Sudha David-WilpOctober 16, 2012 06:22

More women in the workforce to sustain “Made in Germany”

Commentary: Paying women to provide child care at home is discouraging women from working.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on September 27, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. (Sean Gallup/AFP/Getty Images)

Commentary: Chancellor Merkel’s promise to her conservative coalition partner, the CSU, to enact a childcare subsidy for keeping toddlers out of public daycare, will take more women out of Germany’s workforce. It is an antediluvian measure when the EU is proposing quotas for women in the boardroom, and will not help Germany in its quest to boost its birthrate.

Alagi Yorro JallowOctober 12, 2012 06:24

Compared to his predecessors, Obama has done little for Africa

Commentary: In a second term, the President needs to do more to support African democracy

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A supporter of US Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama sports a hat bearing a sticker of Obama in the village of Kogello on November 4, 2008. (TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY — There is a palpable thrill in Africa at the prospects of a second term for President Obama, even though in his foreign policy, Africa has not been a priority. Compared to his predecessors, presidents Clinton and Bush, he achieved little.

Dr. Christine J.D. OndoaOctober 12, 2012 06:23

The greatest threat to Uganda's future? The mosquito

Commentary: International partnerships to control the disease are essential.

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A mother holds her seven-month-old daughter underneath a mosquito tent while at the hospital on August 16, 2011. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

KAMPALA, Uganda – This week marks the 50th anniversary of Uganda’s independence, and the capital of Kampala has been noisy with celebration. My country has overcome a violent past, but hope is daily threatened by a force more deadly than any warlord or civil unrest. The greatest threat to Uganda’s future is the common mosquito.

Tom FentonOctober 3, 2012 06:53

Removing Radical Iranian Group from Terrorist List a Cynical Decision

Slick PR campaign helped sway the Obama administration.

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Supporters listen to Maryam Radjavi (R, on the screen), the President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) leader, during a meeting, on September 29, 2012, in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, where MEK Iranian opposition movement in exile is based. (MEHDI FEDOUACH/AFP/Getty Images)

LONDON ¬– Take a large dollop of Washington influence buying, a portion of hypocrisy and a dash of duplicity. Stir them in the cauldron of a presidential campaign and heat them with national security rhetoric. That’s the recipe that produced what looks like one of the most cynical decisions in current American policy.

Kapya KaomaOctober 2, 2012 06:48

US Christian right links with Zimbabwe’s Mugabe to suppress gay rights

Commentary: Human rights defenders should denounce harassment of LGBT.

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President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in a pictured dated on Dec. 16, 2009. (Peter Macdiarmid/AFP/Getty Images)

BOSTON, Mass. — In recent weeks, police have descended on the Harare offices of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), seizing the group’s publications and computers as evidence, they claimed, in an ongoing investigation. The police sought to also arrest staff, but the organization’s lawyer has kept them free for now. The gay rights activist organization is — absurdly — accused of seeking to overthrow President Robert Mugabe’s government and teaching people to commit acts of sodomy.

HDS GreenwayOctober 2, 2012 06:48

Twilight for the US in Afghanistan

Commentary: The mirage of ‘good enough’ is receding.

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An Afghan policeman looks at a wounded man and children sitting in the main hospital in Khost city on October 1, 2012. A suicide attack on a joint Afghan-NATO foot patrol killed at least 14 people, including three NATO soldiers and an interpreter, officials said. Four Afghan police and six civilians were also killed, and 37 were wounded in the attack near a market in the eastern city of Khost, the provincial governor's office said. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Commentary: Some say Afghanistan will return to civil war when US forces leave. However, civil war never ended. Our Afghan war has morphed into a war against the Pashtuns, a conflict in which foreign armies have had little success over the centuries.

Christina CowgerSeptember 28, 2012 06:15

Mideast protests are in rendition countries. Coincidence?

Commentary: Countries where the CIA tortured detainees have been a focal point of outrage. Acknowledging responsibility would help defuse anger.

Anti us protest thailand islam 2012 9 27

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Muslim protesters pray during a protest against an incendiary anti-Islam film 'Innocence of Muslims' outside a shopping mall where the Google Thailand headquarters are located in Bangkok on September 27, 2012. (CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/Getty Images)

RALEIGH, NC — Americans have watched in shock and perplexity as a wave of anti-US outrage sweeps the Muslim world. It behooves us to reflect on the reasons for such widespread Muslim anger – reasons that go deeper than a trashy anti-Islamic film.

Dr. Robert Lawrence and Adam RichardsSeptember 27, 2012 06:21

Opening up to Myanmar: Proceed with caution to protect the people

Commentary: Repressive regimes are slow to improve human rights, even when they vow to change.

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A monk and his son feed seagulls at a jetty along the Yangon river ahead of the parliamentary elections on March 29, 2012 in Yangon, Myanmar. (Paula Bronstein/AFP/Getty Images)

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WASHINGTON, DC — Aung San Suu Kyi’s widely heralded visit to the United States provides ample opportunity to celebrate her freedom and inspires high hopes for Myanmar’s transition to a more peaceful and democratic future. Yet her visit also reminds us that much more work remains to be done to achieve that goal for all the people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The international community must proceed with caution to ensure that progress toward greater openness and new commerce does not come at the cost of greater human rights abuses for Myanmar’s ethnic minorities.

Malou InnocentSeptember 17, 2012 14:11

The Afghan Surge: Operation Disarray?

Commentary: Will religious purity and the barbarity it inspires persist after combat mission ends?

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U.S. soldiers gather near a destroyed vehicle, as their wounded comrades are airlifted by a Medevac helicopter from the 159th Brigade Task Force Thunder to Kandahar Hospital Role 3, on Aug. 23, 2011. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC — A major goal of US President Barack Obama’s “surge” of 33,000 troops in Afghanistan was to force the insurgency’s less intractable elements to accept conditions for reconciliation. But as Afghans prepare for a post-NATO combat mission in 2014, a peace deal with the Taliban and other insurgent groups doesn’t appear any closer. Indeed, heavily indoctrinated low-level fighters seem committed as ever to fighting on.

Mansour SalsabiliMay 24, 2012 06:20

US should not continue to insist on sanctions against Iran

Commentary: Baghdad negotiations offer an opportunity for all sides to move forward.

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Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and head of Iran's national security council Saeed Jalili, right, chats with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton before a meeting in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on may 23, 2012 as six world powers lay out a new package of proposals in crunch talks over Iran's contested nuclear program. (Ali Al-Saadi /AFP/Getty Images)

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Editor’s note: The writer, Mansour Salsabili, is on leave from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A senior political expert, he is a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He participated in a number of efforts ranging from UN reforms to the Non-Aligned Movement. The views expressed are entirely his own.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Continuing to insist on sanctions against Iran will produce a bad deal for America.

Why? Because this week Iran is putting on the table in Baghdad a number of concrete and tension-reducing offers in response to the earlier requests of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

These offers will have the strong support of Russia and China, and may attract positive votes from other European delegations as well. This will leave the US administration, which cannot force Congress to end sanctions, in the corner and in a passive position in any future talks.