Talibani fighters claimed a stronghold just 70 miles from Islamabad on Wednesday, inching ever closer to the Punjab region, the heart of Pakistan. As violence in the Northwest Frontier has picked up over the last three months, the Buner district is the latest flashpoint in what is the “dawn of an Islamic revolution,” wrote Qazi Hussein Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-i-Islami, the oldest religious and political group, in an op-ed piece. Secular and conservative Islamic forces are struggling for control of the country that has been in political turmoil for over a year. Foreign governments accuse Pakistani officials of “abdicating” to insurgents.
After years of tension, Turkey and Armenia agreed to start the process of normalizing diplomatic relations the two countries announced yesterday. The plan, mediated by the Swiss, developed a “road map” for increased bilateral dealings and friendlier terms but didn’t mention how, or if, the question of Armenian genocide would be handled. The beginnings of a “diplomatic thaw” began last year, when the two countries met in a World Cup qualifying match and the Armenian president invited his Turkish counterpart to watch the game, in addition to briefly waiving visa restrictions for Turkish fans.
Confirming what most people suspected, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that the global recession is the deepest, most wide-ranging economic slowdown since World War II and that recovery won’t begin until 2010. The global economy will contract about 1.3 percent this year, said economist Olivier Blanchard, adding that this is “the weakest performance by far of the post-war period.” Western countries will begin to see budding recovery next year with modest growth but the IMF report warned that poorer nations—minus isolated economies such as Myanmar—will not see any recovery until the credit crunch opens up in the developed world. Blanchard said the situation would be much worse, with the world in a near depression, had governments not immediately injected money into their economies following the Lehman Brothers collapse in September.
As the early election results get tabulated, it looks as if South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) party is just where everyone expected them to be: out in front. If this lead holds, the “controversial but popular” Jacob Zuma will be the country’s next president. Only one-tenth of the ballots have been counted, but so far, ANC has garnered 63 percent of the vote. Well behind them with 7 percent was COPE, the newly formed Congress of the People party that broke off from ANC last year. The staunchest opposition party seems to be the Democratic Alliance (with 20 percent overall and a lead in the Western Cape Province). Zuma, having dodged a rape charge and multiple corruption indictments, seems poised to assume the nation’s highest office. Official results of South Africa’s election are not expected before Saturday.
For the first time ever, credit rating agencies will have to register and be directly supervised to operate in the European Union thanks to a new law adopted by the European Parliament today. Many agencies in Europe, and elsewhere, have come under fire for “being too slow to warn investors of the risks in complex securitized products that have become largely untradable in the credit crunch despite having had high ratings.” The author of the law, EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, believes this regulation will set an example for other countries to follow, improving the conduct of these agencies while benefiting the stability of financial markets across the EU. Only time will tell.