Middle East

AFP and Reuters reported that Lebanon’s Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri announced on Thursday (10 Sep 2009) that he was stepping down, accusing the Hizbullah-led opposition of blocking weeks of efforts to unlock a political stalemate. “Given that my commitment to forming a government of national unity has run up against difficulties that everyone now knows...
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Recent elections in Iran and Afghanistan have one very important thing in common: very strong evidence of fraud. This should not be very surprising, but it should give pause in that some areas of both countries saw turnout greater than the actual number of voters. While Iran does not put up too much...
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Human trafficking is a particularly taboo subject in the Middle East. Many experts have recommended that acknowledging the problem is the first step towards solving it. Bahrain recently hosted the “Human Trafficking at the Crossroads” conference in order address this long-standing taboo topic. During the conference, held the first week of March 2009, the first...
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Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and the forthcoming Stones in Schools spoke last night at the Stern School of Business in New York. Here are a few highlights: • The Pennies for Peace program of Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute is a grassroots campaign started by school kids to donate pennies to build schools,...
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Given the Obama regime’s focus on diplomatic relations in South-Central Asia, a recent piece by Parag Khanna that appeared in Foreign Policy is timely and relevant. His analysis of the ‘Af-pak’ issue displays a detailed understanding not only of U.S. strategy toward the region, but also the strategies of the not so obvious...
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Like most people who have some vague idea as to the current Middle East situation, a cease-fire comes as a sigh of relief. However, I’m confused about this whole situation and don’t really understand the Israeli goals or how anything positive will actually come from the most recent fighting. There has been...
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