By Sara Schonhardt JAKARTA – An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people gathered across Jakarta on Thursday to mark the 100th day of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second term in office. Waving banners and shouting into bullhorns, students, workers and activists lashed out against the former general’s failure to curb high-level graft in government. Their numbers at present pose little real challenge to the second-term president. While many here criticize him as weak and ineffectual, his leadership still represents a significant improvement on past heavy-handed military and incompetent democratic leaders. Leading Indonesia through five years of relative political and economic stability … Continue reading Scaled-back expectations in Indonesia

By Scott Stewart On January 24, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the botched attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day. The short one-minute and two-second audio statement, which was broadcast on al-Jazeera television, called the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a hero and threatened more attacks. The voice on the recording said the bombing attempt was in response to the situation in Gaza and that the United States could never dream of living in peace until Muslims had peace in the Palestinian territories. The speaker also said … Continue reading Taking credit for failure

By Killid correspondents KABUL – The billions of dollars in aid pumped into Afghanistan over the past few years and billions more in investment have helped to drive up average incomes more than sixfold since 2004. Yet the country remains one of the world’s poorest. The average income of Afghan workers has jumped to $426 a year from $70 since 2004, says Aziz Shams, spokesperson of the Ministry of Finance. In the past two years, poverty has declined from 42% to 36%, according to Fardin Sediqi, chief of the Methodology and Supervision Department of the Ministry of Economy. Afghanistan’s annual … Continue reading Afghans wealthier, remain among poorest

By Farooq Hameed Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Osama bin Laden is again in the headlines after a long absence. In what is said to be his most recent audio message, aired on al-Jazeera satellite television, bin Laden claimed responsibility for the abortive December 25, 2009 attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, to blow up a US airliner in flight over Detroit. In his statement, bin Laden warns the US about further such attacks as long as the … Continue reading Better alive than dead – Osama bin Laden

By Donald Kirk SEOUL – No one should imagine that American missionary Robert Park is getting the same relatively benign treatment at the hands of his North Korean “hosts” as the two American women who were held in the North for 140 days last year. Euna Lee and Laura Ling of Al Gore’s Current TV network sojourned in a state guest house near Pyongyang for most of the time, but Park is presumably being held in total isolation, most likely in a remote mountain prison. That’s the grim view of high-profile North Korean defectors who provided an insiders’ perspective on … Continue reading Grim tales from North Korea’s gulags

By Syed Fazl-e-Haider KARACHI, Pakistan – Turkey and Pakistan agreed this week to undertake a US$20 billion project to upgrade a railway link from Islamabad to Istanbul, basically to transport cargo more efficiently between the two countries and ultimately on to Europe. During a meeting in Istanbul, visiting President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, discussed the upgrade of the rail route. Three Turkish companies have shown interest in the five-year project that envisages cutting travel time between Islamabad and Istanbul, via Tehran, from the current 11 days or more to three to four days. … Continue reading Zardari books fast train to Turkey

By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON – With the United States Senate set to take up major sanctions legislation against Iran by mid-February, neo-conservative and other hawks are calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to pursue a more aggressive course of “regime change” in Tehran. In recent days, their call was unexpectedly bolstered by a Newsweek column authored by the president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Richard Haass. Haass is a long-time protege of realists, such as former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and secretary of state Colin Powell, who advocate a policy of broad engagement with … Continue reading Sanctions, regime change take center stage

Muneer Akram During US Defence Secretary Gates’ recent visit, we have again heard the refrain of our Western friends that terrorism and the Taliban, not India, pose an ‘existential’ threat to Pakistan. But India’s own actions and pronouncements belie these Western assertions. For the past year, India has refused to resume “composite dialogue” and has regularly threatened military action against Pakistan in the event of another Mumbai-like incident. And, while protesting loudly about pro-Kashmiri militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, India has been busy fomenting dissension and insurgency in Balochistan, FATA and other parts of Pakistan. It was hardly helpful that … Continue reading Meeting India’s military challenge