CAMBRIDGE: Will military power become less important in the coming decades? It is true that the number of large-scale inter-state wars continues to decline, and fighting is unlikely among advanced democracies and on many issues. But, as Barack Obama said in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, “we must begin by acknowledging the hard …
This article tacitly acknowledges the complex and volatile nature of events in Sudan as a state and a nation, if there is a nation to begin with. The crisis of legitimacy stems from lack of consensus on how Sudan could be governed by existing state institutions. The regime is bankrupt and has lost its moral …
NEW YORK: Continued discrimination against Roma in Europe not only violates human dignity, but is a major social problem crippling the development of Eastern European countries with large Roma populations. Spain, which has been more successful in dealing with its Roma problem than other countries, can take the lead this month as it assumes the …
BRUSSELS: On December 1, 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon – the agreement reforming European Union institutions -was ratified, making the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (ECFR), a document that lays out the entire range of civil, political, economic and social rights of citizens and residents, legally binding. Europe s diverse citizenry is now (thankfully) better …
Since the presidential elections in June 2009, the ship of the Islamic Republic has been cruising in uncharted waters. The repercussions of the elections have not only proven to be politically costly but have fundamentally jeopardized the very survival of the Islamic State. Week after week, the regime has been facing unprecedented challenges; the voice …
RABAT: Established in 2001 by royal decree, the ombudsman office in Morocco, the Diwan Al Madhalim (the Office of Grievances), started its operations in April 2004. It was enthusiastically welcomed by Moroccan political circles and human rights organizations and was tasked with the difficult mission of reducing injustice, arbitrary treatment and abuse of power in …
NEW DELHI: At a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of a power imbalance looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institutionalized cooperation to reinforce the region’s strategic stability. After all, not only is Asia becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but Asian challenges are also playing into international …
TOKYO: 2009 was a good year for China. The Chinese economy still roared ahead in the midst of a worldwide recession. American President Barack Obama visited China, more in the spirit of a supplicant to an imperial court than the leader of the world’s greatest superpower. Even the Copenhagen summit on climate change ended just …
CASABLANCA: The Islamic state is a controversial issue in the West, as recent news confirms. Last October, an imam was killed and six men arrested by the FBI in Detroit for allegedly conspiring to establish an Islamic state in the United States. In the United Kingdom, government officials worry that extremist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir have …
CAIRO: Six Egyptian Copts and a Muslim security guard were shot with a machine gun as Christian worshippers left a church after mass on Coptic Christmas eve last Wednesday. News of the heinous crime committed in the Upper Egyptian city of Nagaa Hammadi, Qena, shocked the nation, not only because of its sheer brutality, the …
PARIS: Geography has dealt Europe a mixed hand. Europeans can congratulate themselves on being a relatively safe distance away from whatever tensions may accompany the rise of powers like India, Brazil, and, especially, China. But Europe is bordered to its south and east by two great regions that give cause for significant concern. Neither Russia …
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Whenever terrorism strikes in Pakistan and innocent lives are lost, people wonder which Islamic injunctions the perpetrators abused to justify their acts. The North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where I reside, has been particularly volatile recently, and people are increasingly appalled by the convoluted logic used by suicide bombers to kill our …
MADRID: The idea of integrating Israel into NATO has frequently been advanced as bait to encourage the Jewish state to make the necessary concessions for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. And some Israeli leaders – Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, for example – are convinced that joining NATO would act as a vital deterrent against Iran. But …
NEW YORK: Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world’s leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action. It was, of course, nice that world leaders could agree that it would be bad to risk the devastation that could …
JERUSALEM: Twelve thousand Ethiopians live around a compound in the city of Gondar. They left their villages for a promise of a better life in a new country. The compound is operated through the contributions of American Jews and the Ethiopians are taught Jewish customs by teachers flown in from Israel. None of them are …
As the world struggles to emerge from the economic near-collapse of last fall, there is one sub-group that has slid below the waterline in record numbers: formerly middle-class women. A new report shows that a million American middle-class women will find themselves in bankruptcy court this year. This is more women than will “graduate from …
MELBOURNE: Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? Perhaps you resolved to get fit, to lose weight, to save more money, or to drink less alcohol. Or your resolution may have been more altruistic: to help those in need, or to reduce your carbon footprint. But are you keeping your resolution? We are not yet …
JERUSALEM: The scene was stunning. At the Druze shrine of Nebi Shueib, against the backdrop of a gleaming snow-capped Mount Hermon, the green mountains and blue sea of the Galilee, kaffiyed Muslim imams and ulema, moustachioed Druze sheikhs, black-hatted rabbis and Christian clergy in various colourful garb, mingled together in animated discussion. This meeting, which …
LONDON: The British comic genius Spike Milligan once observed that he would love to have the opportunity to discover that money wouldn’t make him happy. Big lottery winners, it is claimed, end up miserable, though real-life research suggests that they are as happy as you and I would be with a check for a million …
The saying goes that it is difficult to prophesy, especially about the future. But let us try. There is no doubt: the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is stalled, and all of US President Barack Obama s charisma – and US power – have until now failed to revive it. Stalemates usually encourage doomsayers who predict dour …
RAMLA, Israel: For at least two millennia, political and educational philosophers have remained adamant about the pre-eminent place formal schooling holds in shaping the “good citizen. However, while the place of schools as the single-most important institutional agent for shaping the good citizen remains unrivalled, many other less structured but important educational opportunities exist. As …
BERKELEY: Perhaps the best way to view a financial crisis is to look at it as a collapse in the risk tolerance of investors in private financial markets. Maybe the collapse stems from lousy internal controls in financial firms that, swaddled by implicit government guarantees, lavish their employees with enormous rewards for risky behavior. Or …
The nature of the current wars in the wider western Asian area reveals a disturbing trend: next to sources of conflict between states there are an increasing number of conflicts within them. In Yemen, the civil war has had a ripple effect throughout the Persian Gulf region provoking the military intervention of Saudi Arabia and …
NEW YORK: Sadness is one of the small number of human emotions that have been recognized in all societies and in all time periods. Some of the earliest known epics, such as “The Iliad and “Gilgamesh, feature protagonists’ intense sadness after the loss of close comrades. Likewise, anthropological work across a great range of societies …
The next Middle East war will probably be a reprieve of the last, a second war in Gaza, only this time even more violent and destabilizing for the entire region. The first Gaza war last January left unfinished business and a humanitarian catastrophe. The next war may be started by an Al-Qaeda-inspired Gazan faction of …
CAIRO: Eight whole years after the Doctors’ Syndicate first proposed a draft law to regulate organ transplants, the Egyptian parliament has finally signed off on the controversial law much to the relief of thousands of desperate patients – but will the new law succeed in ending organ trafficking? The absence of appropriate legislation has over …
BERKELEY: On Jan. 1, South Korea takes over the G-20 chairmanship from the United Kingdom. Korea is not the first emerging market to chair the G-20, but it is the first to do so since the global financial crisis. And it is the first to do so since the G-20 emerged as the steering committee …
MOSCOW: Rapid changes in the global economy and international politics are raising, once more, an eternal issue in Russia: the country’s relations with Europe, and with the Euro-Atlantic region as a whole. Of course, Russia partly belongs to this region. Yet it cannot and does not want to join the West wholeheartedly – at least …
CAIRO: In 1989, the prominent Orientalist Bernard Lewis argued that the Arab world was disintegrating into fragmented ethnic and sectarian enclaves, dissipating any sense of collective solidarity and identity. Looking at the Arab world today, from the ugly spat between Egypt and Algeria, countries once identified with pan-Arabism, to the openly sectarian and ethnic power …
Just six short months ago, a sense of guarded euphoria spread through Europe and the Middle East in the wake of President Barack Obama s Cairo speech. It seemed as if, at long last, an American president had understood the crying need for action over regional problems and the terrible damage done by years of …
