The incarcerated leader of Harkatal Jihad al Islam (HUJI), Mufti Abdul Hannan has implicated members of the BNP in a 2004 grenade attack against members of the Awami League. When asked whether they were guilty of the charges brought against them, Hannan, his brother and a deputy claimed they were innocent. Instead, they claimed local […]
Hot on the heels of WSJ’s Real Time Japan comes PanOrient News, a new Japan-themed internet service. According to its launch announcement: “PanOrient News is a collaboration between Shingetsu Institute Executive DirectorMichael Penn and the company’s founder, Khaldon Azhari, aiming to challenge the frail grip of the existing English-language news services in Japan with an […]
Cambodia: Corruption and illiberalism pays according to an article running at the Asian Times. The author believes that Cambodian foreign aid has continued to increase, despite Hun Sen’s continued political oppression of the opposition, due to the West’s fear that any decline in aid flows would create a void that will most certainly filled by […]
I’ll try to pull together some news and analysis in one post. It might strike, you, the reader, as odd that the days news gets separated into digestible chunks, when the foodstuff is run through and through with rough hewn complexity and inter-related dependence. This has everything to do with the news business model, of […]
Matt Waldman in a recently published Paper, “The Sun is in the Sky: the Relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents” explores the extent of the ISI’s links and support to the problem of Afghan insurgency. Though Matt accepts that several endogenous factors are responsible for the emergence and sustenance of the Taliban, his interviews with […]
David Roodman, a scholar at the Center for Global Development has been studying Microfinance for a while now. His work on loan repayment at the Grameen Bank has been an excellent, transparent source where any interested reader can see the latest finding and writing in the much-balleyhooed microfinance business model. His latest writing on Grameen […]
While even the international media had gotten in on the mainstream narrative that Manjur, the BNP backed candidate would lose the Chittagong Mayoral election, he won out in the last count–and by an impressive, incontestable 95,528 votes. Mr. Mohammed Manjur Alam polled 479, 145 to the Awami League candidate, Mr. ABM Mohiudddin Chowdhury’s 383617 votes. […]
India’s rise will generate contradictory pressures on U.S. policymakers. Those in Washington who warily eye the expansion of Chinese power in Asia will welcome the strategic counterweight of a stronger India. But officials will also have to contend with a growing number of Americans who view the country as an economic rival. How Washington handles these cross-currents will be a fascinating balancing act.
The hotly contested election in Chittagong, intensely barked about, has ended peacefully. The BNP backed candidate, expected to lose to his Awami League backed opponent, has claimed to be broadly satisfied with the polling process. Apart from some minor instances of irregularities— that, if verified, would not mount to much–the polling on Thursday was widely […]
Just like Haiti’s Port au Prince, large portions of Bangladesh’s major cities are liable to be washed away in some coastal, rain soaked incident. The throng of people in Chittagong live in cramped spaces, in rough hewn, corrugated, unconstructed huts in that hilly city, like millions others lived in Port au Prince. And like […]
Heavy rain off the Bay of Bengal hit Cox Bazaar in Southeastern Bangladesh and caused landslides which are responsible for at least 52 deaths, small buried alive in their own homes, unready and unaware onslaught. The AP piece published in the Washington Post, draws out the story distressingly well: “The mudslides struck early Tuesday in […]
In a sign that suggests that indeed, Bangladesh and China are moving closer together, China has proposed to help Bangladesh construct its first deep sea port in Chitttagong. Chinese officials have also promised to help Bangladesh put up its first sattelite in orbit. This news follows Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s successful state visit to China. […]
Even as Indian treads the ‘dialogue-with-Pakistan’ path cautiously, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has reiterated the singular importance of dialogue between the two countries. Speaking on an Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Trialogue, she stressed the need to make boundaries “irrelevant” and find “creative solutions” to problems. Ironically, she failed to spell out these creative solutions even as she […]
The Economist tends to recount the sordid tale of Bangladeshi politics every so many months. It has done so again. However, the greatest contribution that the piece lies in its nearly lightning quick analysis of the relative strength of the BNP as it is now constituted. So, The Economist: “Demoralised and in disarray, the BNP […]
