Ten years ago next month, the world watched in horror as Afghanistan’s Taliban regime blew up one of the ancient world’s most inspiring works of art: two standing Buddha statues, one at 125 feet and the other at 180, that had been carved in a cliff face in the remote Bamiyan valley. Within days the Taliban had all but decimated the …
To Intervene, Or Not To Intervene
To further Tony’s excellent post yesterday on obstacles that any eventual Western military action in or around Libya will face, it will be interesting to watch in the coming hours and days whether a more consistent view on outside intervention forms on the Libyan street. For the moment (as the NY Times piece Tony refers to notes) there …
A Twist in Grameen Bank Founder’s Ouster: Not Fired After All?
The case of Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning founder of the Grameen Bank, gets curiouser and curiouser. Earlier today, Grameen announced that Bangladesh’s Central Bank had fired Yunus, apparently because he had stayed on beyond the legal retirement age.That was a surprise in itself. Monday’s board meeting, which was billed as a …
Global Briefing, Mar. 2, 2011: Ten Stories to Start Your Day
Another Assassination: TIME’s Aryn Baker links the killing of Pakistan’s minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, to the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.
Taking Tripoli — Abigail Hauslohner visits a resistance camp in “Free Libya,” where a rag-tag group of volunteers are readying for battle; Tony Karon considers the …
Nobel Laureate Yunus Ousted from Microfinance Bank
Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning founding father of microfinance, has been pushed out of the Grameen Bank. The board of the bank held an inconclusive meeting on Monday to determine whether he would stay. Apparently, efforts to work out a face-saving exit have failed. The official reason given by the Bangladeshi government, which …
South Africa’s Rainbow Nation: Still Stuck on Color
Two race scandals dominate the headlines in South Africa today, both of them concerning slurs against the colored community of the Western Cape, where I live. On Sunday, socialite Nomakula “Kuli” Roberts wrote a poorly conceived and dreadfully executed column about the characteristics supposedly shared by all colored women in her Bitch’s …
How Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws Are Tearing The Country Apart
In a sign of Pakistan’s increasing instability gunmen attacked and killed Pakistan’s minister for religious minorities earlier this morning. Shahbaz Bhatti, a member of Pakistan’s minority Christian community, had been vocal about Pakistan’s draconian anti-blasphemy laws. And he is not the first: in January, Salmaan Taseer, the …
Strong Obstacles Remain to Western Military Intervention in Libya
An international community that in 2005 at the United Nations adopted the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) protocol might seem obliged to intervene directly in Libya. R2P, after all, holds that if a state is unable to protect its citizens from genocide or other mass atrocities, the international community has a responsibility to …
Why ‘Domestic’ Work is a Global Issue
If there was a runner-up award for oldest profession, ‘servant’ would certainly have a shot. But domestic work, like sex work, is rarely treated as real labor, which explains in part why domestic laborers are all-too-often abused, their triumphs downplayed, their work swept under the door. It also explains why, despite links to slavery, …
Can Obama and Calderon Solve Mexico’s Bloodshed — and the Bad Blood?
Are the U.S. and Mexico in “distant neighbors” mode again?
In the wake of last month’s murder of a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, by narco-criminals on a Mexican highway, the façade of U.S.-Mexico drug-war camaraderie appears to be cracking. Already irked by recently WikiLeaked cables between U.S. diplomats …
The Raymond Davis Affair: Are CIA and ISI Ties Doomed?
On Swampland, TIME contributor Mark Benjamin blogs about the breakdown between Washington and Islamabad over the planned trial of Raymond Davis, a U.S. CIA agent responsible for the deaths of three Pakistanis in the city of Lahore. U.S. officials are frantically trying to broker a deal that will avoid a public trial in Pakistan. Benjamin …
After Egypt, A Palestinian Techie Takes to the Streets
Like most Palestinian children, Mohammad Khatib was raised to avoid politics, widely understood as a shortcut to an early grave or an Israeli prison. Khatib took the advice and bent to his studies. But on Feb. 2 he noticed that a friend had updated her Facebook status to say she was going to demonstrate in solidarity with Egyptians …
Zimbabwe: Virtually No Revolution
There’s been much speculation about whether Egyptian-style uprisings might spread south across the Sahara into Africa, particularly to the seat of the continent’s most notorious despot, Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s regime has been particularly paranoid about the possibility, arresting 46 people for watching news reports of the rebellions in …