Kyrgyzstan is imploding again. Didn’t they just have two major revolutions in the last few years. Are their leaders that inept? It’s worse in the sticks, where anti-Uzbek riots are happening now.
The New York Times’ William Dalrymple makes comparisons between what NATO is having to contend with in Afghanistan and what the British Empire had to deal with 170 years ago.
Like a shameless dog, Hamid Kharzai comes back to lick the hand that feeds him. He is desperate at this point to hold on to power. He was the only game in town when President Bush was in office. Though I was not thrilled with his overtures to Iran, I would have been happier to have seen Abdullah Abdullah win the Prime Minister’s seat rather than this cretin.
Though I wish the Afghan people the best in crushing the Taliban, I also hope that their taste in leaders changes, and that they find one who is more upstanding and less stoned than this one.
Turkey is at a crossroads. They have two choices to make: to attempt to integrate with Europe (who don’t really want them), or to make overtures to Islamists as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s Prime Minister, leans in this direction. The next round of elections will decide in which camp Turkey ends up.
Soner Cagaptay, author of the article, covers Turkish politics at Newsweek.com.
The ugly situation in Greece should serve as a warning to American liberals that promising the moon to employees who demand more and more while doing less and less will indeed produce dire consequences. The BBC provides a gory example here.
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La Russophobe is one of my favorite daily reads, namely because Kim Zigfeld napalms Russia’s political elite with a fury reserved for Satan. As wonderful as she is, she can’t cover Russia all by herself. She lists ten of the best blogs covering the mess that is modern Russia here. All of them, especially Caucasian Knot, make for intriguing reading.
Golnaz Esfandiari of Persian Letters is doing stellar work covering Iran as it nears the anniversary of the sham election Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used to rob the will of the Iranian people with. In the link, Mehdi Karrubi is mentioned to be asking for permission, along with Mir Hossein Mousavi, to have a rally in Tehran to mark the occasion. They never seem to get the permission to do so. Readers, you may wish to add this blog to your RSS feed if Persian politics in within your sphere of interest. As an aside, it is my hope that the Iranian people can either revolt or at least hold off until we elect a president who will actually back a freedom-loving people rather than engage in coward’s talk and platitudes to a despotic regime.
Though thought of as a Francophone country, Rwanda has decided its future is better served educating the country’s children in English. The French may not care to hear that, but the reality is that if Rwanda wants to enter the world marketplace, French isn’t going to cut it in international business.
HT: MacLean’s.
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Gordon Chang analyzes China’s ‘paper tiger’ economy over at World Affairs Journal.
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