Asia

In winter, a noxious fog sometimes descends on Kabul that is so acrid, you can actually taste it. It's a toxic brew of fumes from traffic jams and thousands of charcoal fires, and it's a testament to the fact that in the decade since the fall of the Taliban, Kabul's population has gone up sixfold, from 500,000 to about 3 million.

(please note: technical difficulties prevented recording of the first 10 minutes of the event.)

On Friday, March 11, 2011, the New America Foundation welcomed Rajan Gupta, senior researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to speak about regional energy issues in Asia. Two nations now dominate energy markets in the region, China and India, and both have made massive investments in hydrocarbon over the last few years. Dr. Gupta examined the strategic implications of these investments and the competition now under way for resource security.

The death and destruction in Japan may be horrifying, but the record earthquake that struck March 11 off the east coast of Honshu island still suggests one important lesson: Building codes and land use regulations can save lives. Japan's strict guidelines have been widely credited for keeping the death toll down to a fraction of the casualties in Haiti's quake last year.

It is too soon to know just how much devastation the Japanese earthquake and tsunami have caused, in human or economic terms. The death toll may climb into five digits. Damage to Japan's nuclear power plants could result in sickness and dislocation for hundreds of thousands more. The country's economy, which has already endured two decades of stagnant growth, is now threatened by a stock-market collapse and a massive increase in national debt.

In Japan's earthquake-triggered nuclear emergency, at least 200,000 people who live within 21 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station outside Tokyo have been removed from their homes -- residents who are already victims of the worst earthquake to hit Japan since records were kept.

Today I will be discussing American grand strategy and U.S. policy toward South Asia at the Santa Fe Institute. Check out the event page here, where the proceedings will eventually be posted. Thanks to Bill Frej and Chris Wood for the chance to join the conversation.

This month, the YouthSave Consortium, Expert Advisory Board (EAB) and partnering Financial Institution (FI) representatives from Project countries came together in Bogota, Colombia for a two-day learning exchange.

Osama bin Laden must be sitting in his comfortably appointed hideaway somewhere in northwest Pakistan watching the events in the Middle East unfold with a mixture of glee and despair.

Glee, because overthrowing the dictatorships and monarchies of the Middle East has long been his central goal.

Despair, because none of the Arab revolutions has anything to do with him.

The tragic death of Khaled Said—the 28-year-old who in June 2010 was dragged from an Internet cafe in Alexandria and beaten by the Egyptian police—was the event that galvanized young Egyptians, pushing them to share their grievances on Facebook. A group called "We Are All Khaled Said" quickly reached hundreds of thousands of members and played an instrumental role in promoting the protests that eventually swept Hosni Mubarak from power.

On August 22, 1998, Mullah Omar, the emir of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, made a cold call to the State Department. The United States had just lobbed cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in his nation. Omar got a mid-level diplomat on the line and spoke calmly. He suggested that Congress force President Bill Clinton to resign. He said that American military strikes “would be counter-productive,” and would “spark more, not less, terrorist attacks,” according to a declassified record of the call. “Omar emphasized that this was his best advice,” the record adds.