S Mubashir Noor

Pan-Islamic unity, the kind preached by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the recent Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Istanbul, is not a bridge too far if all parties check their egos at the door. Unfortunately, that does not seem likely anytime soon. To rework J K Rowling’s prose, the problem with the […]

Continuing the Obama administration’s proud tradition of flouting foreign policy orthodoxy, John Kerry on April 11 became the first sitting US Secretary of State to visit Japan’s national memorial for the victims of Hiroshima’s nuclear holocaust. In the pursuant presser, a clearly shaken Kerry spoke of the “gut-wrenching display” that “tugs at all of your […]

As spring returns to Pakistan, so does the national cricket board’s zealous craving to clean house. Shahid Afridi recently stepped down as captain of the Twenty20 (T20) squad after being called everything from “clueless” to a “flu” that ailed his charges’ match awareness. Ditto head coach, Waqar Younis, once he realised the Pakistan Cricket Board […]

Belgium’s capital Brussels is a cosmopolis like no other. Key institutions of the European Union (EU) call it home and so does NATO. It is, however, a city of contradictions. Though Brussels brings together regional policymakers to roadmap Europe’s future, it also has a dark underbelly that came into focus after the Paris attacks in […]

Establishment Republicans are not sniggering at Donald Trump’s antics anymore as he keeps notching primaries and threatens to go solo in November if party insiders scheme to deny him the nomination. Echoes of similarly irate conservative Teddy Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” party sinking the Republican (GOP) national campaign in 1912 get louder every time […]

Sri Lanka’s civil war ended seven years ago, but social fault-lines dividing the country have not yet closed. Ethnic Tamils worldwide still resent the Sinhalese-dominated state for alleged war crimes committed during the insurgency and for its piecemeal efforts at resettling internally displaced Tamils. What pains them more than material losses wrought by two decades […]

British newspaper Daily Mail reported on March 2 that Bangladesh’s Supreme Court is now reviewing a petition to remove Islam as the state religion. It will decide whether the former President Muhammad Ershad’s 1988 decision designating Islam as such was illegal or not. A hearing scheduled for late March takes place against the backdrop of […]

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or simply North Korea, three months into 2016, faces a new round of punitive UN sanctions. The long-standing communist regime in Pyongyang that world powers decry as repressive and belligerent to neighbours is being censured for conducting an unverified hydrogen bomb test in January and launching a satellite […]

The iconic American sitcom Seinfeld has this episode where George Costanza, the show’s lovable loser, mopes to friend Jerry Seinfeld: “My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have. It has all been wrong.” Jerry deadpans back, “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would […]

When his time is done, China will remember President Xi Jinping as its most transformative leader. Since taking office in March 2013, Jinping has not only turbocharged forerunner Deng Xiaoping’s outward-looking economics, but has also mapped a foreign policy course moored to win-win partnerships. His China proves that major power privilege and conditional handouts in […]