Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent call to eradicate poverty in South Asia through an international cooperative effort is a welcome move. She proposed such a moved during a celebtration of the life and the work of the great Rabindranath Tagore (Thakur). During her term in office Sheikh Hasina has raised Bangladesh’s profile on the international […]
By Malik Siraj Akbar Foreigners who have never heard of Pakistan’s Balochistan crisis are often comforted by the fact that they are not the only ones who do not know much about the raging conflict. Even most Pakistanis are equally ignorant about the gruesome developments taking place inside Balochistan because of a nearly complete blackout […]
Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, father of slain Juan Francisco, will headline a massive protest against the government’s drug war strategy tomorrow. The first protest took place on May 5 in the city of Cuernavaca, not far from where Juan Francisco died. Protests are scheduled in 31 sites across Mexico, and all manner of civil society […]
A Japanese woman who was found guilty of smuggling methamphetamine into Malaysia is unlikely to escape the death penalty, her lawyer said Friday. Mariko Takeuchi, 36, was arrested Oct. 31, 2009, for attempting to smuggle 3.5 kilograms of methamphetamine into Malaysia through Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Under Malaysian law, anyone possessing a minimum of 50 […]
The narrative of the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is still in flux, nearly seven days out. The nucleus of that narrative however remains static : what did the Pakistani military and intelligence services know about bin Laden’s whereabouts, when did it know it and what did it do about that knowledge or […]
For the third friday in a row, casualty numbers have declined in ongoing Syrian protests. It would appear that the large scale preemptive arrests carried out by the government over the previous days have been successful in keeping protest numbers down. Reports also indicate that the international Red Cross/Red Crescent has been given access to […]
With the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in what appears to be a covert American operation in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistanis are in a state of deja vu. While the international community is caught in a state of disbelief that the world’s most wanted terrorist was hiding inside Pakistan, a country […]
Every so often I just like to remind my readers how vast Africa is (and thus how difficult, indeed absurd, it is to think about it as a single unit or phenomenon or place). The True Size of Africa:
“The EU will have its voice in the General Assembly,” said President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy. For this first time of its history, the EU will be able to address the UN General Assembly (UNGA). By passing on May 3, 2011, the Resolution 65/276 on “Strengthening of the United Nations System: Participation […]
I have recently written about TAPI, the 1,680 km (1,000 mile) $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India proposed pipeline scheduled for completion in 2016 with a capacity to transfer 90 million cubic meters of gas per day to energy starved South Asia. According to the TAPI agreement, Turkmenistan will supply 38 mmcmd each going to Pakistan and India, […]
As unrest continues to grip Syria, and opposing viewpoints continue to battle it out over the airwaves, in the pages of newspapers and magazines, and over the interwebs, let’s try to take a look at some of what is going on; both in Syria, and in the battle to frame what is happening there, shall […]
Mahmood Mamdani, the director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda and a prominent voice in African studies, recently gave a talk in which he compared the recent uprisings across North Africa, the “Walk to Work” protests in Uganda, and the Soweto Uprisings. While the argument may not sustain scrutiny as a historical […]
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