In The News

Senators Demand Ban on Imports from Burma

Anwar Iqbal June 5, 2003
In the wake of the detainment of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the opposition party in Myanmar, two US senators are proposing a legislation to ban all imports from the country until it improves its record on human rights and democracy. If the bill passes, the US will join business and labor groups that have already united in support of sanctions. Already, many major...

The Arch of Globalization

Abdel-Moneim June 5, 2003
In the first installment of a two-part essay, Abdel-Moneim, director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt, offers five possible genealogies of the US-led war in Iraq. First, he argues, the war was about opening up the Middle East to processes of globalization. Globalization has been uneven, affecting world regions and countries differently, and the Middle East is the...

America's War on Terror Goes Awry in Pakistan

Ahmed Rashid June 4, 2003
Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, offers a scathing indictment of US foreign policy in South Asia, post-September 11. Rashid argues that US-led military action and victory in Afghanistan did not eradicate the Islamic fundamentalist ideology of the Taliban. Rather, Taliban's...

Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts

Patrick E. Tyler June 4, 2003
Though the Egyptian government has been cooperating with the American CIA for years, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says that the US failed to heed warnings from Egypt of an imminent terrorist attack against the US prior to September 11. The CIA denies that such intelligence was received, but is currently cooperating closely with Egypt because of the country’s extensive sources within Al Qaeda...

In Search of the Iraqi Pie

Charubala Annuncio June 3, 2003
Preliminary work on the reconstruction of Iraq has begun, and firms from a variety of countries are already lined up for possible contracts. This article from Outlook India Magazine discusses the prospects for Indian companies hoping to get some of the lucrative sub-contracts in the reconstruction. Since the contract assignment process is mostly run by the Americans, the authors point out that...

Russia Joins the US in Tackling North Korean Challenge

Alexander Lukin June 2, 2003
By joining its voice with the US condemnation of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Russia is making a mid-course correction of its policy toward the Korean peninsula that is designed to preserve its influence. Russian scholar Alexander Lukin posits four reasons why Moscow is in a good position to help bring about a peaceful settlement with North Korea and end the crisis. First,...

A Tale of Two Visions

Omayma Abdel-Latif May 30, 2003
After the war on Iraq, Arab intellectuals have grouped into two camps and centered their argument on what really is ahead and what the Arab world should do next. While the liberals and democrats are pro-U.S. in many ways and pushing for reforms in the region, the Islamists and radicals are still opposed to Western intervention of any sort and are holding fast to their ideologies. In this article...