Recently, we have witnessed an unprecedented series of political events in the Middle East and North Africa after a young man from Tunisia had his vegetables confiscated by the police. In retaliation, the young man set himself on fire, which initiated inextinguishable flames of protests and demonstrations demanding a more humane world for everyone. Protests and strikes driven by everyday people continued to sweep across the tightly controlled North African states. However, not everybody treated these unrests as a deep, socially rooted problem in society.

• Necati Anaz |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

The relations between Bangladesh and India are important and have a strong historic basis. The prospects for these relations to grow in strength are indeed enormous if they are pursued for mutual benefit and with mutual respect. Our geographical proximity, cultural affinity and shared history should form the parameters of our relations.

• Begum Khaleda Zia MP |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

Hardly any language in the subcontinent has a history as contested as that of Urdu. The history of Urdu is not just a story of linguistic evolution, but of the evolution of culture, of societies and of communities. Thus, undertaking the task of narrating this journey is in itself an act of courage and Tariq Rehman does it wonderfully well.

• Amit Julka |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

The recent wind of ‘popular uprisings’ blowing across North Africa, most notably Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Libya, is monumental and unprecedented. Indeed, the world was taken aback by these uprisings. Despite notable contextual variations in the triggers and accelerators of the uprisings, which largely account for the divergent trajectories and outcomes, a common denominator seems to be the all-pervasive legitimacy crisis, or better still, the negative legitimacy, in these countries.

• J. Shola Omotola |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

An old African proverb—‘Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter’—comes to mind after reading Farhat Taj's combative, if also compelling, and to an extent controversial, description of what is actually happening on ground zero of the War on Terror, i.e. the Pashtun-dominated belt of the Afpak region. Often enough, the dominant narrative of any war drowns the voices of those living through and dying in the conflict. This is precisely what has happened in the Pashtun-populated areas that lie in the eye of the Islamist storm.

• Sushant Sareen |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

On 6 June 2012 the European Union (EU) launched a multilateral diplomatic process to discuss and negotiate an International Code of Conduct (CoC) for outer space. This CoC is designed as a complementary mechanism for the existing framework and for ensuring the security, safety and sustainability of all outer space activities. Space sustainability is about ensuring that outer space is used for the advancement of society and providing society with the various benefits of space technologies.

• Ajey Lele |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

AResurgent China: South Asian Perspective, edited by Tan Tai Yong and S.D. Muni, is a timely book. The simultaneous rise of India and China is a defining reality of the Asian and global order. The trajectory of Sino-Indian relations will have an impact on South Asia. Since the mid-1980s, the two countries have made efforts to unfreeze the relationship, and in the last 10 years the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship has been transformed politically and economically.

• Arvind Gupta |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

The strum and drang that has accompanied China's arrival as a major economic and diplomatic actor in Africa has divided the continent into advocates, alarmists and analysts. 1 For the advocates, the integration of China into the African architecture is one to be promoted as an alternative to the tired policy pronouncements of an increasingly enervated West, not least because of the practical rationale that Beijing has the financial means and political will to invest in Africa's future.

• Chris Alden |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

When the Berlin Wall was brought down in 1989, followed by the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union, one is unsure whether Francis Fukuyama was actually singing a ditty with the ‘End of History’ as the tag line (to the tune of ‘We Are the World …’, the famous Michael Jackson song). Fukuyama celebrated his ‘free at last!’ moment by writing a book called End of History, for which he has had to apologise a few times since.

• Pinaki Bhattacharya |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis

China's emergence as a global actor has fuelled much speculation over its ‘intentions’ in the long term. Arguably, debates on the issue have centred around China's growing military and economic power and concurrent challenges to the maintenance of the existing status quo in the international system. This article seeks to understand China's foreign policy motivations by studying the conceptualisation of ‘national interest’ within China.

• Rukmani Gupta |
• September 2012 |
• Strategic Analysis