Having previously suggested that the academic community should explore the semantics of the Italian Defense Minister’s description of Afghanistan as “stable in its instability”, I would also like to suggest they follow up on John Negroponte’s verdict on the Surge:
“It’s one thing to have brought the violence under some semblance of control,” Mr. Negroponte said during a news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone here, after meeting Iraqi officials in Baghdad and seven other provinces in Iraq’s north, south and west. “But it’s another matter now to follow up with the necessary reconstruction and stabilization projects that will safeguard regions and protect them from this type of violence.”
There has to be an IR specialist out there ready to work up a piece entitled “From a Semblance of Control to Stable Instability: A New Framework for Peacebuilding”. I look forward to it. In the meantime, those seeking some respite from the grim news from Darfur, the Congo and Chad may at least get a hollow laugh from the all-time winners of the Worst Revolutionary Acronym Award, Chad’s United Front for Change (FUC):
The FUC posed a grave danger to the government of President Idriss Deby in April 2006 when they launched an attack on Ndjamena that was stopped only after French army stationed there intervened, according to many sources. Deby later made Nour defence minister on the condition that he integrate his FUC fighters into the army.
