For weeks, the U.N.’s mission in the Ivory Coast has sat pinned down in its quarters, watching as this West African country lurched toward civil war. An escalating conflict between the rival forces of Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara has led to hundreds, probably thousands of deaths and has displaced, by some counts, over a million …
Humanitarian aid
After Libya, the Ivory Coast: Should the U.N. Sanction Military Intervention?
Yesterday, TIME’s Monica Mark reported from Abidjan of the spiraling crisis in the Ivory Coast:
The erstwhile beacon of prosperity and stability in West Africa has been held hostage for five months by incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to cede power after losing a November runoff presidential election. Instead, he has
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On Japan’s Coast, Survivors Fear the Fate of Their Towns
The 300-year-old Daiou temple is the last thing left standing in its neighborhood of Minami Sanriku, perched over a tangled sea of what were once greenhouses, cars, houses and lives. A delicate bronze Buddha statue, just feet away from a trailer that has been tossed on its side, observes the destruction from behind a barrier of trees …
Aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan: The Navy Grapples with Japan’s Disaster
Lieutenant Junior Grade James Powell tells me to hold my hands out in front of my waist and waves a detector a few inches above them. “So where are you from?” he asks casually. Eyeing the digital numbers flickering on the counter, I answer. He tells me to turn around and lift my left foot so he can scan the sole of my sneaker for …
A Prayer for the Dead: On the Ground in Blighted Japan
The specter of a full-blown nuclear disaster loomed over Japan on Tuesday morning after the third reactor explosion in four days occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant just after 6AM. By noon, employees were scrambling to contain a fire in another reactor, and reports were trickling in that radiation had been detected in …
Japan’s People Power: Residents Help Each Other in Quake’s Aftermath
Tomeo Suguwara leans into the hill, carrying a large, empty straw basket. Behind him, a few houses are left where a neighborhood used to be. For the third day in a row, the farmer has been feeding a calf he found wandering around the detritus of people’s kitchens and bedrooms after the tsunami swept through this village in Kesennuma. …
How Japan Copes with Tragedy: A Lesson in the Art of Endurance
Japanese is one of those languages that is full of untranslatable words that define a unique culture. Gaman is one of them. It means something like the art of endurance, with a good dose of stoicism and resiliency mixed in. Gaman is what Japan in the wake of the killer earthquake and tsunami has displayed in abundance.
To riff on …
On a Mission with Japanese Soldiers in the Quake Zone
When Koji Haga looked toward the shore and saw the massive earthquake shuddering through his village of Akaushi on March 11, he knew what would come next. After all, every school child in the area is taught that roughly every 50 years, a seismic seizure triggers a giant wave that engulfs this tightknit fishing community. It had been a …
As Nuclear Emergency Worsens, Death Toll Jumps
Report from TIME’s Krista Mahr in Kesennuma:
There are few good places to be right now in what’s left of this savaged corner of Kesennuma, Japan. But the gymnasium at the Hibiki High School is the very last place anybody wants to have to visit. On a hilltop over the washed-out mud flats where houses stood this time last week, the …
Afghanistan’s Buddhas Can Be Rebuilt. But Should They?
Ten years ago next month, the world watched in horror as Afghanistan’s Taliban regime blew up one of the ancient world’s most inspiring works of art: two standing Buddha statues, one at 125 feet and the other at 180, that had been carved in a cliff face in the remote Bamiyan valley. Within days the Taliban had all but decimated the …
Strong Obstacles Remain to Western Military Intervention in Libya
An international community that in 2005 at the United Nations adopted the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) protocol might seem obliged to intervene directly in Libya. R2P, after all, holds that if a state is unable to protect its citizens from genocide or other mass atrocities, the international community has a responsibility to …
In Liberia, a Peace Activist Becomes a Mayor
This terrific video comes via TIME’s Multimedia Director Craig Duff, who offers the following introduction:
If peacemakers are indeed blessed, as a famous sermon once said, then Etweda Cooper can think big. As a founder of the Liberian Women’s Initiative, Cooper – who is better known as ‘Sugars’ Cooper – led demonstrations and …
Broken Promises: How We Failed Afghanistan’s Girls
Imagine that nine years ago, a rich philanthropist decided that your community needed an elementary school. He constructed a nice building, furnished it with desks and blackboards, and maybe even gave you a playground. Now imagine that the school was right in the middle of a vicious turf war between two rival gangs. The teachers at the …