The Foreign Desk
Why do Pakistani lawyers want to ban the country’s favourite soft drink? (A clue: it’s made by minorities)
Generations of Pakistanis have grown up reaching out for the sweet and easy pleasures of Shezan soft drinks. Over five decades the company has cemented its reputation as a supplier not just to high street shops, but to hotels, airlines and the country’s armed forces.
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 12:14 pm
More than half of Afghanistan’s families live in extreme poverty
Leila is watching her baby intently, as his mouth moves trying to swallow the small blob of yellow peanut paste Dr Tayab has spooned gently into his mouth.
She sits on the floor of her one-room mud house and rocks his tiny, malnourished body on her lap. After a tense pause, the baby’s neck strains and [...]
By Sarah Jacobs | The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 15 February 2012 at 10:51 am
Bahrain: One year on
I am used to endless lies and criticism from the BNP and its favourite blogster, as well as Islamist ideologues who hate my work on anti-semitism and the off-shore press obsessed about Europe. But this is the first time that a government, Bahrain, has sent a 17 page letter to the British Government telling William Hague to shut me up.
By Denis MacShane | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 14 February 2012 at 5:13 pm
What’s amiss in India – is it jugaad?
For decades India has survived, and sometimes thrived, by turning muddle and adversity into success. In the days of the licence Raj, this enabled the country to work, creakily, until systems and machinery broke down and were patched up again. Hindustan Motors’ Ambassador car is perhaps the longest surviving example of patchwork success, with its [...]
By John Elliott | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 14 February 2012 at 2:18 pm
HIV orphans in Thailand prepare for the future
In Baan Gerda, a community for HIV infected or affected youngsters in Northern Thailand, a group of young people are finding themselves at the forefront of the battle to educate Thai youth about HIV.
By Eleanor Herzog | Health, Notebook, The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 14 February 2012 at 12:02 pm
Time for a reality check on the Sri Lankan civil war
Sri Lanka, much like Britain, has side-lined accountability long enough.
By Emanuel Stoakes | Notebook, The Foreign Desk | Monday, 13 February 2012 at 12:24 pm
Egypt changes course
America’s top general has been talking to Egypt’s top military leader about the future of US military aid, or “choices and consequences,” as a Pentagon spokesman put it delicately.
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk | Sunday, 12 February 2012 at 8:51 pm
Syria: Something must be done
I am no foreign policy expert, and so until now I have refrained from writing anything about Syria. Until now, I have instead confined myself to tweeting my simultaneous senses of frustration, helplessness and anguish about the situation, whilst faithfully following those on Twitter whom I have deemed better placed, either emotionally or intellectually, to comment on this crisis than I. (I have included here a list of Twitter accounts – some contentious, all compelling – that I have found indispensable to my embryonic understanding of what is going on.)
By Musa Okwonga | The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 8 February 2012 at 4:33 pm
India “in blundering retreat ” on corruption crisis
India’s endemic corruption is demolishing the credibility of its Congress-led coalition government and threatening prime minister Manmohan Singh with an inglorious end to a long career as an economist, bureaucrat and politician. This not because new corruption cases are emerging (though some are and there are plenty in the locker), nor of course that the [...]
By John Elliott | The Foreign Desk | Monday, 6 February 2012 at 4:11 pm
LSE: New concerns over human rights
Last year, the London School of Economics (LSE) found itself mired in controversy over ties to the Gaddafi regime, one of a number of universities accused of complicity with human rights abuses through funding sources and research ties.
By Ben White | Notebook, Opinion, The Foreign Desk | Monday, 6 February 2012 at 1:02 pm
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