THE ONCE AND (ALMOST) CURRENT KING — Afghan President Hamid Karzai took time away from his country’s growing problems earlier this week to report to parliament on King Zahir’s improving condition following his hospitalization in India on Feb 4. King who? After living in exile in Rome for 27 years, 92-year-old former King Zahir Shah returned to Kabul in 2002 following the defeat of the Taliban. But for U.S. republican sensitivities he might well have ended up as Afghanistan’s restored monarch. In the loya jirga (tribal conference) that determined Afghanistan’s political future, the idea of restoration had strong support. Older [...]
WASHINGTON — “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” may have prompted Americans to run and find Kazakhstan on a map. But another recent development appears to have a growing number of Washington insiders talking seriously about political discord in the massive former Soviet republic. A rising young Kazakh politician visited Washington recently trying drum up support from U.S. policy makers and journalists for his newly established and reform-minded Kazakh political party — the official registration of which he claims is being obstructed by his country’s “draconian law on political parties.” The second largest of [...]
BANGKOK, Thailand — At precisely 7:09 a.m. on Feb. 24 Thailand will collectively hope for good luck. The army generals now running the country think the country needs uplifting and have decreed this date an apparently auspicious time for a bout of national “merit-making” to be led by senior Buddhist monks. The Land of Smiles, as the Tourist Authority of Thailand labels the country, has not had much to smile at recently. Since the military coup last September, the economy has slumped, bombs have killed people in Bangkok, cracks have appeared in the runways of the capital’s brand new $4 [...]
