International Scene - Super Bowl Sunday

I tend to use Clipit to throw my international reads on this blog quickly, but I don't think that they get quite the searchability, so I will take the time to put the links and comments into one longer post on International issues of concern today:

1. ABC News showcases the ever-growing war along the Sudan and Chad border in Africa. Basically all the national lines surrounding the Darfur region are inflamed with tribal and national war frenzy. Sudanese may well be helping the Chadian rebels. Chadian troops and money may be assisting the Sudanese rebels. There is a general havoc around Darfur. Of course United Nations efforts have been all but useless.

2. Some theorists call for Afganistan "surge" similar to the one working now in Iraq to shove the Taliban and Al-Queda forces further into retreat and the hands of Pakistan's army. U.S. Presidential candidate Guiliani had endorsed this kind of action prior to removing his name from selection and endorsing John McCain. Most would assume that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would not favor any additional troops in the region.

3. Hamas, in a further move to try and shore up control of Gaza, agree to try and control the border crossing into Egypt. Israel has nothing to gain, and more to gain actually if thousands of gazans leave and head to Egypt for good. Hamas needs to gain some foothold before they are looked on as merely terrorist and unworthy of negotiations.

4. Tensions continue to be aggrevated in northern Turkey by Kurdish rebels bent on forming a homeland in northern Turkey and northern Iraq. This area, once the Assyrian empire, is not really even one tribe or people group. But the Kurds would prefer to fight it out and try to gain some foothold in both countries. Sadly, they would gain so much more if they would be the light of democracy instead of totalitarian islamacists.

5. One of my pet projects, or hobbies moreso, is to watch and learn from Kenya. First, because I've been there and second because I feel it has the best chance of reaching true democracy first on the continent. Problem one, tribal tensions are high due to the stolen election. Problem two, the terrorists have a foothold near the east coast so western nations are trying to keep some order, call it security, or we'll lose another country to bedlam. Sadly, this was a country that favored Christ and featured a leader that was supposedly a believer.