Bobby Ghosh

TIME’s International Editor, Aparisim ‘Bobby’ Ghosh is a frequent writer and commentator on world affairs.

Articles from Contributor

How a Late Bollywood Icon Saved This Correspondent’s Life


RIP Shammi Kapoor, Bollywood star of the 1960s. You danced, you sang, you romanced, you made movies fun. And although you didn’t know it, you saved my life.

Long before Indian song-and-dance movies became cool in the West, they were huge in the Middle East. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Bollywood stars like Raj Kapoor (Shammi’s older …

From the Magazine: The Rise of Moderate Islam

As we wait for the Salafi leader Kamal Habib at the Cairo Journalists’ Union, a sudden panic comes over me. I’ve just noticed that my translator, Shahira Amin, an Egyptian journalist, is wearing a sleeveless top and that her hair is uncovered. In my experience, Salafis, adherents of a very strict school of Islam, take a dim view of such …

Turkey Inspires Islamists and Liberals, But in Very Different Ways

Everybody wants a piece of Turkey. On my sweep through Egypt and Tunisia, virtually everyone I met invoked the nation that bestrides the Bosphorus as one they’d like their own country to emulate. The Turks had just had a general election, and Arabs had watched it unfold on Al Jazeera and other TV channels. The vote was clean, mostly …

What’s So Scary About the Muslim Brotherhood?

Essam Erian throws his hands up in mock surrender. “I cannot answer this question,” he says, smiling broadly. “This is a question for me to ask, for you to answer.”

The question: What does the Muslim Brotherhood have to do to stop being portrayed as the bogeyman? The Egyptian Islamist movement has been trying very hard to shake …

Why the Muslim Brotherhood Are Egypt’s Best Democrats

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, many Western commentators were surprised by the ease with which Iraq’s religious movements adapted to multiparty democracy. The Shi’ite groups, in particular, were quick to organize into political parties, set up grass-roots organizations across the country and form practical coalitions ahead of …

The Saudis Take Charge in Yemen

With the Obama administration’s feeble attempts having failed, the task of brokering a peaceful end to Yemen’s civil war has fallen to Saudi Arabia. Wires are reporting that Riyadh has got the warring sides—President Ali Abdallah Saleh and the Ahmar clan—to agree a truce after days of bloodshed.

Reuters is reporting that Saleh …

A Devil Dog Finds His Best Angels

After several interruptions, I’ve finally finished the best book to land on my desk this year: “It Happened On The Way To War,” by Rye Barcott, a former Marine who has devoted his life to bringing development to one of the world’s worst slums. The book (published by Bloomsbury) chronicles the creation of Carolina for Kibera (CFK), a …

In Memoriam: Chris Hondros

War photographers are the bravest people I know. In many years of covering conflict, from Kashmir to Palestine to Iraq, I’ve had the honor to befriend and work with some of the finest, and bravest, of the breed. Few were in the league of Chris Hondros. I am heart-broken by the news that he and Tim Hetherington, another photographer, have …

The Rat’s Deserted. Hold the Champagne

News that Moussa Koussa, Libya’s foreign minister, has ditched the dictator and fled to London will boost the morale of the rebels and please NATO. A big-name defection may be exactly what it will take to shake Muammar Gaddafi’s resolve to fight till the bitter end. And they don’t come much bigger than Koussa, a former intelligence chief …

Endgame in Yemen: As Saleh sinks, what should the U.S. do?

Over dinner in Sana’a late last year, a European diplomat told me that President Ali Abdallah Saleh’s 32-year-old regime was unlikely to be toppled anytime soon. He offered four key reasons: “The army are with him and the tribes are with him—which means the people will never rise against him. And of course, the U.S. is with …

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