KENYA

KENYA
East African Standard, Nairobi, Sept. 15: As blood continues to flow in Sudan, the U.N. has described the situation as one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. It is more than this. With at least more than 10,000 people dying monthly from diseases and violence related causes, to call it a humanitarian crisis is an understatement.
The blinding fact the international community is reluctant to face is that what is happening in Darfur is simply genocide, racial annihilation of one of Sudan's black communities by a government-sponsored militia.
Bloodthirsty militia
But the core of the problem lies in the genocidal attacks waged by the bloodthirsty government-sponsored militia, baptized as Janjaweed, who kill, maim, rape and sexually molest girls and women with full state protection.
But the Khartoum government does not seem bothered by the killings. More vexing is that the international community, including the U.N., still dithers on how to resolve the situation.
This is reminiscent of what happened in Rwanda. Must it happen again in Sudan?
The U.N. is the custodian of international law. It must stop this madness.
ITALY
Corriere della Sera, Milan, Sept. 15: Many think that the Chechen issue is only a pretext that will enable Putin to carry out his project of an authoritarian state. However, this is only partially true.
To carry out his plan of constitutional reforms Putin will appeal to Russian nationalism, will claim Russia's rights as a great powerful nation and will react with growing irritation to the troublesome American presence in central Asia and in the Caucasus.
New Cold War?
Shall we get ready for a new Cold War? Putin ... is aware that his country has been delayed by the communist regime. He has to defend the unity of the state but he also has to make Russia new, free its extraordinary economic potential and let the country grow.
The result of an international match depends on the good will of all the players. Most importantly, in this case, the United States and the European Union. It is up to them to understand Russia and avoid its making too many mistakes.
NIGERIA
This Day, Lagos, Sept. 10: They say talk is cheap -- particularly truisms of the sort enunciated and repeated with digitalized rapidity in the hours and days following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which claimed several thousand lives. The world had changed forever, we were told.
Tomorrow marks the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack. And in the current atmosphere it would be a simple matter to voice another truism: that we are today living through the horrible unfolding of a wave of terrorism announced by the attacks in New York and Washington; that all the world is the terrorist's playground.
The past week, of course, has witnessed the horrific slaughter of innocents, many of them children, at Beslan.
The killing of innocent civilians is as odious in Russia as it is in Nairobi or New York or Madrid or Baghdad or Tel Aviv or Gaza or Cape Town. But it seems clear that such attacks are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Root causes
Three years on from Sept. 11, one lesson must be that the world will get nowhere if it targets the symptoms rather than the root causes of such attacks. The latter are more often rooted in long-standing injustices and even slaughters inflicted upon entire peoples.
In contrast, Washington's "war on terror" is fanning the flames of such attacks in the Middle East and around the world.
The most dangerous elements of the so-called Bush doctrine were announced within days of Sept. 11: that countries were either "with us or against us", and that the U.S. military would strike pre-emptively, wherever and whenever it wanted.