Regions

  The new president will be puppeteered out of office quicker than he was put in  The election played out as many opposition supporters of Henrique Capriles supporters feared. Government candidate Nicolas Maduro won by a close margin — closer than expected actually. Capriles denounced the results, pointed out cases of fraud and intimidation and […]

  As NATO troops leave, Afghanistan and two of its northern neighbors will undergo national elections. Should we be worried? While some observers expect an uptick in Afghan border infiltration after the upcoming NATO drawdown, others feel that instability in neighboring states Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have long been homegrown. These countries are the main routes […]

I argued in an earlier post that much of Pakistan’s future direction will hinge on events unfolding this year.  The first of these are the national elections scheduled for May 11, which could be decided by a large number of first-time voters.  These voters are the product of one of the world’s largest youth bulges […]

In preparation of the elections scheduled for next month (amidst talks of postponement), officers in charge of scrutinizing election nomination papers have questioned candidates on their knowledge of religion, as is required by Article 62 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. Under Article 62, persons seeking to contest in parliamentary elections must display adequate […]

For years, the U.S. has seemed determined on preventing an Israeli attack on Iran. Both Presidents Bush and Obama stood firm in their opposition to Iran becoming a nuclear state. But Bush outright vetoed Israel’s request in the final months of his presidency, and Obama has stood resolutely opposed to green lighting a military option […]

As a Russian who first came to America as a small child and later spent his university years in Cambridge, Mass., I felt particularly gripped by the ongoing Boston bomber saga. There remain so many questions about why these two brothers, to whom the U.S. had given shelter, passports, schooling and acceptance, turned so violently […]

The U.N. Security Council is currently debating a draft resolution on whether or not to extend the peacekeeping mission in the Western Sahara (MINURSO) ahead of the April 30, 2013 deadline. For more than 20 years, the U.N. Security Council has debated, then renewed the mandate of this U.N. body rather perfunctorily—needlessly prolonging a nearly […]

How can the EU still advertise itself on the global stage as being the embodiment of democracy and human rights? This question should be raised and asked in Brussels as many of EU member states are seriously flirting with the extremes. The latest developments in Greece – only to name one out of the group […]

Farideh Farhi on Iran’s Power Dynamics  Farideh Farhi is an Independent Scholar and Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Dr. Farhi is a regular contributor to Lobe Log Foreign Policy, the U.S. foreign policy blog of the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS News), writing on U.S. and Iranian foreign policies and Iran’s internal […]

One fact that is often presented in the classroom of fresh MBA students is that out of all the markets for carbonated beverages in the world, Mexicans stand as the number one consumers of sodas. So much is the love of those sugary drinks that it placed the former head of Coca-Cola in Mexico, the […]

  Mehdi Khalaji on Iran’s Crisis of State Ideology Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on the politics of Iran and the Middle East. Mr. Khalaji is considered one of the leading scholars on Islamic thought and Shiite Islam. He is also one of the pioneers […]

“Of course, there is a lot of resistance to change, especially when some of the largest recipients of contracts in Haiti are the for-profit development companies that hired a lobbyist to push back on these reforms,” declared Research Associate Jake Johnston, who co-authored “Breaking Open the Black Box: Increasing Aid Transparency and Accountability in Haiti” […]