The Dowry Trade and Gender Based Violence in Bangladesh
July 7, 2010 2 min. read

Al Jazeera English’s 101 East series has put together another astounding, heart breaking piece on Bangladeshi culture, its sociology.  This time around, film makers sponsored by Al Jazeera have examined the wide spread phenomenon of violence that so often churns along with the covert exchange of property rights that is tagged euphemistically in cities and […]

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S21 Documentary, Junta Nukes, and a Rice Shortage?
July 7, 2010 3 min. read

Cambodia – My colleague, Sean Patrick Murphy, over at FB’s Global Film Review blog, has an interesting post about a new documentary, “S21,  The Khmer Rogue Killing Machine”.  The documentary interviews former Khmer Rogue members who worked at the infamous S21 prison camp, where various crimes against humanity were committed during the reign of Pol […]

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Tensions Rising in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir
July 7, 2010 4 min. read

Tensions have mounted in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) during the past month. The people’s protests became unmanageable for the state government and the Army was called in to flag march in the state on July 7th. The recent round of anti-India protests were triggered by the killing of 15 people by […]

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BNP and Jamaat: Crossroads and U-turns
July 7, 2010 3 min. read

Can the BNP stand behind former allies who might be prosecuted for committing war crimes against their own people? This question must now float high on the list of questions BNP leadership is asking while strategizing a fecund and energized return to power. The BNP has recently struck out in support of the three top leaders […]

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Fueling Drama on the Streets
July 6, 2010 3 min. read

The Indian government’s decision to raise fuel prices last month resulted in some opposition-led large scale protests on Monday.

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Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban: Separating Out the Like and the Unlike
July 6, 2010 6 min. read

The issue that is handily, wrenchingly, confounding the Pakistani military is the one that has long confounded the NATO command in Afghanistan. That issue, that problem has been canvassed well in a  recent New York Times article . The issue is this: How can one separate out the enemy from the friendly citizen?  No real answer […]

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Negotiate with Taliban?
July 5, 2010 4 min. read

In a recent press conference Mian Nawaz Sharif – the head of the largest opposition Party Pakistan Muslim League-N (PMLN) – claimed that terrorism in Pakistan is a result of government’s foreign policies. Sharif made the comments two days after two terrorist suicide bombers had attacked the most popular Sufi shrine in Punjab. The province […]

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Learning to Love the Spice
July 5, 2010 5 min. read

Journalist Joel Stein gets into some hot water for his column on Indian Americans in Time Magazine.

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UPA Government's era of Group of Ministers (GoMs)
July 3, 2010 3 min. read

The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in India seems to believe in the slogan of ‘the more the merrier’. It appears that Cabinets in the era of coalition governments were not enough trouble for the UPA. It has added another dimension of complexity by frequently constituting Group of Ministers (GoMs) to decide on official policies. […]

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A Question of Sovereignty as U.S. Gives Pakistan F-16 Fighters Jets
July 3, 2010 2 min. read

Salman Masood recently wrote a very interesting blog post for the New York Times At War blog.  The U.S. has passed along 3 F-16 fighter planes to the Pakistani Air Force; the transfer has caused much strutting fan fare and has germinated a crashing wave crop of billowing, swollen chests. Citing reportage in Dawn, the […]

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The Domestic and International Consequences of the War Crimes Trial in Bangladesh
July 2, 2010 4 min. read

It is instructive to think about the international political economic implications of the easily disparaged, late in coming War Crimes Trial in Bangladesh.  The local media have for long written up tomes on the domestic fight in setting up that trial; less attention has been paid to the international dimensions of that fight. A quick summary […]

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The Conflict Between Democratic Decison-Making and Representative Government in Pakistan
July 2, 2010 5 min. read

Given the latest news of the strategic suicide bombing in Lahore, it’s important that we think hard about what we are fighting for in Pakistan. We need to ask: What is the U.S. fighting for in Pakistan?  What is Pakistan fighting for? An answer to either question is not readily available.  Perhaps neither question is […]

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