Latest Updates

Timor-Leste has just elected a new president and will hold parliamentary elections on 30 June 2007.

Serbia finally has a new government but one that is deeply divided between pro-Western and nationalist forces. Facing two difficult issues – Kosovo status and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – its choice is between moving towards European integration or on to a more isolationist path.

South East Maluku (Maluku Tenggara, commonly abbreviated Malra), a district in a remote corner of the Indonesian archipelago, is about to be divided in two, and many residents are worried about the possibility of conflict.

Haiti’s overcrowded, understaffed and insecure prisons are powder kegs awaiting a spark.

In late March 2007, arrests by Densus 88, the police counter-terror unit, netted seven detainees in Central and East Java (an eighth was killed); a huge cache of explosives and weaponry; and documents that seemed to suggest a new military structure for Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the region’s largest jihadist organisation.

The North Korea nuclear talks finally achieved a breakthrough on 13 February 2007, when the six parties struck a general denuclearisation deal.

When local elections were held in Aceh on 11 December 2006, conventional wisdom (shared by Crisis Group) was that candidates from the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) would not do well.

The death of President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan from heart failure was announced on 21 December 2006.

Though much of the focus since Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad’s June 2005 electoral victory has been on Iran’s foreign policy, the fate of his presidency will ride at least as much on his domestic performance.

Violent and organised crime threatens to overwhelm Haiti. The justice system is weak and dysfunctional, no match for the rising wave of kidnappings, drug and human trafficking, assaults and rapes.