Although I’ve been deeply interested in Central Asia for many years, it’s been difficult to get inordinately excited about events in Kyrgyzstan, given that I don’t yet know just who composes the opposition. There’s not much to be gained from replacing one dictator with another, and there’s certainly always room for things to get worse. It seems that the previous president was a Soviet holdover, but a less ruthless one than his neighbors in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. I’m always ready...

A must-read in today’s New York Times. My wife’s mother died of kidney cancer five years ago yesterday, so this passage plunged me into a dark gloom: “We have no friends, and no future, nothing at all, really,” said the soft-spoken older sister, Hae Jon, 17. “But if we stay here, at least we have enough to eat. In our country, we could go for days without eating.” Within months, according to an underground network of people who help support...

Add Stratfor to the list of pundits veering sharply from bearish to bullish on Iraq. Success, as they say, has a thousand fathers. Failure grovels, disowned and bitter, for a dollop of gruel (more fun here). The best news of all is the role being played by the Iraqi people in turning against the terrorists, via this fascinating AP report: The raid at Lake Tharthar in central Iraq turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents, Iraqi Maj....

Add Stratfor to the list of pundits veering sharply from bearish to bullish on Iraq. Success, as they say, has a thousand fathers. Failure grovels, disowned and bitter, for a dollop of gruel (more fun here). The best news of all is the role being played by the Iraqi people in turning against the terrorists, via this fascinating AP report: The raid at Lake Tharthar in central Iraq turned up booby-trapped cars, suicide-bomber vests, weapons and training documents, Iraqi Maj....

. . . lest anyone get too carried away with optimism about the Middle East. According to the AP, these boys are Fatah. That would be the ruling faction of Mahmoud Abbas. I realize that mentalities can only change so much overnight, but . . . .

A must-read in today’s New York Times. My wife’s mother died of kidney cancer five years ago yesterday, so this passage plunged me into a dark gloom: “We have no friends, and no future, nothing at all, really,” said the soft-spoken older sister, Hae Jon, 17. “But if we stay here, at least we have enough to eat. In our country, we could go for days without eating.” Within months, according to an underground network of people who help support...

On her return from an eight-day trip to the United States, Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of Grand National Party, told reporters yesterday that relations between South Korea and the United States are far worse than Koreans imagine they are. “I met various politicians,” said Ms. Park. “If the mistrust that prevails among the politicians spreads to the general public of the United States, bilateral ties between the two countries will face greater problems.”Ms. Park had a meeting with U.S. Secretary of...

Other than the odd exceptional case of an outright admission, every specific accusation that a secretive regime has engaged in a specific nefarious act is subject to the collateral attack that it rests upon the inexact science of intelligence. Intelligence errors cut both ways, of course, and any administration facing a hostile press is certain to face withering criticism no matter where it chooses to assign the very real risk of error. What is so often missing in these discussions...

Daily NK reports two items of interest today. The first is purportedly the text of the judgments against those executed and imprisoned by the North Korean authorities there. Although it accuses most of the condemned of trafficking in North Korean women, treat that characterization with extreme caution; putting a sexual taint on a dissenter is an old trick that China has used pretty shamelessly against Korean underground railroad activists. It could be true, too. But then, why add this language?...

On her return from an eight-day trip to the United States, Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of Grand National Party, told reporters yesterday that relations between South Korea and the United States are far worse than Koreans imagine they are. “I met various politicians,” said Ms. Park. “If the mistrust that prevails among the politicians spreads to the general public of the United States, bilateral ties between the two countries will face greater problems.”Ms. Park had a meeting with U.S. Secretary of...

Other than the odd exceptional case of an outright admission, every specific accusation that a secretive regime has engaged in a specific nefarious act is subject to the collateral attack that it rests upon the inexact science of intelligence. Intelligence errors cut both ways, of course, and any administration facing a hostile press is certain to face withering criticism no matter where it chooses to assign the very real risk of error. What is so often missing in these discussions...

Iran Update: National Security Advisor Steven Hadley (via Dr. Zin) is optimistic that Europe is serious about its agreement to put meaningful pressure on Iran if it fails to negotiate in good faith. Better yet, that pressure may extent to Iran’s support for terrorism and suppression of its own people. I hope he’s right.

Daily NK reports two items of interest today. The first is purportedly the text of the judgments against those executed and imprisoned by the North Korean authorities there. Although it accuses most of the condemned of trafficking in North Korean women, treat that characterization with extreme caution; putting a sexual taint on a dissenter is an old trick that China has used pretty shamelessly against Korean underground railroad activists. It could be true, too. But then, why add this language?...

Notwithstanding the government’s best efforts, there has been an explosion of blogs in China, many of them talking about corruption. UPDATE: From NKZone’s own Rebecca MacKinnon, we learn that some Chinese are protesting the closing of a popular BBS.

Some have long insisted that democracy is incompatible with Asian values, but then again, the most visible proponent of that theory was Lee Kwan-Yew, the benevolent dictator of Singapore. Ross Terrill has an interesting argument in opposition, including this dead-on statement about North Korea: The nature of Kim Jong Il’s Stalinism precludes trust, effective inspections, or meaningful transmission of aid to the starving masses of North Korea. It becomes clearer with each lie from Pyongyang that only regime change there...

Iran Update: National Security Advisor Steven Hadley (via Dr. Zin) is optimistic that Europe is serious about its agreement to put meaningful pressure on Iran if it fails to negotiate in good faith. Better yet, that pressure may extent to Iran’s support for terrorism and suppression of its own people. I hope he’s right.

Notwithstanding the government’s best efforts, there has been an explosion of blogs in China, many of them talking about corruption. UPDATE: From NKZone’s own Rebecca MacKinnon, we learn that some Chinese are protesting the closing of a popular BBS.

Recent events in the Middle East are melting my pessimism and cynicism about the region. Events that I had thought would take decades seem to be emerging in months. The news from Iraq recently is downright encouraging: Iraqi citizens are taking up arms against the terrorists. In three different cities across Iraq, the people have also engaged in apparently spontaneous demonstrations against terrorists, extremists, and the government of Jordan, which Iraqis belive has tacticly tolerated support and sanctuary for them....