This is a post on Somali pirates that I wrote for the American Enterprise Institute’s Enterprise Blog. I thought would be good to upload here too since it focuses on lessons for Somalia from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore’s strategy for combating piracy in the Strait of Malacca. Arthur Herman published an impassioned article in the […]
Recently there has been some heated discussion on who is ‘morally qualified’ to write about India. Socio-economic changes have made India the apple pie of global literary – fiction and non-fiction – circle. Patrick French’s India: A Portrait and Anand Giridharadas’s India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking have invited the ire of […]
Shortly after Hosni Mubarak stepped down from the Presidency of Egypt, Iran requested permission from Egypt to cross through the Suez Canal. This had not happened since the Iranian Revolution and the fall of the Shah over thirty years ago. Obviously, many people – Israel most particularly – were concerned. This would bring the Iranian […]
Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated that “The Palestinians aren’t ready to reach a final-status agreement to end the conflict, in light of the instability in the region,” referring to the current unrest raging throughout the Middle East. In light of this, he had been reportedly considering a Palestinian state with temporary borders in order to work […]
President Calderon arrives today on a two-day trip to Washington. The Mexican president will meet with President Obama, Speaker John Boehner, and members of the U.S. business leaders. Though it is a snap visit, it could prove pivotal. Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote over the weekend, “It will, assuredly, be a […]
Dr. Mohammad Yunus has been fired from his role as managing director of Grameen Bank, essentially because he did not seek approval of his leadership role from Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh, from the moment he turned 61. Really, that’s the reason he was fired earlier today. According to the New York Times: […]
The Awami League government just let H.M. Ershad have a pass–it dropped charges brought against him by the BNP led government of the 1990’s. Along with 75 others withdrawals out 836 politically motivated cases,the case against former President Ershad’s moves to buy radar techinology from the United States at a higher price, presumably pocketing the […]
Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan’s contagion across the Kush, is bent on taking down the government in Islamabad by destroying the foundational liberal and multicultural bases that it had long promised to cherish. Militants have shot and killed the minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, a man who had for some time challenged the fundamentally intolerant and morally insecure and […]
TAPI Signatories in Ashgabat The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline or TAPI is a 1,680 km (1,050 m) natural gas line originating in the Daulatabad gas fields in southeastern Turkmenistan. It crosses Afghanistan and continues on through Pakistan ending in Fazilka, a northwestern Indian city close to the India-Pakistan border. TAPI is one of the largest pipelines in […]
Billed as “North America’s Premier Gas Conference,” the Arctic Gas Symposium will be taking place tomorrow through March 3 in Calgary, Alberta. In the province that helped revolutionize tar sands, there will be lots of discussion on the latest issues facing the hydrocarbon industry in the Arctic. One notable topic of interest this year is […]
Stories from the troubled Zimbabwe suggest that the Zimbabwe government is paying a closer attention to the revolution sweeping across North Africa and Middleast. In response to an anonymous Facebook page called “Zimbabwe Million Citizen March” (which called for a day of rage against President Robert Mugabe’s tyrannical rule), the government went all the way […]
Over the past few weeks, if the World was glued to its TV screen following the events in Egypt unfold, none did it with more interest than the State of Israel. The entire nation’s media dedicated most of its air time and editorial space to Egypt’s uprising. But, rather than marveled at the Egyptian’s courage […]
As the Middle East is being swept off by a revolutionary wind, many analysts are drawing parallels between the Egyptian Revolution and the uprising in neighboring countries. However, recent events in Libya prove that if indeed a need for Freedom and self political determination unify the protesters across borders, each and every uprising […]
The recent social unrest in Yemen has brought this rather unknown south Arabian country in the mainstream media. However, even though the news coverage has increased, little is really known of the country itself and its political/social landscape. Many often associate Yemen with Al Qaeda, as it is believed to be one of its […]