Since she was appointed as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister in July of 2011, Hina Rabbani Khar has had to deal with the fallout from the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, a deterioration in relations with …
Pakistan
Pakistan Still Propping Up the Taliban, Alleges Secret NATO Report
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister must have really regretted getting on that flight to Kabul this morning. About the time Hina Rabbani Khar was winging her way over the Hindu Kush for a friendly visit to repair relations between the …
What the World Learns from What Obama Didn’t Say
Strategic decision-makers in the Middle East, Europe and Asia who stayed up late to catch President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday may have initially wondered why they had bothered. In sharp contrast to the Bush era when three quarters of a typical SOTU address covered matters of national security and the projection …
Faces of Guantanamo: Detainees Who Were Unjustly Imprisoned
Jan. 11 marks ten years since the first detainees arrived at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Of the 779 imprisoned there since January 2002, only a small minority had any real ties to al-Qaeda. Many were arrested …
Forty Years After Its Bloody Independence, Bangladesh Looks to Its Past to Redeem Its Future
Forty years ago on Dec. 16, in front of massed throngs in Dhaka, the commander of the eastern wing of the Pakistani army tendered his country’s unconditional surrender to an Indian counterpart. That act signaled the end of a …
Armed Camps: Where Militaries Meddle with Democracy
The Egyptian military’s latest attempt to circumvent the results of national elections has stoked scrutiny of the top brass in Cairo. Global Spin looks at countries where the army is currently meddling in politics.
Planet 7 Billion: Five Crisis Hotspots to Watch
The following is a guest post from TIME contributor Joe Jackson.
As the planet’s population climbs towards a new U.N.-projected peak of 10.1 billion by the turn of the next century, competition for resources within and between states will likely intensify. So too, goes the logic, will the number of resulting conflicts over oil, …
France’s Counter-Terrorism Ace Finds Himself Under Scrutiny
For the past three decades he’s been known as “The Sheriff”, “The Admiral”, and more generally as the world-famous icon of French counter-terrorism. The pipe-smoking, Magnum-packing judge became counter-terrorism’s international celebrity through exploits that included (but were far from limited to) tracking down and …
Why the CIA’s Vaccine Ruse Is a Setback for Global Health
Last week, the Guardian broke the news that in the run-up to the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, the CIA used a vaccination campaign as a ruse to get DNA evidence from the al-Qaeda leader’s kids. With help from a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, they set up clinics in two neighborhoods, delivering doses of the Hepatitis B …
What Happens When Journalists Take on Pakistan’s ISI
Omar Waraich examines for TIME what happens when a Pakistani journalist dares to criticize the powerful Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Although the ISI was originally conceived as an external intelligence agency, it has a profound influence on Pakistan’s domestic politics, and is now widely accused of carrying out …
The Afghanistan Drawdown: The Limits of American Power
Swampland’s Michael Crowley examines the politics and regional implications of President Obama’s announcement last night that the U.S. will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. While the decision might have been inevitable, many Republicans have already begun to call the president a ‘declinist.’ Crowley contends, …
World Refugee Day: Three Things You Must Know
Today marks 60 years since the founding of the UN refugee agency. Initially tasked with assisting 2.1 million Europeans displaced by World War II, it now works in 120 countries and is charged with helping millions more. In a cover story for TIME last year, Krista Mahr reported that the system is over-stretched and under-funded. The …
Refugee Case Highlights Global Plight of Ahmadi Muslims
Almost 100 Pakistani refugees, including dozens of children and a month-old infant, were freed from a Thai immigration prison on Monday, after a rights group put up a $150,000 bond for their release. The men, women and children, all members of Ahmadiya, a minority Muslim sect, were detained in police raids between December and …