Dr HA Rizvi

Lack of clarity on the status of Musharraf and the judges issue, as well as indecision on economic and security policies raises doubts about whether or not societal forces will continue to maintain a friendly posture towards the government in the next six months

M.S. Swaminathan

Mark Dummett and Alastair Lawson

Dr Manzur Ejaz

The Maoist movement has shown that sometimes a movement believing in a violent revolution is the only way to usher in a contemporary democracy

Mao Zedong must be smiling over what happened in the Nepalese elections the other day. Even Mao’s countrymen may be wondering how some people can follow their prophet’s outdated revolutionary prescriptions and change the course of their fate.

Simon Jenkins

COME on, confess it, you have not enjoyed a story so much in years. A round-the-world marathon with all-in wrestling, kick boxing, rugby tackling and sanctimonious steeplechasing, staged free of charge in the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco by the International Olympics Committee — and before the Beijing games have even started. To add to the joy, nobody gets hurt except politicians.

A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world''s most vulnerable people are facing starvation Paul Vallely

A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world''s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages grow and cereal prices soar. It threatens to become the biggest crisis of the 21st century.

Workers from Bangladesh has lately been unjustly maligned as a purveyor of criminal activity within Saudi borders, and this sort of generalization is a gross injustice to the majority of the two million workers who come from that South Asian country, writes Tariq A. Al-Maeena of Arab News

Of late Bangladeshis have been attracting a lot of media attention, but mostly for wrong reasons. This group of expatriates has lately been unjustly maligned as a purveyor of criminal activity within the Kingdom’s borders, and this sort of generalization is a gross injustice to the majority of the two million workers who come from that South Asian country.

Mark Dummett

There is a simple enough way of judging how serious Bangladesh’s food crisis has become this year - it is to count the changing number of people queuing up to buy government-subsidised rice each day.
As the weeks have passed and the sun above Dhaka has become stronger, so the queues are now forming earlier, and more and more people are joining them.

Rakhal Das wants to be on the first train to Dhaka, the way he was on the last train from there to India more than 42 years ago

Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta

Rakhal Das, 54, wants to be on the first train to Dhaka, the way he was on the last train from there to India more than 42 years ago.

High in the Himalayas, Bhutan has always revelled in its isolation. That is why a somewhat reluctant electorate was apprehensive about what democracy might bring, Chris Morris

The day after its first parliamentary election, the world’s newest democracy is already learning that politics can spring a surprise. High in the Himalayas, Bhutan has always revelled in its isolation.

Is India, the world’s second most populous nation, facing a food crisis, asks Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Is India, the world’s second most populous nation, facing a food crisis?

This question is vexing policy makers and analysts alike even as creeping inflation - around 7% now - is sending jitters through the Congress party-led ruling coalition.

Jonathan Power

FIRST it was Mitt Romney who wrote in Foreign Affairs that “radical Islam’s threat is just as real as that posed before by the Nazis and the Soviet Union” And now, last week, it was John McCain saying the US needed a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”.

M Abdul Kabir

Not long ago, the idea of an objective and worthwhile anti-corruption drive was frowned upon given the impotence of the previous Bureau of Anti Corruption and the absence of good intentions of the earlier governments. Now such a crusade is going on, thanks to the present CTG’s laudable and moving initiatives. When the whole nation is eagerly waiting to see the outcome, however little promising it may be, of this daring drive, some influential quarters continue to insist on the administration to stop the campaign and release those captured. Clearly, this would be suicidal for the country should the government yield to their demand.

S. Haroon Ahmed and Saleem Asmi

PRIME Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s welcome move to revive student unions takes one back to the first all-Pakistan students’ body, the Democratic Students Federation.

This paved the way for the progressive outlook of the National Students Federation (NSF) and also the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA). The DSF is either ignored or misrepresented in most accounts of the students’ movement in Pakistan. At this critical juncture of Pakistan’s history, there is a need to set the record straight vis-à-vis the DSF.

Irfan Husain

WHAT happens to a man who has run a flourishing bank into bankruptcy, costing taxpayers billions, wiping out further billions in equity, and causing thousands of employees to lose their jobs? Well, in the case of Adam Applegarth, former chairman of Northern Rock, he is set to walk away with a 760,000-pound severance package.

By: Dr. Sultan Ahmad

Riazat Butt

The Quran was revealed over a period of more than 20 years, with the Prophet Muhammad receiving the first revelation in AD 610 in the Cave of Hira, near Mecca. He was told: “Read in the name of your Lord who created, created man from a clot. Read, for your Lord is most Generous, Who teaches by means of the pen, teaches man what he does not know.”
Muslim scholars therefore see the pursuit of knowledge as a duty, with the Quran containing several references to the rewards of learning.

Prof A F Salahuddin Ahmed

Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Foreign adviser

The ancient Greeks used to say, with a modicum of logic, as that they were wont to do in an intellectual discourse, that prior to placing your arguments, you must define your terms. A statement on 'foreign policy' should, therefore, must contain what the subject connotes: Tonight I shall, for the purpose of this discussion, take the foreign policy of a country to be the sum-total of its external interactions flowing from a conscious decision to advance the country's perceived national self-interest.