International Affairs

Former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle has been in the Darfur region of Western Sudan monitoring the humanitarian crisis there for the African Union. Steidle says there's no doubt that Sudan is in the midst of genocide.

John Prendergast is Special Adviser to the President of the International Crisis Group. He has 20 years of experience attempting to resolve conflicts in Africa, and shaping U.S. foreign policy toward the region.

Sidney Jones is the director of the International Crisis Group's South East Asia Project. She has examined separatist conflicts, ethnic conflict, and terrorism in the region, with much of her attention focused on work in Indonesia. We discuss how the Indian Ocean tsunami has affected the already politically unstable Indonesia.

Mark Bowden's article about the 25th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage crisis will be featured in the December issue The Atlantic Monthly. On Nov. 4, 1979 a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage the entire American diplomatic team — which resulted in a 15-month international crisis that still has reverberations today. Bowden interviewed the former hostage-takers for his article.

Reid is Rocky Mountain bureau chief for The Washington Post. Previously he was the Post's London bureau chief, and their Tokyo bureau chief. He is also an NPR commentator. His new book is The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy.

John Prendergast is the co-director of the Africa Program for the International Crisis Group. He's the author of the book God, Oil, and Country; Changing the Logic of War in Sudan. Before joining ICG, he was a special advisor to the U.S. State Department, where he worked on a number of issues, including Sudan policy.

Dr. Rowan Gillies is the International President of Midecins Sans Frontihres (Doctors Without Borders). He is a medical doctor and surgeon from Sydney, Australia. Dr. Gilles began working with Doctors Without Borders in 1998 as a field doctor in Afghanistan. Since then he has worked with the organization in Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Liberia. He recently returned from Sudan.

Dr. Rowan Gillies is the International President of Midecins Sans Frontihres (Doctors Without Borders). He is a medical doctor and surgeon from Sydney, Australia. Dr. Gilles began working with Doctors Without Borders in 1998 as a field doctor in Afghanistan. Since then he has worked with the organization in Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Liberia. He recently returned from Sudan.

Graham Allison is an expert on nuclear weapons and national security. In his new book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, he argues that avoiding a catastrophic nuclear event needs to be a higher priority for the U.S. government.

His new book is Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. It's a biography of the former Soviet leader. Stalin was often described as an enigma. This exhaustive account of his life seeks to banish the mystery. Montefiore has traveled extensively through the former Soviet Union, and has written for many publications, including The New York Times and The Spectator.

Pritchard is a retired U.S Army colonel and the former point man on North Korea for Colin Powell. He worked on North Korea issues in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Pritchard resigned from the Bush administration in August 2003 and has criticized the administration for lacking an effective strategy. This week the United States is participating in six-party talks in an attempt to freeze North Korea's nuclear programs and restart inspections.

Langewiesche is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, and he is the author of a number of books including Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight. His new book is The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime. It's about the unregulated world of the open sea where some 40,000 ships travel carrying raw materials and products. Their crews are often poorly trained and poorly paid. The ships are vulnerable to accidents, piracy and terrorists.

Gen. Romeo Dallaire was commander of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda 10 years ago during one of the worst massacres in modern history. Some 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days. Most of them were Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians. During that time Dallaire and his troops were denied authority to intervene. The experience changed him, tormented him, and filled him with guilt. He suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, was suicidal and depressed. He's written a new account, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.

Lloyd Schwartz reviews the new DVD collection The Best of Abbott and Costello, which collects eight of their films.

While The Washington Post's bureau chief in West Africa in 2001, Douglas Farah discovered al-Qaeda's diamond smuggling operations there. His coverage for the Post angered his hosts in West Africa and embarrassed U.S. intelligence officials. Forced to leave Africa and to defend his findings back in the United States, Farah continued his investigation. He's just published a book, Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror, that details his findings.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews the new CD from pianist Bill Charlap Somewhere: Songs of Leonard Bernstein.

He is the author of Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China. In the book, he chronicles the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens who fought government oppression. They each fought locally but brought about national change. Johnson says economic reforms have created a space for dissent in Chinese culture. Johnson is the Berlin bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Falun Gong.

His new book is At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War. Reed recounts America's fight against communism at the height of the cold war. Reed was director of national reconnaissance, a special assistant to President Reagan for national security policy, and a consultant to the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a well-known center for nuclear weapons research.

She has reported on Haiti for a number of years and is the author of the book The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. She also edited and translated the book In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti by deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Wilentz is a contributing editor for The Nation, and a former associate professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Kathie Klarreich is a freelance writer who has covered Haiti for more than 15 years. She is a Christian Science Monitor stringer and op-ed writer — and is currently reporting for Time magazine. She'll talk to us from Port-au-Prince.