Praveen Swami

Gabrielle Giffords with John Boehner last week (Photo: AP)

Here’s something to think about when you’re planning your next vacation: you’re more than thirteen times as likely to get killed in a shoot-out within walking distance of the White House than in terror-torn Pakistan. You would even be safer, incredible as it sounds, in Iraq or Afghanistan or Mexico.

I’m serious: data I’ve compiled makes it clear that the risk of being murdered in a gun crime in the United States is significantly higher than that of a civilian being killed in some of the world’s worst conflicts.

The tragic attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has started Americans debating their increasingly vituperative public culture – as well as laws that many believe allow easy access to weapons.

For students of political violence, the data… Read More

The scene of an al-Qaeda bomb blast in Baghdad (Photo: Reuters)

Nine years after the tragic events of 9/11, al-Qaeda has lost much of its top leadership, commands just a few hundred fighters and is strapped for cash. Paradoxically enough, it also probably exercises more power than at any point the past.

From the north-western Himalayas to the deserts that surrounds Timbuktu, al-Qaeda’s message has been taken up by a new generation of jihadist leaders I call ‘Baby bin Ladens’. In the main, the new al-Qaeda subsidiaries are led by Islamists who participated in the anti-Soviet Union jihad in Afghanistan, and went on to found jihadist movements in their own countries.

They successfully tapped local issues and political grievances to build a political base for the jihadist movement – and are… Read More

Nine men appeared before a judge in the City of Westminster Magistrates Court and were remanded in custody (Photo: Anthony Upton)

Londonistan, irate French officials used to call the city I live in and sometimes love. It’s a good name. Flying into Heathrow from South Asia, you pass through the looking glass into a wonderland where everything that existed in the world you left nine hours ago reappears jumbled up.

It’s only in Londonistan that you could even imagine that there might be an alleged jihadist called Gurukanth Desai.

Mr Desai is one of nine men held just before Christmas for their alleged role in a plot to stage attacks in London. For those of you who aren’t South Asian, hi… Read More

Sri Lankan Tamil refugees flee LTTE-controlled territory in 2009 (Photo: Reuters)

In February 1945, British and American aircraft dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on Dresden. “People were caught in fires as hot as 1000° C”, Britain’s National Archives record. “The city was devastated.” Investigations conducted by Dresden authorities concluded that between 22,700 and 25,000 people were killed.

Five thousand miles and six decades separate the conflict in Sri Lanka from Second World War Germany – but the same ethical issues have surfaced in an increasingly charged debate over the small, South Asian island nation’s human rights records.

Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, has called off a visit to Sri Lanka, amid reports that his decision to lecture there violates British human rights concerns. The Oxford… Read More

A senior Somalian Sufi reads the Koran in Nairobi (Photo: AFP)

The strangest things kept happening to Walid Muhammad Hajj during his years as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. “Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me”, he told al-Jazeera in a recent interview. “It tried to penetrate me again and again.”

Then there was that “incident with a guy who sat next to me in the morning. When they brought the milk, he began to urinate into the milk.” “That’s when we knew that he was under a spell,” Mr Hajj recalled. “After he had recovered a little, after we read Koranic verses to him, he said to me: ‘The birds on… Read More

Smoke rises from the Taj hotel in Mumbai, November 2009 (Photo: EPA)

Late last week, a former professor of religious studies at the International Islamic University in Islamabad spoke at a meeting called by Pakistan’s religious Right-wing to oppose plans to repeal the country’s notorious blasphemy laws.

Yep, I know, it’s no surprise: the scholars at the International Islamic University at Islamabad aren’t known for their progressive theological views. The faculty there once included Abdullah Azzam, the founding patriarch of the modern jihadist movement and Osama bin-Laden’s ideological mentor. Some institutions still value their heritage.

But this particular deranged professor wasn’t any old deranged professor. Back in December, 2008, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed was subjected to United Nations Security Council sanctions because, when he isn’t giving talks, he command… Read More

A US Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field (Photo: AP)

“War,” wrote the great Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, “is only a part of political intercourse, by no means an independent thing in itself.”

Earlier this week, a group of leading scholars and journalists issued an open letter to Barack Obama calling for an end to the  war in Afghanistan – and an immediate political dialogue with the Taliban. The idea isn’t new, but the eminence of the signatories to the letter means it must, and likely will, be taken seriously.

I’m hesitant to even attempt a critique of the letter: the wealth of scholarship and on-ground experience its signatories possess far, far exceeds my own. Put another way, they’re smarter and better-informed than me. That doesn’t… Read More

Protesters march through Hong Kong calling for the release of Liu Xiaobo (Photo: AFP)

For reasons that I cannot fathom, the Nobel Peace Prize committee neglected to invite me to their post-award banquet. All alone in my Oslo hotel room, I watched the Norwegian women’s handball team demolish Hungary, cheered on by supporters dressed, somewhat surreally, in Santa costumes.

Like competitive sport, global geopolitics centres around the intelligent use of power: the strong, the smart and the unprincipled win. The big difference is that the teams get to make the rules as they play.

Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo’s story has acquired the tone of a redemption fable. We all love martyrs for our beliefs. Like most great stories, though, it leaves out important bits of the truth. I’d like to imagine that a high-minded moral agenda underpins the award to… Read More

Brigitte Bardot would not turn off young Islamists (Photo: Corbis)

Denmark’s government is being called upon to employ a lethal new weapon in the fight against Islamist extremism: bare breasts.

No, I’m not making this up – and also deny outrageous suggestions that I’m looking for an excuse to tear myself away from the world-changing Wikileaks exposé. Peter Skaarup, the foreign policy spokesman of the Danish People’s Party, wants footage of topless women at beaches to be included in a video shown to prospective immigrants, in order  to deter religious fundamentalists.

“Topless bathing probably isn’t a common sight on Pakistani beaches, but in Denmark it is still considered quite normal. I honestly believe that by including a couple of bare breasts in the movie, extremists may have to think twice before deciding to… Read More

General Hwang Eui-don checks the fence of the Demilitarized Zone (Photo: AP)

“Like lips and teeth,” Mao Zedong said, in response to a question about his country’s relationship with North Korea.

Yesterday morning, the Guardian revealed that the Wikileaks cables said China was “ready to abandon North Korea.” In a separate report, the newspaper quoted Chinese diplomats as backing the revelation, saying they wanted an “independent and peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula.”

It’s an odd claim, because the cable doesn’t say anything of the kind.

The text of the cable – a report on a conversation between Chun Yung-woo, South Korea’s Foreign Minister, and Kathleen Stephens, the US Ambassador, is this:
Describing a generational difference in Chinese attitudes toward North Korea, Chun claimed XXXXXXXXXXXX believed Korea should be unified… Read More