with the United Nations.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR:
• How quickly the UN troops can bring security to Darfur's sprawling aid camps. It will take at least a year for the full 26,000 troops and police officers to be deployed, and they lack air support.
• Whether rebel groups can agree on a common position and return to peace talks abandoned in Libya in October.
• New agreements springing from the 3-year-old Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was designed to end the decades-old civil war between the Arab-dominated north and the Christian and animist south. Little progress has been made in agreeing how to share revenues from oil-rich areas on the border. If the North-South war starts up again, observers are concerned that it could become intertwined with the conflict in Darfur, complicating peace efforts.
• Activists and the Olympics in Beijing. US actress Mia Farrow and others will highlight China's links to the Sudanese government, supplying arms and buying oil.
Joshua Mitnick in Jerusalem; Nicholas Blanford in Beirut, Lebanon; Scott Peterson in Istanbul, Turkey; Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá, Colombia; and Rob Crilly in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.
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