Patrick French, a scholar and one with family connections in Pakistan’s Swat region, recently allowed to be ruled by Sharia law by the Paki government, argues that this is a disastrous policy. He asserts that the Swat settlement was an appeasement of radical Taliban leaders who will continue to foment unrest and violence further and […]
President Obama has officially named Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry as his choice to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan. Eikenberry, a career military man, was the top US commander in Afghanistan until 2007. Though some are concerned about giving such a key diplomatic spot to a military leader, I feel this is an excellent choice. […]
The holocaust drama The Reader edged out Waltz with Bashir, a film about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, for the Oscar because “Hollywood likes its Jews… hunched over and dressed in rags”, not waging morally ambiguous wars, Bradley Burston wrote in Haaretz. Similarly, America likes its Russian artists defecting from their home country and condemning its […]
After President Obama’s announcement last month that he was sending in 17,000 more US troops to fight for stability in Afghanistan, it seemed that there were few who thought it a bad idea, though some surely did, and the American people seemed to back the plan according to several polls and newspaper articles. The main […]
Registan’s critique of scholarship on Islam in Central Asia got me thinking. The writer, Nathan, focuses on Soviet scholarship, but I am more familiar with Central Asia under tsarist rule. Either way, Nathan critiques the scholarship Islam in Central Asia because it typically starts from the postulate that Muslims are inherently violent fanatics. He is […]
So while many news outlets, including yours truly, made fun of Nazarbayev’s plan for a world currency, a Nobel-prize winner Professor Robert Mundell thinks it’s quite plausible. He was the architect of the euro and believes the idea could be expanded. I continue to seriously doubt it, Nobel prize or not. I see Nazarbayev’s remarks […]
Today’s New York Times featured two contrasting views of how the US should fight the Afghan insurgency and prevent international terrorism from breeding in the region. Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, while asserting that defeating the Taliban threat is ‘not achievable’, argues for a steady military drawback from the conflict, […]
What human rights? Activists say that the ruling regimes in Central Asia deny their citizens basic freedoms, like freedom of the press or assembly. I have always thought that that is beyond the point. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are considered part of the top 8 most repressive in the world. I believe them. Religious freedom is routinely […]
Iran is in the news, this of course is no surprise, but what is worth noting is that it involves US-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan. After the fall the Taliban, which involved US-Iran partnering up in small, but significant ways, there has not been a healthy or productive relationship between the states regarding the stability and […]
As this blog has been insisting, regional ties are the answer to many of Central Asia’s problems, rather than the West or even Russia. This Radio Liberty article describes how the State Department groups the post-Soviet Central Asian states together with the South Asian states in a long-term effort to promote ties between US-friendly states […]
Over at the Afghanistan blog, I wrote a piece about the Sister City program between San Diego, California and Jalalabad, Afghanistan. This group does a lot of amazing work that should be recognized. Maybe we should have a ‘surge’ of Sister Cities!
The city of San Diego has many sister cities and one of them is Jalalabad, Afghanistan. As a new San Diegan, this was brought to my attention by San Diego-Jalalabad activist David Edick Jr. It appears that through this organization much good has come about with active citizens participating from both cities. Here is the […]
After reports that Kygyzstan was still waiting for Russia to send money, and Kyrgyz officials attempting to seem ambivalent, the money is in and the US has to leave by August 20th. I hope Kyrgyz officials decide to do something useful with their money, for example, by increasing funding of the Red Crescent, which is […]
In an Air Force One interview session, President Obama opened the proverbial door to negotiating with the segments of the Taliban. He was vague about who the ‘Taliban’ was and how to go about it, but its definitely on his Afghan policy workbench. Though he offered few details, Obama was well aware that such a […]
Not everyone in America or England knows this, but today is International Women’s Day, an official holiday in Russia. Ironically, while the USSR had long prided itself on its feminist stance and some well-deserved progress in gender equality, Women’s Day often felt more like a mix of Valentines and Mother’s day, an orgy of flowers, […]