Abdur Rahman Chowdhury

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to get involved in the Syrian crisis and allowing his air force to launch massive air strikes against the opposition forces have dramatically altered the warfare trajectory. Though Moscow insisted that the airstrikes targeted Islamic State (IS) militants, the reports emanating from Syria belied this claim. The footage taken from […]

The death, destruction and suffering inflicted by a four-year-long civil war in Syria have now reached a breaking point. More than 250,000 people have been killed and about a million have been seriously injured. Not a single city has been spared from bombings either by forces loyal to the Assad regime or by the rebel […]

Jeb Bush, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls and brother of former President George Bush, accused President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of abandoning Iraq too early. Bush believed troops were withdrawn from Iraq before the mission was accomplished. The Bush brothers are not held in high esteem but on this issue […]

The debate over the Iran nuclear agreement has dominated the media and the political arena in the United States, since the deal was stuck on July 14. It will continue to remain so until September 17, 2015, when the deadline for the US Congress approaches to either accept or reject the agreement. The Republican members […]

Following protracted negotiations lasting for weeks, Iran and US-led western countries signed a historic nuclear agreement on July 16. The agreement is the revised and comprehensive version of the framework agreed in April. Iran will reduce its number of uranium centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,000 and its stockpiles of enriched uranium will be reduced from […]

Hisham Barakat, Egypt’s chief government prosecutor, was assassinated in Cairo on June 29. A vehicle laden with high explosives hit the convoy carrying Barakat shortly after he left home. Seven police personnel assigned to his security were seriously wounded. This happened a day before the second anniversary of the removal of Morsi’s government. Three days […]

The Washington Post, in its editorial on June 12, denounced the human rights records of Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. It referred to the alleged punishment given to Raif Badawi, a blogger in Saudi Arabia, who was arrested in 2012 for his proposal that there should be an open debate about “interpretations of Islam”. Badawi was […]

Last week people mourned the passing away of Charles Kennedy in the UK, Tariq Aziz in Iraq and Sheikh Mohammed Al-Hanooti in Virginia. They came into prominence on their own merits and influenced the lives of people by their thoughts and actions. The people of the UK, like some other countries, have fallen hostage to […]

Major headlines in the international media captured boatloads of people reaching the shores of Indonesia and Malaysia after being at sea for several days. They are the Rohingya Muslims, an unwanted community in Myanmar. About 800 boat passengers left home allured by human traffickers to escape persecution at home. They were also assured of jobs […]

A pattern of racial violence has been set in motion in the US since the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida in the summer of 2012. In this violence the victims are invariably black youths and the perpetrators are white police officials. These incidents have common traits: the local black community will protest, followed by […]