In The News

Islamic Challenge to Indonesia’s Democracy

Sadanand Dhume October 15, 2008
Gains by radical parties around the globe highlight democracy’s ongoing vulnerability to anti-democratic movements. Indonesia – with its free press, stable economy, free elections, tolerant and inclusive policy – is no exception. But in local Indonesian politics, the radical Islamic Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) has made dramatic gains, with extremists pressing for dress codes, Koran reading...

Pakistan Democracy: An Interview with Husain Haqqani

October 15, 2008
With a democratic government now in place in Islamabad, Pakistan has set out to redefine goals for its people and communicate for greater predictability and security. In this interview with YaleGlobal editor Nayan Chanda, Husain Haqqani – ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, as well as leading journalist and former advisor to Pakistani prime ministers including the late Benazir Bhutto –...

The Fragility of the Global Nuclear Order

Graham Allison October 1, 2008
In 1968, the international community joined forces on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, taking decisive action before crisis hit. Forty years later, “global trend lines in all things nuclear are worsening,” note Harvard professor Graham Allison and Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico and director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, in an essay for the Boston Globe. Both...

Pakistan on the Brink

Ahmed Rashid September 19, 2008
The US shotgun marriage with Pakistan, arranged after the 9/11 attacks in order to launch the US “war on terror,” has begun to fall apart, and in the process endangers the very state of Pakistan. The US detoured to Iraq and relied on Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf as an ally to manage the region. He’s gone and during the long period of US neglect, both Afghanistan, original...

Will Kashmir Protests and Terrorism Thwart India’s Global Ambitions?

Harsh V. Pant September 15, 2008
Before summer of 2008, India and Pakistan were gradually normalizing relations and edging toward agreement on territorial claims in Kashmir. But the longstanding dispute, in play since Pakistan separated from India, remains a live issue for politicians and extremists in India and abroad, to exploit and throw a spanner in the works for the country’s global ambition, suggests Harsh V. Pant,...

Ending Lapse into Lawlessness

Kenneth Roth August 29, 2008
The US president has denied that the country relies on torture, but human-rights advocates do not agree with the country’s definitions of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or a process that limits harsh treatment to those who are not US citizens. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, urges candidates for US president to close detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay and end...

A Door Opens for Reform in Pakistan – Part II

Ziad Haider August 25, 2008
Pakistan has long failed to meet the needs of its own citizens, and this two-part YaleGlobal series explores how weak governance and over-reliance on military solutions have contributed to political turmoil and a build-up of extremism. In the rugged federally administered tribal areas, the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulations, an outmoded legal system inherited from British colonial administration,...