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Sudan’s peace process survived a major challenge in the first weeks of the new year. Indeed, signature by the parties of a strengthened cessation of hostilities agreement on 4 February and a memorandum of understanding codifying points of agreement on outstanding issues of power and wealth sharing two days later indicates that the momentum to end the twenty-year old conflict is strong.

Tucked away in a handful of villages in a remote pocket of Iraqi Kurdistan, a small group of radical Islamist fighters has been accused of being the Kurdish offspring of the al-Qaeda network, and thus has become a fresh target in the international war on terrorism.

Afghanistan’s legal system has collapsed. Never strong to begin with, it has been nearly destroyed by 23 years of conflict and misrule.

December 2002 witnessed the signing of a power sharing agreement between Congolese parties under the auspices of the UN Special Envoy, Mustapha Niasse, and South Africa that should lead to finalisation of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue and a transitional government.

More than a decade after their independence, each of the Central Asian states is on its own particular path of political and economic development. While most have achieved at least partial integration within the international community, one stands out as an exception: the remote former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea.

On 3 November 2002, an unmanned U.S. “Predator” aircraft hovering in the skies of Yemen fired a Hellfire missile at a car carrying a suspected al-Qaeda leader, four Yemenis said to be members of the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, and a Yemeni-American who, according to U.S. authorities, had recruited volunteers to attend al-Qaeda training camps.

Since January 2002 when President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah officially declared Sierra Leone’s brutal eleven year civil war over, numerous efforts have been made to consolidate the peace.