The Arab world is connected, but it is not unified. Its leaders may meet under chandeliers, embrace for cameras, and issue communiqués about common destiny in a common language. But beneath that ceremonial language lie rival economies, competing ports, divergent security partnerships, dynastic anxieties, and national projects.
If Iran is honorably invited back into the financial system its 90 million refined and energetic people, backed by huge oil wealth, will be able to make the greatest possible contribution to strengthening not only the whole world economy but specifically to saving the US currency.
This piece talks about how bad loans, political patronage, and cosmetic accounting turned Bangladesh’s banks into a public crisis.
The systems that govern the world are powerful, but they are not immutable. They derive their strength, in part, from acceptance, from the belief that they cannot be altered.
A society in which the “honour of the huzur” matters more than a child’s cry has not yet learned justice. A state in which poor families are afraid to seek justice has not yet learned equal protection.
This first article in a three-part series argues that Bangladesh’s celebrated growth story was always more fragile than it looked. Now that growth is slowing and investment is yielding less, the hidden costs of that model are becoming harder to ignore.
This third article in a three-part series argues how wealth leaves the country, why the gains of growth narrow at the top, and what a fairer settlement would actually require.
In a world driven by technology and innovation, the value of human intellect far exceeds that of raw materials. Countries that fail to recognize this shift risk being trapped in cycles of dependency and underdevelopment.
Petitions are circulating now to remove these sites from search engines. Outrage is building, slowly. But it is not enough. But the real shift needs to start within us, in these awkward conversations. Stop correcting the numbers, stop making excuses and start confronting what actually happened.
An extended war would not only upset the oil market, but could also disrupt development projects. Our workers, mainly in construction, cleaning and other blue-collar professions, are thus at high risk of mass layoffs.
The contrast between our technological ambitions and our moral shortcomings raises an uncomfortable possibility. What if our progress is fundamentally unbalanced? What if we have mistaken the expansion of capability for the advancement of civilization?
US remains Bangladesh’s single-most important export market, major source of FDI and a key development partner. US is also a market with substantive export potentials as far as Bangladesh was concerned. Remaining engaged with the US should be the way to go forward.
The final irony of our current moment is that while the world watches the dramatic surface conflicts and the crises that dominate headlines and social media feeds, the deeper system is already adjusting, already adapting, already moving towards a different configuration.
55 years ago today, Pakistan as it existed then came to end as the Mujibnagar Government was formally formed. Two generations on, the peoples of the two countries share a common yearning for democracy. On both wings of the erstwhile Pakistan then, a prayer for democracy.
The economic man treated nature as a storehouse. The social man must learn to treat it as a home -- and eventually, as an authority.
