Pakistan has to come to terms and do away with its proxies if it is interested in retaining the friendship with China; the BRICS declaration is a gentle nudge. Commenting on China’s regional approach to political, security, and economic issues, former Pakistani senator and analyst Afrasiab Khattak writes in one of his latest articles that […]
The most immediate example is the series of efforts by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to isolate, embargo, and boycott Qatar. Some 100 days have passed since they issued some 13 broad, categorical, and poorly defined demands that Qatar change its behaviour. These demands may or may not have been reduced to six […]
Hillary Clinton says she made a mistake when she gave speeches on Wall Street after leaving government. Taking money from banks, she writes in her new memoir, created the impression she was in their pocket. Her old boss doesn’t seem to share her concern. Read Here – Bloomberg
Three years after Donald Trump arrived on his private jet for a deal-making tour, India has become the only major developing country where his business is roaring. It has the most construction projects with Trump licensing deals of any country outside of the U.S. After his election, Trump abandoned a number of international projects and promised not to engage […]
But when extremist groups walk away from negotiations—as happens ten per cent of the time—they often get crushed. Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers pioneered the suicide vest. It was the only terrorist group to assassinate two world leaders—India’s Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991, and the Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, in 1993. At its peak, it controlled […]
The logic in these arguments, whether derived from Newtonian physics or the national interest, is always as impeccable as it is morally numb. This is why around the world we confront a bigger crisis than the one commonly linked to political and economic dysfunction. Demagogues are mere symptoms of an ethical breakdown. The more disturbing […]
Nobody is going to confuse the dusty fishing village of Duqm for Dubai. But Oman intends to change this by building an entirely new, $10.7 billion transit-oriented industrial city on the desertified coast of the Arabian Sea, 550 kilometers south of Muscat. More accurately, China intends to change this by building an entirely new $10.7 billion transit-oriented industrial […]
Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this city was pious and sedate… Qom became the bedrock of Iran’s theocracy and remains one of the country’s holiest places — home to 200,000 religious scholars, a destination for Shiite Muslim pilgrims and a center of Islamic thought in a country whose political system is controlled by the clerical establishment. […]
It has been more than six years since the start of the Arab Spring, and life for most Arabs is worse than it was in 2011. Unemployment is rife in the Middle East and North Africa, where two thirds of the population is between the ages of 15 and 29. And throughout the region, regimes […]
China’s elite have long had to keep their diaries clear for much of September, October and November, waiting for a date to be announced for a five-yearly congress of the ruling Communist Party. At last, it has been revealed. The red carpets will be rolled out and the skies turned blue (by shutting down factories […]
looking beyond borders 