In his hysterical editorial in today's Guardian, Edward Lucas calls Russia “deeply corrupt and lawless”. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is true: Russia is so saturated with laws and its legal system so harsh that “more than one in 10 of the country's citizens have been convicted of crimes over the past 15 years“, reports […]
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan ‚ Helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday in the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil, American officials said. Until now, allied forces in Afghanistan have occasionally carried out airstrikes […]
PESHAWAR/BEIJING: Pakistani Taliban on Tuesday claimed they had kidnapped two Chinese telecommunications engineers and two Pakistanis and that abductions would continue until the government stopped attacking militants. Talking to Daily Times over telephone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said the two Chinese engineers, their guard and driver were in the custody of his colleagues. He said […]
A failed assassination attempt on Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in the capital Islamabad highlights insecurity in the nuclear-armed country just three days before a presidential election will name Pervez Musharraf's successor. Pakistan has been rocked by a spate of violence that has seen hundreds die in suicide bombings and explosions over the past […]
Jeffrey Azarva at the American Enterprise Institute argues today that as Egyptian President Husni Mubarak continues to block democratic reform a new U.S. administration would do well to “send Mubarak and the one-in-three Arabs he rules the message that U.S. aid cannot be taken for granted.” Since the early 1980s the United States has provided […]
Raghida Dergham writes for al Hayat on the American presidential candidates and foreign policy from an Arab perspective. Quick excerpt: Rarely do the Democrats remember that global protests to American policies are not solely ascribed to the war in Iraq. They are equally ignited by the policies adopted by Democratic presidents in the past […]
Hady Amr, scholar at Brookings in Qatar, takes note in the Daily Star of the fact that, though Arabs make up 5% of the world's population, they took less than 1% of Olympic medals. (Of 958 awarded, only 9 went to citizens of Arab countries). In his words: … Something is clearly wrong when countries […]
The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibilty for an assasination attempt on Yousuf Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister. Shots were fired at the pime minister's motorcade on Wednesday near Islamabad's international airport, but officials and police said Gilani was not in the car at the time. The Taliban said it was behyind the attack and said it […]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ‚ Shots were fired at the motorcade of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani Wednesday afternoon near the capital, Islamabad, but Mr. Gilani was not in the motorcade at the time, Pakistani officials said. Mr. Gilani was returning to Islamabad after a visit to the city of Lahore, and had departed Chaklala Air […]
In the past few weeks we have discussed Russian relations and influence in Central Asia in the prism of the recent Georgia-Russian conflict, and for good reason, as the war sent vibrations across the geopolitical landscape, and was especially relevant to former Soviet Republics such as our CA states. However, before the early August invasions […]
Whatever one thinks of his foppish red socks or penchant for Prime Ministerial underwear, famous Iraq whistleblower Sir Christopher Meyer is a sound chap when it comes to foreign policy. So when the UK's former ambassador to the US writes that “a return to 1815 is the way forward for Europe: the Congress of […]
… with, of course, emphasis on Iraq and energy. Richard Holbrooke, Ambassador to the UN under Clinton and an attractive candidate for Secretary of State under a Democratic administration (and a whole host of other things – see Wikipedia) has a piece in the September/October Foreign Affairs on the foreign policy challenges that either McCain […]
The Movement for Democratic Change is calling upon regional leaders in southern Africa to apply pressure on Robert Mugabe to continue working toward a settlement of Zimbabwe's political stalemate. It seems clear that Mugabe must have hoped for just this sort of impasse when he agreed to sit down at the negotiating table to begin […]
Yesterday's Washington Post explores how Africa's growing (but still largely overlooked) middle class is playing a greater role on the continent.
In September voters in Angola, Rwanda and Swaziland will go to the polls for a national election. In November Zambia and Cote d’Ivoire will follow suit, (though the situation in the Ivory Coast is up in the air), and Ghanaians will do the same in December. While the spate of elections might seem as cause […]