A salient feature of Iran’s foreign policy is its ability to build influence where least expected. With the ascent to power of Sunni Islamists throughout the region, and Iran‘s support of the military campaign in Syria, many have argued that Iran’s regional standing is in decline. But the opposite assessment needs to be taken seriously. […]
Pakistan appeared to be treading toward an uncertain political terrain on Tuesday as arrest orders were issued for a sitting prime minister in a corruption case and a populist cleric called for the government’s resignation leading tens of thousands of protesters into the federal capital. During the early hours of Tuesday, the Pakistani-Canadian chief of the Tehrik-i-Minhajul Quran (TMQ), […]
Elections make for responsive and accountable governments, or so goes the truism. But can they also achieve the opposite — that is, encourage complacency, even callousness, among elected representatives? Last month’s headlines from India and China present a disquieting contrast between elected and unelected governments for anyone committed to democratic politics. Read Here – Bloomberg
In 2011, when Algeria’s Religious Affairs Minister Bouabdallah Ghlamallah awarded the contract to build the Grand Mosque of Algiers, the third-largest such structure in the world, it did not go to a homegrown Algerian bidder nor to one based in a fellow Muslim-majority Arab nation like Lebanon, nor even to one in a nearby non-Muslim […]
A shy boy with filthy hands and a shabby tunic approached the great man, bowed and tried to kiss his hand. Gen. Matiullah Khan was seated like a sultan on a cushion in his hojra, his airy receiving room. He barely looked at the boy. He nodded to an aide, who withdrew a thick wad of Pakistani […]
IN HUNAN province last August, Tang Hui was sentenced to 18 months in a labour camp. Her crime was to demand tougher sentences for the men who had kidnapped and raped her 11-year-old daughter. In days gone by, Ms Tang would simply have disappeared. In the age of the microblog, thousands of incensed middle-class people […]
“We are moving away from a U.S. – or Europe-led world to a world led by China,” writes Stephen King, Chief Global Economist at HSBC in a report. HSBC’s Emerging Market Index for the last quarter of 2012 tells investors to think of the global economy in terms of “two separate narratives.” The first is the “old world” […]
Two years after he set himself on fire, Mohamed Bouazizi remains history’s most famous fruit vendor. Like many enterprising Tunisians, Bouazizi, 26, was subject to constant fines of as much as 10 times his daily earnings as he tried to make a living on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. After his scale and cart were […]
As US President Barack Obama begins his second term, he needs a simple way to express his vision and policies for the economy – a metaphor around which support for his policies might crystallize, thereby boosting his administration’s political effectiveness. So, what makes a successful metaphor work? The 2008 Obama campaign used the slogan “Change […]
NARENDRA MODI, the burly chief minister of Gujarat, is on a roll. On December 20th he won a third successive state election. Though the tally for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell slightly, from 117 seats in 2007 to 115, his victory was emphatic, a triumph more for Mr Modi than for his party. Nobody […]
