In The News

Transcript of Pakistan at the Crossroads – Part II

August 9, 2007
On August 7, more than a month before Ms. Benazir Bhutto announced the date of her return to Pakistan, she sat down with YaleGlobal Online editor Nayan Chanda to discuss the state of her country and why she was determined to return home. She did return as she had said she would, and on December 27, 2007, she was killed in a terrorist attack. It was a death as foretold. Her comment on the task at...

Pakistan at the Crossroads – Part I

Philip H. Gordon August 7, 2007
The US scrambles to manage multiple fronts in its war against terror. The US invaded Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks, forcing the Taliban government to fall. But six years later, the nation is still far from secure and cannot hope to achieve stability without assistance from Pakistan, where Al Qaeda fighters are now said to hide. This two-part series examines various efforts afoot to...

Kenyan Farmers’ Fate Caught Up in US Aid Rules

Celia W. Dugger August 2, 2007
US legislators debate a massive farm bill – estimated at more than $260 billion – which will fund loans, subsidies, conservation and many other agriculture activities over the next five years. The Bush administration has proposed allowing the purchase of up to $300 million worth of food in poor countries to quicken response times during times of emergency. The US often provides food aid to Africa...

Grand Strategy for a Divided America

Charles A. Kupchan August 1, 2007
The US has overextended itself on international security matters, failing to gain widespread cooperation with the international community in recent years. As a result, the US has failed in achieving some major goals – promoting democracy, defeating terror and encouraging free trade to alleviate poverty. US voters, observing mounting debt, with little results, are increasingly divided about how to...

Summer of Setbacks

Ernesto Zedillo August 1, 2007
Summer of 2007 may well be remembered for a string of bad financial news: increasing numbers of homeowners in the US struggling to pay home mortgages, the decline of the US dollar, and climbing oil prices as conflict and tension linger in the Middle East. Yet the world economy flourishes despite shocks in foreign exchange and the debt markets. Ernesto Zedillo, director of Yale Center for the...

Continued Decline Is Not Inevitable

Marina Ottaway July 31, 2007
Multi-party elections throughout the Middle East may be manipulated, but voters do get a voice. Voters increasingly turn to Islamist parties in seeking reform and satisfying public needs. “Secular parties – that is parties that do not explicitly derive their ideology from Islam, but are not necessarily anti-Islamic or anti-religion – played a central role in Arab politics in the past, writes...

Deconstructing Islamist Participation

Amr Hamzawy July 31, 2007
The participation of Islamic parties in political processes throughout the Arab world has raised concerns about their ability to rule. Amr Hamzawy, a senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, analyzes three forms of Islamist political parties of the Middle East: Some Islamic regimes possess the means to exercise violence, some support cooperation, while others have fragile...