Barack Obama is in office. Guantanamo is closing (though not immediately), America’s interest in Iraq seems to finally be fizzling and the new President gave a distinctive address to the people of the Middle East via al-Arabiya, al-Jazeera’s quietist rival.…
Iran: Asia’s Other Rising Power
As Israeli tanks and soldiers pound their way through the Mediterranean’s most destitute outpost, let’s think about how we arrived at this point. During the 2006 war between the Israeli state and Hezbollah, the Middle East raged with hell fire…
Pakistan’s Confused Militants
I was sitting with my family in an Indian restaurant in Queens, New York at our annual pre-Thanksgiving dinner as my eye occasionally darted up to the screen overhead with images of Mumbai’s Taj Hotel smoldering on a Hindi-language satellite…
From South to South Part 2
Refugees as Migrants: The Rohingya in Pakistan Bouncing in and out of muddy pot-holes, I noticed something fairly unusual in Pakistan. In a nation with perhaps the most feverish cricket obsession in the commonwealth, it is almost a strange…
From South to South Part 1
Burma’s stateless minority under the tip of globalizations’ spear A column of frail women and children in brilliant cotton tunics deftly balance aluminum jars atop their heads as they trundle down a steep, eroded jungle hillside. They are spending most…
A “Credible” Election
This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post. Today Pakistan awoke under a spell of relief. The electoral results seem, at least for the time being, to have been accepted as a sounding defeat by the ruling PML-Q. Rather than…