Regions

WASHINGTON ‚ Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, is facing angry questions from other senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorized contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan. Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, the leader of the […]

All countries that have had high rates of fertility and, therefore, high rates of population growth now have very young populations. Pakistan along with almost all countries of the Muslim world falls into this category. For several decades the rates of fertility ‚ the number of children born per woman in the reproductive age ‚ […]

Bill Keller recently reviewed John Carlin's Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation in The New York Times. Keller's review is glowing. I worry a bit that the book will be somewhat deterministic. The 1995 World Cup marked a nice moment for South Africa, and a profoundly powerful symbolic one […]

This past weekend's New York Times travel section had a cover feature on Namibia that provides pretty sound evidence for why that country is one of my very favorites.

It was obvious from the start that PML (N) and PPP are not going to get along forever, but the alliance didn't even last for 8 months and today Nawaz Sharif announced that his party is leaving the ruling coalition. In reality, both parties have very different views on almost every issue, but the breaking point […]

Pakistan People Party has nominated Asif Ali Zardari to be the next President of Pakistan.  As of today, it seems likely that Asif Zardari is going to be the next President of Pakistan. It is also obvious that the Pakistan People Party and its allies (excluding Pakistan Muslim League (N)) have the necessary majority to […]

The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is not only largely irrelevant in South African political life, it is an anachronism. Borne of the apartheid era, Mangosuthu Buthelezi's movement (which always was, as much as anything, a tribute to the glories of Mangosuthu Buthelezi) represented an ethnically driven party committed to Zulu nationalism that did not come […]

Now that the bloodshed has stopped in the Caucasus, constructing a new policy approach for the West is imperative. Western, Georgian and Russian sources all agree on the following: Russian forces have largely, but not completely, left Georgia proper. They remain in Georgia in what has been called a "new administrative border" buffering South Ossetia […]

The Mexican State has failed, again, in providing security for its citizens. The years of tranquility experienced during the economic recovery of the late 1990s, suggest that, indeed, better economic conditions, and not the government's anti-crime initiatives, reduced crime in the country. Now that economic conditions are not as promising, Mexican society is living in […]

Western retaliation against Russia for its actions in Georgia will do it more good than harm, according to the academic and actvist Boris Kagarlitsky. As Russian troops finally begin to withdraw from Georgia, the US and Nato are pondering the best punishment for its earlier invasion. The respected International Crisis group suggested that “the West […]

Given the non-stop turmoil in Pakistan, and the role of military in Pakistan's affairs, political or otherwise, it was understandable when Pakistan watchers took great interest in Crossed Swords by Shuja Nawaz. Almost no one knows the author except for the few fortunate, but there is a simple way to introduce him. Shuja Nawaz, the […]

The newest issue of the incomparable journal Foreign Affairs has several short reviews of books on Africa. The topics of the books under review include Botswana's economic successes, another book on that country's military, the failure to establish democratic institutions in the Republic of Congo, Africa's political economy, and the role of Africa in the […]