Af-Pak

Tajikistan: The Most Failed State You Know Least About

Of the five Central Asian “stans” straddling the crossroads between China and the Middle East, Russia and South Asia, Tajikistan seems easy to overlook. It doesn’t have Uzbekistan’s large population and historic cities, nor Kyrgyzstan’s jumble of U.S. and Russian military bases, nor Kazakhstan’s vast reserves of natural gas. But …

Obama in the U.K.: Pomp and Circumstance, but What Does It Mean?

Not everyone welcomes the visit by the leader of the free world to London. There was the smartly dressed woman who found herself prevented from crossing Whitehall. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Do I look like a terrorist?”

On the opposite side of the road, some 30 demonstrators protested for a different reason. At nearby Downing …

Global Briefing: Bosom Buddies and the Same Old Bad Guys

Anglo Unity: Fresh from his late Monday night arrival in Ireland, President Obama meets U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron in London today, as the White House steps up its efforts to rekindle the much-touted “special relationship” between the across-the-pond allies. As Catherine Mayer writes, they do have a lot to discuss.

Bursting the

U.S., Chinese Interests on Display in Karachi Raid

As news emerged Monday about the attack on a naval base in Karachi, it appeared that Pakistan’s ally China might also be caught up in the mayhem. Some initial reports suggested that Chinese military personnel were being held hostage. That news was later denied by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. My colleague Omar Waraich’s story

Obama: So Loved in Britain, He Might Consider Staying

The President was supposed to arrive for his two-day state visit to the U.K. on the morning of May 24. Instead, a plume of volcanic ash from Iceland forced a change of plan that saw POTUS curtail his trip to his ancestral homeland, Ireland, and head for London before Air Force One could be grounded. As officials scrambled to find him a …

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 …

Global Briefing: Hollow Rhetoric and Bad Ideas

Obama’s Cairo II: At 11:45am EST, President Obama will deliver his latest speech on the Mideast from the State Department. TIME and Global Spin’s Tony Karon writes that the Washington venue is important: “Obama’s Mideast ‘reset’ speech is not aimed primarily at the newly empowered Arab public; its primary audience is Washington, where the …

Amid U.S. Doubts, Pakistan Finds Old Friends in China

The visit to China by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has been widely described as an effort to seek support from an old friend at a time when Pakistan’s government and military are facing difficult questions over the degree of official complicity in sheltering Osama bin Laden. But even as China has defended Pakistan’s …

Global Briefing: Crimes and Misdemeanors

L’affaire DSK: The arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual-assault charges in New York has plunged France into a bout of “soul searching” and probably removes the greatest threat to unpopular French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rule in upcoming elections. TIME’s global business correspondent Michael …

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