On April 16, more than 300 Afghani women – many of them students – marched together in Kabul in protest of a new law passed by Parliament that would impose a series of Taliban-like restrictions on women. The law would limit women’s movements – say, for work or study – without male permission, and even …

CAIRO: Egypt’s decision to cull its entire population of pigs is not only a misguided effort to contain swine flu, but also reflects the haphazard, panic-driven decision-making process that’s endemic to this country. First of all, there are no pigs sneezing in Mexico. According to a World Health Organization release, when the outbreak was first …

WASHINGTON, DC: During his January 2009 presidential inaugural address, US President Barack Obama sent a clear message to the world s 1.3 billion Muslims when he said: To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. A few weeks ago in Ankara, fulfilling his promise to give …

The anxiety over Jacob Zuma’s election as president of South Africa obscures a significant milestone: for the first time in decades, a sub-Saharan nation has at its helm a champion of ordinary people. African politics has long been the exclusive domain of aristocrats, soldiers, and technocrats. Even with the spread of democratic elections, the region’s …

WASHINGTON, DC/DOHA: On the morning of April 8, a US-flagged cargo ship – the Maersk Alabama – carrying US government food aid destined for Africa was hijacked by Somali pirates 300 miles off Somalia s coast. Eventually, the crew and the ship escaped to safety, while Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage by the pirates …

In recent months, Qatar has found itself embroiled in resurgent notions of an Arab Cold War. Moreover, Qatar is often painted as one of the instigators of this potential cold conflict. Hosting Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) conferences and unexpectedly inviting Iran, hosting post-Gaza invasion conferences apparently seeking to wrest away the mantle of Arab leadership …

The UN anti-racism review conference was held in Geneva recently and the world did not stop turning, as the conference’s detractors wanted us to believe. In fact, the world might be a better place now that the conference approved by consensus a document that builds on the commitments made in Durban eight years ago to …

PARIS: Is the current economic crisis uniting the democratic world in anger as much as in fear? In France, with many factories closing, a wave of executive hostage-taking – “bossnapping, as this newfangled crime is called – is agitating board rooms and police across the country. In the United States, big bonuses given to executives …

WASHINGTON, DC: US President Barack Obama’s recently revealed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is likely to precede a more aggressive campaign in northwest Pakistan, as illustrated by the decision to send thousands of additional troops to the “AfPak region by the end of the year. In a different area of US-South Asian engagement, American …

EXETER: Many people ask how sure we are about the science of climate change. The most definitive examination of the scientific evidence is to be found in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its last major report published in 2007. I had the privilege of being chairman or co-chairman of …

During a visit to the United States that preceded President Barack Obama s visit to Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu, chief advisor to Turkey s prime minister, stated that Our approach and principles are almost the same, very similar to the US on issues such as the Middle East, Caucasus, Balkans and energy security. Therefore, we hope …

In college, the famous naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) had one major passion: he loved to shoot things. Zoology he found dull; geology, even worse. What he really liked was hunting. And collecting beetles. He was also a religious man. Although his father wanted him to become a doctor, Charles was horrified by the sight of …

Agriculture ministers from the Group of Eight (G-8) and major developing nations claimed this week in Italy they were ready to fight food insecurity by cracking down on speculation. This might make politicians feel good but the evidence shows that alleged speculation had nothing to do with the food crisis: the real cause was bad …

AMMAN: President Barack Obama received a message from the Arab world when he met King Abdallah of Jordan in Washington earlier this month. It was an important message that the American president and his administration should appreciate because of its timing and content. The message that King Abdallah carried was carefully phrased in Amman on …

Egypt, the bastion of literature and culture, the cradle of arts and civilization and the mother of the world decided to shut down an unnecessary literary magazine called Ibda’a (Creativity), which was published for years by the Ministry of Culture. The magazine is truly creative. Over the years, it published nothing but creative poetry, novels, …

BRUSSELS: President Barack Obama’s first appearances outside North America – in London, Strasbourg, Prague, and Istanbul – galvanized world attention. But what that trip singularly failed to do was paper over a startling fact: the “Washington Consensus about how the global economy should be run is now a thing of the past. The question now …

New York: In rhetoric, and increasingly in action, US President Barack Obama s administration is ushering in a willingness to engage the other – the missing link in US statecraft. From Syria to elements of the Taliban, the Obama administration has sought discourse and engagement, not marginalization and exclusion. The administration has the resources to …

WASHINGTON, DC: Hours after his handover ceremony, the new Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Ha’aretz newspaper that “Israel is not bound by the Annapolis process , the US-backed declaration that initiated the final status talks on establishing a Palestinian state. Instead, Lieberman wants to revert to the situation in 2003, when the Middle …

My last article quoted a statement made by the English writer Arthur Clarke that goes as follows: “new ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along. By arguing that initial reactions to …

YEREVAN: Turkey, sadly, seems to be falling into the bad habit of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity in its relations with Armenia. But this failure of will and vision is only breeding wider regional instability. In the two weeks before US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Turkey, there was almost universal …

PARIS: Those who think that Algerians have been passive victims of their country s political problems need look no further than the Algerian women s movement for a change of mind. Twenty-five years ago, a unique relationship developed between Algeria and the non-profit organization, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), which is going strong even …

NEW YORK: Many conflicts are caused or inflamed by water scarcity. The conflicts from Chad to Darfur, Sudan, to the Ogaden Desert in Ethiopia, to Somalia and its pirates, and across to Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, lie in a great arc of arid lands where water scarcity is leading to failed crops, dying livestock, …

LONDON: All epoch-defining events are the result of conjunctures – the correlation of normally unconnected events that jolt humanity out of a rut. Such conjunctures create what the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “Black Swans – unpredictable events with a vast impact. A small number of Black Swans, Taleb believes, “explain almost everything in our …

TEL AVIV: In January 2000, several days after the crucial meeting between then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa, which took place under the auspices of President Bill Clinton in Shepherdstown, Virginia, I received a copy of the draft agreement the United States had presented both parties. Being a seasoned political …

You have to give it to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – he really knows how to create controversy. At the Geneva conference on racism yesterday, he questioned the manner in which the State of Israel was created, blaming the ensemble guilt of European anti-Semitism as the locomotive behind the seeding of a racist entity in …

BOULDER, Colorado: Passover came and went, and Jews around the world celebrated with ritual foods, prayers and a retelling of their ancient story. The Exodus narrative -about the struggle to endure under the tyrannical rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh – is arguably the central organizing principle within Judaism. It offers a template for faith in …

President Barack Obama s visit to Turkey could not have gone better in terms of winning Turkish hearts and minds. Obama did all the right things, visiting Ataturk s mausoleum, the Blue Mosque and the Turkish parliament, capturing the complexity of a country that is Turkish by birth, Muslim in culture and western in its …

GAZA/JERUSALEM: As representatives of Hamas and Fatah meet for the fourth round of national unity talks in Cairo, not only Palestinians but also Americans and Europeans will be watching closely. The top-level talks, hosted by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, will be crucial to ending nearly two years of bloody confrontation between Hamas-ruled Gaza and …

Why did President Barack Hussein Obama visit Turkey so soon? Considering that Turkey and the United States have a long history of strategic relations both at the bilateral level and in the context of the North Atlantic alliance, the opening question may seem redundant. However, it is not. What is unusual in Obama s state …

SINGAPORE: The world will be enveloped in a heavy cloud of gloom and doom this year. Economies will sputter, governments will fall, and companies will fail. But the biggest danger of all is a sense of hopelessness. Preventing this requires resolving some large and apparently intractable problem. Closing the Doha Round of world trade talks …