Underplayed, overlooked or just plain missing

By Nonna Gorilovskaya
nonna@niemanwatchdog.org

’Tis the season to compile lists, and Foreign Policy magazine put together a good one of this year’s overlooked stories. 

The start of the “surge in Afghanistan” tops the list. During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama criticized the Bush administration for diverting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq and promised to shift focus. Afghanistan, however, has been getting more troops under the Bush Administration. As FP points out, the United States added 21,000 troops earlier this year, an 85 percent increase. And just this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the U.S. will send up to 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan within the next year and a half. Vast construction projects, such as a scheduled $100 million expansion of Kandahar airfield, suggest that the United States is planning to stay for a while. 

Coca farmers continue to say no to Plan Colombia, whose ineffectiveness has been known for a long time. But is it possible that it is actually making things worse? The increase in Colombian coca production is No. 2 on the list. According to the Government Accountability Office, cultivation increased by 15 percent between 2000 and 2006. The United States is the world’s top cocaine consumer and most of that cocaine comes from Colombia. The drug money finances the rebel group FARC, among others. As FP puts it, “The United States has spent $6 billion on Plan Colombia, but Colombia still supplies 90 percent of U.S. cocaine. Time for a rethink on the drug war?” 

The genocide in Darfur, subject to periodic bursts of press coverage, could have made this list of overlooked stories. Instead, at the number three spot, FP anoints the newly-created Sudanese province of Southern Kordofan as “the next Darfur.” The conflict has many parallels with Darfur, such as dissatisfaction over the division of the country’s oil wealth in the 2005 North-South peace deal that ended Sudan’s civil war and the land conflict between the indigenous black farmers and Arab nomads. The central government in Khartoum is moving troops into Southern Kordofan, insisting that this is a response to the military build-up by the Justice and Equality Movement, Darfur’s rebels, whom it accuses of wanting to spread the conflict. With the run-up to next year’s national elections, things are expected to get worse.

The U.S.-India nuclear deal overshadowed this year’s negotiations about a joint missile defense system on Indian soil, which comes in at number four. Lockheed Martin says that the Indians don’t have to start from scratch and is pitching its Patriot system. If it comes to fruition, the shield would be a blow to China, India’s rival for regional supremacy, and may escalate tensions with India’s long-time foe Pakistan.

Russia’s courting of Africa is number five on the list. Gazprom, the state-owned energy company, has been striking deals in Nigeria, Libya, Ivory Coast and elsewhere, buying up energy resources and bidding to finance the pipelines that will carry them from Africa to Europe. Russia has also raised its profile on the continent by forgiving $20 billion in African debt and boosting foreign aid. 

Not all that is green is good is the message of the sixth item on the list. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), a gas that is 17,000 times more harmful than carbon dioxide, is used in the manufacturing of everything from computer chips to solar panels. Unlike carbon dioxide, only two percent of it makes it into the atmosphere. The gas is not covered by the Kyoto Protocol but more and more of it is being emitted as costumers flock to make their homes “green.”

The collapse of schools in China’s Sichuan province during the earthquake this May exposed shoddy construction and corruption. A study by the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau now raises questions about the safety of buildings in China’s largest city and is No. 7 on the list. Almost half of the batches of steel tested by the Bureau did not meet basic safety requirements. Among the problems was that the steel was too light, sometimes lighter than iron, its main component.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili secured lots of money for his poor, corrupt and partly democratic country in the midst of the American presidential campaign. The U.S. pledged some $1 billion in reconstruction over the next few years, but $30 million of that sum is going toward the construction of a Park Hyatt in Tbilisi, the capital untouched by the fighting between Georgia and Russia. “The 183-room, five-star hotel will include 70 luxury condominiums, a fine-dining restaurant, conference facilities, and a health spa with juice bar,” FP writes about its eighth story.

Ever since 1994, with the passage of the U.S. federal extraterritorial torture statute, the Department of Justice had the right to prosecute U.S. citizens on charges of torture committed abroad. The first conviction, number nine on the list, however, did not come until this year. From 1999 to 2002, the American-born Charles Taylor, Jr., son of the former Liberian president (on trial at the Hague), led Liberia’s Anti-Terrorist Unit tasked with torturing his father’s political opponents. Some suggest that the same law, which followed U.S.’ ratification of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, could be used to prosecute Bush administration officials for authorizing torture.

The absence of protesters at the Beijing Olympics was a testament to China’s repressive regime. Had crowds of protesters materialized, the Communist Party would have had a handy American tool to disperse them. Closing the list is the sale of the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) by the San Diego-based American Technology Corporation to China. “The LRAD works by emitting from a dish high-energy acoustic waves that are said to be, at close proximity, louder than a jet engine. It is capable of reaching 150 decibels, enough to incite panic, inflict pain, and even cause hearing loss among large crowds,” FP explains. Sales pitch: Works well on Somali pirates and Chinese dissidents?  

For the Foreign Policy story, click here.

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