So the questions remains, and likely will linger at least until South Africa's 2009 elections: just how potent a political force will the Congress of the People (COPE) prove to be? And how different from the ANC is the new party, really? After all, the transformations in South African politics boil down to personality clashes […]
Our soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the Iraqi PM to be replaced in 2007. We’ll see how she navigates a relationship with him, and his successor in 2009.
Raghida Dergham weighs in today on the question I posed yesterday: is it helpful to understand the political issues of the Middle East as interconnected? Here is her soundbite from the New York Times: Raghida Dergham, who writes a column in Al Hayat, the London-based pan-Arab daily, wrote that it was a matter of when, […]
For a week starting today General Michel Aoun meets with Syrian officials. This is one of the most controversial visits since President Suleiman took the Presidency. Worth keeping an eye on it. Three years after his return from a 15-year exile, Maronite opposition leader Michel Aoun shakes hands with the son of the man who […]
Even in my remote bit of paradise, news of distant disasters filters through: above the steady sound of waves breaking on the sandy beach in Sri Lanka, I was informed by several news channels about the sickening attacks on Mumbai. My Internet connection is erratic and slow, but nevertheless, I have been bombarded with emails, […]
PRICE manipulation through the creation of artificial shortages is all too common in Pakistan. Much to our detriment, we have grown used to unscrupulous millers and hoarders deliberately curtailing supplies of food items such as wheat flour and sugar in order to jack up prices at the retail level. Successive governments have failed to crack […]
THE Mumbai nightmare has plunged the media in India and Pakistan into the dangerous, old trap in which nationalism trumps responsible reporting. This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to India and Pakistan. American journalists fell into this trap after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on Sept 11, […]
ISLAMABAD, Dec 2: Pakistan on Tuesday proposed a joint mechanism with India to investigate the Mumbai carnage as part of its offer of complete cooperation in efforts to unearth "the hands behind the dastardly act". The proposal was made at a briefing by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to foreign diplomats a day before US […]
Today, I want to go over recent cooperative measures and conferences in our beloved Central Asian region. With Obama soon to be in the White House and multilateralism all the rage, I thought it was about time. In all seriousness, these cooperative efforts regarding such important transnational issues as terrorism, trade, drug trades, and disease […]
Martin Indyk, of the Brookings Institute and numerous other institutions of repute, and the equally credentialed Gary Samore of the Council on Foreign Relations co-directed a research initiative called Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. You can read summaries of their work from Brookings here and from CFR here, or […]
Robert Mugabe's thugocracy can surely endure run-of-the-mill catastrophes like the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) shutting down Harare's water supplies to try to strangle the country's cholera epidemic and the concomitant riots that have resulted. But for some time the wild card of Mugabe's ability to endure has been the loyalty of the police, military, […]
In The Mail & Guardian, columnist Adriaan Basson asks the following: Did the African National Congress jump the gun by recalling former president Thabo Mbeki on the strength of an untested, contentious high court judgement? It is a good question, and Basson strongly implies that the answer is yes. Let me be even more blunt: […]
Those who have been following the dueling versions of what happened in South Ossetia last August can find the latest installment of The Truth in today's Wall Street Journal. In it, Mikheil Saakashvili attacks “misleading reports” by an OSCE observer who was in South Ossetia on August 7. It was those reports, you may recall, […]
Free State provincial ANC leader Ace Magashule recently made the case that Jacob Zuma is suffering like Jesus Christ.: “Jesus was persecuted. He was called names and betrayed. It's the same kind of suffering Mr Zuma has had to bear recently, but he's still standing strong. He's not giving up,” Magashule, the ANC leader in […]
The actual costs of Thabo Mbeki's AIDS denialism are probably incalculable. Nonetheless, a recent Harvard University study gives at least some indication of the consequences of the very real damage he did on this issue. According to the study, access to retrovirals and other drugs likely would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people. […]