Having been a columnist for Newsweek International for 18 years, I would suggest this to fellow G2K list members: Don't take the magazine's selection of "leaders to watch" too seriously. The choices are made quite arbitarily and, I submit, often without genuine in-depth knowledge of various regions. To name only one person -- Mohsen Kadivar -- in a region of more than 300 million people is actually quite capricious. Surely there are other men and women who might qualify for the moniker of...

It's nice that some Iraqis are optimistic about the upcoming election. But let's not forget that an election is only a process, a means toward establishing a governing order. Implicit in the trust that people invest in election is that those who they elect are capable of good governance and policymaking. Has anyone given much thought to who the candidates are? And their qualifications? An election isn't a magic bullet that guarantees a subsequent period of good governance. I refer G2K lis...

Regardless of Iraq's internal situation prior to the US invasion in 2003, the fact remains that the liberation and occupation have resulted in anarchy where most instruments of governance cannot function. In my view, it's unlikely that Iraq can be restored to any semblance of a functioning society in the foreseeable future because of the 2003 war and now certainly because of the unending domestic turbulence. It seems to me that three things need to be addressed with regard to Iraq: 1....

Michael Axworthy writes: "The doctrine that values of freedom and democracy are culturally relative, and therefore unsuitable in various parts of the world, is old and creaks. I recall it being used by people on the left in the early 80's about countries in Eastern Europe that are now members of the EU and NATO, as a result of democratic elections. It is a patronising argument, and its companion, that the West should stay out of Africa, or the Middle East, or East Asia, has been a favourit...

The Saudis have long had close ties with Pakistan. They generously finance the madrasas, particularly those that emphasize a constructionist view of Islam. They also hire Pakistani troops and intelligence personnel, often for protection of assorted Saudi royalty. Some Saudi princes are known to favor Pakistani brides. All this by way of saying that, when it comes to weighing in on the intractable Pakistan-India dispute over Kashmir and other disputed territories, the Saudi have always ta...

Iraq is lost, at least for the foreseeable future, as a functioning society. It is lost even more as a functioning democracy. It is lost as a place where various ethnic communities can live in harmony to pursue a common goal of eradicating poverty and engendering prosperity. All this needn't have been.

It may well be that some Iraqis would want a continued US presence in their country because of a belief that the Americans would somehow protect various ethnic elements from going after one another with blood on their minds. My own experience in the Middle East and elsewhere in the developing world suggests that there's usually a substantial difference between what people say for the sake of convenience and out of the exigencies of self-interest, and what they truly believe. Do Kurds, Shias, ...

The potential of a "tyranny of the majority" always exists in any society, even a democratic one. And James Madison was quite precient about this in his commentary. In my native India, this argument has often been used by minority Muslims, who point to the fact that 80 percent of India's population consists of Hindus. But India has nevertheless managed to remain a secular state where minorities of all sorts are respected and are accorded the same rights and privileges as the majority. Ind...

There is no way out of the Iraq quagmire other than for the US and other well-meaning liberators to get out, thereby cutting their own losses. The "significantly smart" members of the Gulf2000 List can cogitate all they want, but I'm afraid that Iraq is "lost." It is lost in the sense that the current prescription of imposing elections on an unwilling and unacceoting electorate isn't going to work. Nor is the imposition of more troops to maintain law and order. As I've written before in ...

The potential of a "tyranny of the majority" always exists in any society, even a democratic one. And James Madison was quite prescient about this in his commentary. In my native India, this argument has often been used by minority Muslims, who point to the fact that 80 percent of India's population consists of Hindus. But India has nevertheless managed to remain a secular state where minorities of all sorts are respected and are accorded the same rights and privileges as the majority. Ind...

What will it take to end global poverty? By Jack Freeman Written for Earthtimes This June it will be five years since the nations of the United Nations agreed upon a set of "Millennium Development Goals" -- basically aimed at halving the amount of extreme poverty on the planet by the year 2015 -- and pledged their governments to work toward achieving them. Customarily the UN puts off conducting formal reviews of its major resolutions and their implementation until at least 10 years hav...

I received this letter from a young woman who I'd mentored at The Earth Times. I was so touched by what she said that I thought I should share the note. (I have withheld her name.) Dear Pranay: Happy New Year! I was delighted to find an e-mail from you in my inbox the other day. I looked you up on the internet recently (the power of Google!) in order to find contact information for you, and I stumbled upon your Website. I found the “journalism” section quite interesting, and many of th...

I agree that "patience" is required for rebuilding any society, particularly one that was working fine until the US "liberation" happened along. Earle refers to the "insurgents." They flourish not in a vacuum but as an integral part of the very society that we -- the US -- are trying to rebuild after destroying it. They aren't aliens, as we are, but a part of the everyday life of Iraq. I'm afraid the situation in Iraq has gone well past the point where these so-called insurgents can be c...

Why do I have this increasingly weary sense that none of the electioneering, media propaganda, and diplomatic "make nice" is going to work? Look, everyday Iraqis don't want the US around on their soil. It should be pretty clear by now to all that even if they are force-fed these so-called elections, Iraqis are far, far away from establishing responsible institutions of good goverance that would be necessary to implement the promise of genuine democracy. It's just not going to happen. Iraq...

One of journalism's great figures, Seymour Topping, has just come out with a new novel, "Fatal Crossroads: A Novel of Vietnam 1945." It is published by EastBridge Books. Topping has devoted much of his 50 years in journalism to covering Vietnam and China as a correspondent and editor. He became the first American correspondent to be stationed in Vietnam after World War II when in 1950 after reporting the Chinese civil war for three years he opened the Associated Press bureau in Saigon. Fol...