Berry Picker

A group of people bow at the base of the giant bronze statue of the state founder and Great Leader Kim-Il Sung in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on February 26, 2008. (Reuters)As you might expect, North Korea's "Internet" mirrors North Korea itself: Sad, secluded, and limited to just a handful of propagandistic sites.

There's a country-wide intranet, and the content consists of state news and message boards. A custom-built operating system, Red Star, includes a mandatory readme file about "how important it is that the operating system correlates with the country's values." Whenever leader Kim Jong Un is mentioned, his name is displayed slightly bigger than the text around it.

And the weirdest part about it? It doesn't have to be that way.

In a recent conversation with The Atlantic's Steve Clemons, Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen -- who co-wrote the new book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business -- mentioned that North Korea actually has the capacity for a full-fledged Internet network. It just chooses not to have one.

The mobile networks are there, Schmidt said, the country's leadership just hasn't turned the data.

"It's just arrogance, stupidity and bad decisions that prevents this," Schmidt said. "There is literally one command to turn on the Internet."

North Korea has too many horrors to describe -- gulags, starvation, forced reverence of a demented leader -- but Internet access would speed the end of the regime. The utter lack of knowledge about the outside world there keeps a lid on dissent and domestic strife. North Koreans for the most part live in a total information dead zone, told they are lucky even as they endure food shortages and freezing winters without heating. The fact that it could all be undone with the flip of a switch is both maddening and heartbreaking.

Schmidt visited Pyongyang in January in part to try to push the leadership on the Internet issue, he later told reporters:

North Korea "is the last really closed country in the world," he said. "This is a country that has suffered from lack of information. The Internet was built for everyone, including North Koreans. The quickest way to get economic growth in North Korea is to open up the Internet. I did my best to tell them this."

When foreigners visit, Schmidt wrote earlier this year, "the government stages Internet browsing sessions by having 'students' look at pre-downloaded and preapproved content, spending hours (as they did when we were there) scrolling up and down their screens in totalitarian unison."

At the Atlantic event, Schmidt pointed out that at least now, smuggled mobile phones and DVDs from South Korea are proliferating, and where possessing these illicit materials might have carried the death penalty years ago, the government now appears to be letting such minor transgressions slide. Still, though, for a major policy decision like turning on the Internet, "the Kid has to decide," Schmidt said.

    

A bakery in downtown Rome on September 18, 2008. (Tony Gentile/Reuters)

In the land that invented La Cucina Povera -- literally, the poor man's kitchen -- it's no surprise to witness an increase in home baking. Figures recently released by Coldiretti, the association of Italian farmers, are staggering. Italians are buying record amounts of flour, eggs, and butter - the highest since World War II. A third of Italians are using these ingredients to make more pizza, and 19 percent are baking more bread at home.

A combination of Italy's financial crisis and a greater awareness of local food are pushing the trend, says Jeannie Marshall, a Canadian expat and author living in Rome. "I bought a loaf of wonderful bread recently, which lasted us two days, but it was more than 5 euros for the loaf, so it's not really cheap. You can make the same thing for about 80 cents, so there's definitely an economic component to it."

Austerity means that more Italians are making bread at home -- but ten percent of small bakeries in and around Rome have shut in the last two years alone.

The surge in bread making is a stark contrast to 2007, when Italian bread consumption was at its lowest.

That's because Italian bread wasn't very good, Marshall explains. "The 2007 low was partly due to the quality of bread being so poor. It was really bad, but it's gotten a lot better now, you can find all these great grains, like the Lario, which is semi-grain bread. The price for good bakery bread has gone up too, though. "

Pierluigi Roscioli comes from a family of Roman bakers, and owns Forno Roscioli, a bakery in Campo de Fiori, a neighborhood well-known to tourists and wealthy residents.

"The quality of middle-of-the-road bread is very low in Italy, so a lot of people who appreciate good bread and like to eat healthy have started to make bread at home. There is also a large group of people who make their own bread for economic reasons. In the last five years, the trend has increased steadily," Roscioli said. For the unemployed, less money and more time makes bread-making a no brainer. "You save money and feel you're doing something good for your family."

But this cottage industry has had a serious impact on local bakeries. Ten percent of small bakeries in and around Rome have shut in the last two years, according to CNA, the Italian Association for Small and Medium Artisan Businesses.

Bernardino Bartocci, president of the CNA in Rome, says local bakeries can't compete with the buying power of hypermarkets, massive supermarkets that pile goods high and offer low prices -- now a staple of Italy's suburbs. The choice: adapt or die.

"They have to sell more than bread. Now, bakeries are producing traditional Italian cookies and cakes to increase their offering."

Bakers like Roscioli, with his central location, haven't seen a drop in retail business, but he has suffered a loss of 10 to 15 percent in the last two years because of his increased wholesaling. He supplies bread to supermarkets in the middle class suburbs of Rome. "People like the quality, but they prefer to save money on bread."

Roscioli and others are changing the everyday eating culture in Rome by offering prepared food, and more importantly, sandwiches. Once limited to alimentari, small corner stores where for years workers bought their lunches, fresh panini are now sold at bread bakeries as well. It's a trend that has only developed in the last five years, says Roscioli.

For Roscioli, turning a 40-cent roll into a 4-euro sandwich is an obvious solution. One loaf of bread can make several sandwiches, and that means fewer leftovers.

"We make two to three times our cost on a sandwich ... A loaf of bread creates more profit through sandwiches than on its own."

But as Roscioli and other bakers innovate, they bite into the profits of other traditional businesses, like the alimentari and pasticceria, or pastry shops. This domino effect is creating a survival of the fittest culture, one which Elizabeth Minchilli, a food journalist and 40-year resident of Italy, claims is anything but the death knell for Italian food. Instead, she sees it as progress.

"I'm on the side of the bakery. I would hate to see the pastry shops go out of business, but I don't think they should be artificially supported by any kind of protectionism."

Minchilli says one of the reasons Italy has been among the last countries to modernize its food culture is not so much because of public resistance to relinquish the old ways, but because of the stranglehold trade guilds have had over much of the industry.

"You could only get certain things in a bakery because of the political power of these guilds protecting their turf in a way that wasn't in sync with the economy. It covers a lot of the food business. That's finally being broken down. Now, bars which used to only be allowed to serve coffee are allowed to serve full meals and are also serving breakfast."

The increase in competition has brought about higher quality, something Marshall says is necessary to breathe life into the businesses -- some of which, like their loaves, had gone stale.

Most of Italy's bakeries now offer whole grains, whereas the old-fashioned alimentari typically don't serve whole-wheat panini because they're run by an older generation who refuse to update ingredients. Marshall says pastry shops could also do with a few new recipes.

"Some of these places have been serving the same thing since after the war, the same Sacher torte which is a huge thing here. I'm sentimental, but tastes have changed. "

But Italians still share a passion for their own, home-grown food. Dedication to local ingredients remains steadfast.

"I did a class recently learning how to make bread and I was the only foreigner there. Many people are going for refresher courses. It's a re-appreciation of their culture. People are taking food seriously again."

    

(Photoshop Roadmap/Flickr)One of the most commonly cited reasons for why the U.S. hasn't yet intervened in Syria is that there's little support from the general public. Americans are "war weary," the thinking goes, having just left Iraq and still trying to extricate ourselves from Afghanistan.

That theory isn't entirely true -- about 45 percent of Americans support intervening in Syria, "if it is confirmed that Syria used chemical weapons against anti-government groups," Pew found in late April. That's up from a December poll that didn't mention chemical weapons, in which only 27 percent of people said the U.S. had a responsibility to do something about the fighting.

That 45 percent is a plurality, which is actually kind of surprising given how few Americans have been following the Syrian conflict. Another April Pew poll found that most people weren't following the news about Syria and chemical weapons very "closely at all," and only about 18 percent of people follow it "very closely."

(Elahe Izadi/National Journal)

It may be understandable, then, that half of Americans also can't seem to find Syria on map. Pew wrote up a January survey today in which the organization found that only 50 percent of respondents correctly identified a shaded country on a map as Syria. (Almost one in five thought it was Turkey, 11 percent said it was Saudi Arabia, and 5 percent said it was Egypt. And -- geography teachers, get ready to facepalm -- a full 15 percent didn't even attempt to answer the question.)

By comparison, 79 percent of people correctly labeled the Twitter logo, and 69 percent knew what the Euro currency symbol was when they saw it.

As you might expect, college graduates were more likely to be able to find Syria (61 percent of them could). So were self-identified Republicans (55 percent, versus 48 percent of Democrats).

And then there's the factoid that flies in the face of the "Me, Me, Me, Generation" theory:

Despite stereotypes about young people not paying attention to current events, 53 percent of people aged 18 to 29 got the question right -- ahead of the 30-to-49-year-olds (52 percent) and those over age 50 (48 percent).

Of course, not knowing isn't the same as not caring. Only 57 percent correctly identified Israel in a similar poll, after all, and that's a country where many Americans have blood relations or political interests.

So maybe it's not so much a scathing indictment of our ignorance about international affairs, but rather a sign that as we increasingly rely on Google Maps, Google Glass, and Siri, we have fewer reasons to know offhand which war zones are where. Even as we weigh going into them.

    

The Al Mar family. (Jonathan Krohn)

REYHANLI, Turkey--"We are afraid to go back to Aleppo--Aleppo is dangerous!--but we can't stay here because the people of Reyhanli kicked us out," said Muhamed al-Mar, a Syrian refugee, as he and his family waited to be allowed back into Syria through the Bab al Hawa gate Tuesday.

In the wake of two car bombs that rocked the border town of Reyhanli and shut down the border gate 6 miles away on Saturday, Syrian refugees became easy targets for the resentment of anxious neighbors searching for answers. "'Get out! We don't want any more problems here,'" al-Mar recalled hearing as his Turkish relatives drove him of the city.

Some refugees in Reyhanli are returning to their war-torn homeland, in hopes of escaping intense anti-Syrian sentiment in the town.

Many Syrian families in Reyhanli have chosen to leave for Syria in the hopes of escaping the intense anti-Syrian sentiment in the town.

The timing couldn't have been worse for al-Mar's family, though, as he and his wife are expecting a fifth child in the next month, an addition to their already hectic household of children (ages 2, 3, 4, and 5.) When they finally reached Bab al Hawa, they realized they had another problem: since they had escaped from Syria illegally without passports, their return to Syria was up to the discretion of Turkish border security. On Tuesday, the al-Mar family was finally waved through: free to go back to their home in the dangerous Salahaddin neighborhood of Aleppo.

Many Syrian families in Reyhanli have chosen to leave for Syria in the hopes of escaping the intense anti-Syrian sentiment in the town.

"We are leaving for 10 days to get away from the stress," said Zakaria, another Syrian refugee, as police officers hurried him and his family to a car. As a policeman opened the door for Zakaria's wife and kids, a group of Turks gathered around the scene, yelling at the cop for helping the refugees, and shouting at the family to "Go away!" After the car had sped away one of the Turks justified his actions, saying, "Turkish people never hit a child or woman. Syrian people do that," adding that all Syrians should just "go home."

Meanwhile, Abu Hussein, a Syrian refugee who witnessed this scene, said he had been targeted by Turkish people himself a few days earlier. His driver seat window had been completely shattered and his windshield bore two holes from rocks thrown at his car -- presumably, he says, because it bore a Syrian license plate. Now he keeps his car hidden from sight, hoping that if he stays out of sight long enough it will all blow over.

While the situation has simmered down much since the immediate aftermath of the attack on Saturday, and direct attacks on Syrian refugees themselves seem to have stopped, the animosity between Syrians and Turks within the city is still very real.

Zakaria Labidi, head of a local Syrian relief agency in Reyhanli, confirmed that "many" Syrians in the city had opted to make the return trip, especially after Turkish opposition groups organized protests on Monday morning. As early as noon on Tuesday--the first day Bab al Hawa was open since the blast--about 100 people had already crossed back into Syria, with a steadily growing crowd still waiting to cross. How many of these people left Reyhanli because of the ethnic tension is not known.

Some of the most harrowing border crossings were by those leaving to bury family members who had died in Saturday's bombing in their homeland.

According to Labidi, the bodies of Syrian refugees had been given priority by the Turkish government, and were allowed to pass through Bab al Hawa while the gate was closed. For the bodies to leave Turkey for Syria, he said, they had to first be examined by a doctor and then would be allowed to cross the border. While Labidi's organization can confirm that some of the bodies had indeed been returned, he had no idea how many had taken this route, or the whereabouts of all the bodies

Meanwhile, on Friday, as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., Turkish President Abdullah Gül visited Turkish families that had lost relatives in Saturday's blast. He did not visit any Syrian families. While anti-government sentiment was still high among some in Reyhanli, the atmosphere Friday was rather patriotic. Turkish flags lined the city streets, and families whose lives had been rocked by the blast had nothing but positive things to say about the government.

"I love the government. All people love the president here," said Ishmael, who had lost a cousin in the blast, and, eyeing the security forces all around him, emphasized again that, "We love our government."

    

A customer buys Iranian gold coins at a currency exchange office in Tehran's business district on October 24, 2011. (Raheb Homavandi/Reuters)

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has arrived in Washington, D.C. for a much-anticipated summit with President Barack Obama. The timing of the visit -- amid reports of chemical weapons usage in Syria and an attack against a Turkish border town by alleged Syrian agents -- will make it hard to talk about anything other than the civil war in Syria.

But some members of Congress want to draw attention to a less-obvious issue. Last month, a bipartisan group of 47 members of Congress penned a letter to Secretaries John Kerry and Jack Lew calling for clarification on Turkey's financial dealings with Iran. Under the initiative of South Carolina Republican Representative Jeff Duncan, the letter expressed deep concerns over Turkey's gold dealings that have helped Iran skirt Western sanctions designed to curtail Tehran's illicit nuclear program.

Turkey's gold dealings have helped Iran skirt Western sanctions designed to curtail Tehran's illicit nuclear program.

In February 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that Turkey's state-owned bank, Halkbank, was processing "payments from third parties for Iranian goods." This included "payments for Indian refiners unable to pay Tehran for imported oil through their own banking system for fear of retribution from Washington." Separately, the Journal also reported that the Turkish bank was responsible for many of Turkey's "gas-for-gold" transactions with Iran despite an executive order issued by the Obama administration prohibiting gold payments to the government of Iran. As Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan frankly admitted, Turkey's "gold exports [to Iran] end up like payments for our natural gas purchases."

The system was simple. As Reuters notes, Turkey purchased Iranian natural gas in Turkish lira, and transferring the proceeds to Halkbank accounts. Iranian gold traders then accessed the funds to buy gold in Turkey, which was subsequently carried in luggage to Dubai, and then sold for foreign currency to help sure up Tehran's dwindling foreign exchange reserves.

Remarkably, it was legal under the current sanctions regime, as long as the Obama administration couldn't prove that Turkish gold payments were made to the government of Iran (which strained credulity given Turkey's public admissions that they were selling gold to Iran in exchange for Iranian energy).

To plug this loophole, the Obama administration on January 13, 2013, put in place new legislation that imposed a blanket prohibition on all gold sales to Iran. However, the administration requested that the sanctions only become effective after six months, thereby granting Turkey and other countries a six-month exemption from the tougher gold sanctions, which is now set to expire on July 1, 2013.

With the window still open, according to Iran's state-owned Press TV, Turkey and Iran reportedly completed a $120 million gold deal within days of the announcement. According to Hurriyet , Turkey's gold exports to Iran rose twofold in March, totaling some $381 million. According to a report by Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics, " Iran's golden loophole" has allowed Iran to receive over $6 billion since July 30, 2012, when the administration could have started prohibiting Turkish gold sales. In the first quarter of 2013 alone, Iran has received $1.3 billion in gold payments, either directly from Turkey, or through the UAE.

Turkey, in other words, has milked the gold trade with Iran for all it has been worth. Only recently has Turkish Minister of the Economy Zafer Caglayan hinted at a possible "decline in demand for gold" from Iran.

But the challenge of Turkey's illicit finance activity doesn't end there, so far as legislators are concerned. Last month's letter also voiced concern about Erdoğan's support for Hamas, an Iran-sponsored terrorist group. Turkey is now also considered to be one of the primary patrons of the violent Palestinian faction. One unconfirmed report in late 2011suggested that Erdoğan's government sent "$300 million to be sent to Hamas' government in Gaza." Whether or not that money arrived, other Turkish cash has flowed to Hamas for hospitals, mosques , and schools in the Gaza Strip. Turkey is also the home of Hamas rising star Saleh al-Aruri, who is said to be in charge of Hamas' operations in the West Bank.

Following Erdoğan's trip to Washington, the Turkish leader is slated to visit the Hamas government in Gaza. Should he follow through, he will be only the second head of state to visit the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas.

Secretary of State John Kerry openly objected to Erdoğan's Gaza visit, but he has yet to respond to the congressional letter that requested "information about the efficacy of Turkish measure to support sanctions on Iran and prevent funding of terrorist organizations."

For its part, Halkbank responded to the congressional letter in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet , denied all wrongdoing, and lambasted the "pro-Israel lobby" for the letter.

Duncan, in the meantime, affirms that he has "been in touch with the Embassy of Turkey. I expect our conversations to continue on this issue, and I believe that the U.S. and Turkey must work better together to prevent Iran from evading sanctions." Duncan added that his sessions were "frank" and "productive."

With Erdoğan's arrival this week, some members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee may greet him with changes to the Iran Nuclear Prevention Act to help close the Turkey loophole.

The White House, however, will likely not address this issue - not publicly anyway. The public policy discussion will remain focused on the U.S.-Turkish alliance and solving the problem of Syria.

Of course, Syria's top Middle East patron is Iran, which continues to benefit from trade with Turkey, until U.S. waivers cease and this loophole is closed.

    

NATO soldiers with at the site of a suicide attack in Kabul on May 16, 2013. (Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi thumbs excitedly through a brochure prepared for him by Textron, the U.S. defense contractor. "This is what I want!" the Afghan army chief of staff says, pointing to a picture of the latest technology in armored troop carriers.

Outside Karimi's window, the giant, $92 million new defense headquarters that Washington is building for him is nearly finished; Karimi moves in in September. "Pentagon No. 1. This no. 2," Karimi's adjutant, Col. Mohammed Shah, says proudly in broken English. What Shah means is that the vast domed structure atop a hill--which resembles nothing so much as the Temple Mount--is expected to be the second-largest defense headquarters in the world, a distinct oddity in one of the poorest countries in the world. The Pentagon is also spending about a billion dollars on Karimi's pride and joy, a new Mobile Strike Force. That includes $58 million on brand-new armored vehicles designed especially for the Afghan army by Textron (and which are deemed so state of the art that Canada just bought some for itself).

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More than anywhere else, the future of Afghanistan will be decided here, in the heart of the new Afghan security structure on which Washington is spending billions of dollars. And it may well be decided in the next six or seven months, when the latest "fighting season" ends and the mettle of Karimi's new Afghan National Security Forces are truly tested. As of the end of June, the ANSF will move from planning and leading operations for the entire country. Asked in an interview what his plan was for defeating the Taliban, Karimi replied: "We will never allow the Taliban to take over the country. That's the plan."

It doesn't sound like much of a plan, but Karimi had better be right. This has been a horrific week for U.S. casualties, culminating in a suicide bombing in Kabul on Thursday that killed six Americans and at least nine other people. The casualties, which included the deaths of four U.S. soldiers killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar on Tuesday, will almost certainly harden President Obama's commitment to hand this decade-long quagmire over to the ANSF as quickly as possible.

Like other Afghan and U.S. military officials, Karimi says the 334,000-strong ANSF are far stronger and more organized than they have ever been, reducing the insurgency to nighttime raids and occasional IED and suicide bombings. "We have kept, and protected, all the areas we are responsible for," Karimi says. U.S. and Afghan officials now describe the Taliban as "confused" about their strategic aims, though the insurgents are not ready to talk peace, by all accounts.

Still, the Taliban-led insurgency, said to consist of no more than about 30,000 fighters, has made much of the country too dangerous to travel. And Thursday's bombing points up the complex nature of the enemy, whose leaders perceive how quickly support for the war is fading in the U.S. and NATO countries and aims to launch "spectacular" attacks like Thursday's to quicken the departure of the 50-nation International Security Assistance Force, which consists of 28 NATO and 22 non-NATO countries and is led by the United States. The American victims were two soldiers and four civilian contractors, a NATO source said. An extremist group called Hezb-e Islami under the Pakistan-based warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed responsibility for the attack. A former Afghan prime minister, Hekmatyar is not part of the Taliban but occasionally fights alongside them--and sometimes against them. Other attacks have been blamed on various factions that are also supplied out of Pakistan, especially the notorious Haqqani network, which is also loosely allied with the Taliban.

Whoever this multifaceted enemy really is now, it's increasingly apparent that most of the hardest fighting will still be left to the Afghans and Americans. For that, Karimi says he's going to need a lot of U.S. military assistance well after the end of 2014, the deadline for withdrawal. "We still need their help and support, maybe for another five to 10 years," he says. Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, the deputy commander of ISAF under Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, tends to back Karimi's assessment. "For some time to come it's our expectation that we will need to supply the Afghans ... [with] air support, certainly, counter-IED support, logistic support, and a number of areas where their capabilities are not at the level where they need to be at," Carter said in an interview last Saturday. He says the U.S. and NATO will have to "train, advise, and assist"--the post-2014 catchphrase--probably until at least 2018.

But those plans are barely sketched out. U.S. and European officials interviewed here this week appeared to agree on one thing: Most of ISAF is waiting on Obama, whose administration is currently engaged in secret negotiations with Karzai's government on the size and shape of the U.S. force that will be left in Afghanistan after the final drawdown of the 63,000 or so American troops that remain.

That force is expected to number perhaps 8,000 troops, complemented by another 4,000 or so from NATO and ISAF countries. But France and Canada have already announced they are leaving Afghanistan completely, and thus far only Germany has stepped up with an offer of 600-800 troops post-2014.

Can it work? "As we are tired of fighting, so are the Taliban," insists Karimi, who was interviewed before Thursday's attack. "They are not united. They have different approaches. Pakistan is supporting the Taliban, but Pakistan has its own [economic] problems. So it is not easy for Pakistan to continue sustaining them." Indeed, despite all the negative trends here now--enemy attacks may well be up, one reason NATO doesn't even track them anymore--Thursday's assault on the convoy was a rare "spectacular" in recent months. "The Taliban have more propaganda than actually what they can do," said Karimi. "They announced [their spring offensive] and started it about two weeks ago. So where is it?"

Well, it's still here, as a horrific week has demonstrated. Karimi may be right that the Afghan army will hold the center of the country, and that the Taliban are no longer taking over and holding large sections of Afghanistan. The ANSF now outnumbers the Taliban by 10-to-1. Even in the face of U.S. and NATO withdrawal, the long-term commitments Washington and other capitals are making, however reluctantly, will very possibly change the age-old equation that has often seemed to doom Afghanistan to a state of permanent war.

But it still promises to be a very long haul, no matter how much money and effort America pours into the new Afghan army.

    

Finland's Krista Siegfrids (centre, L) performs during dress rehearsals for the second semi-final at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest at the Malmo Opera Hall in Malmo, Sweden on May 15, 2013. (Reuters)

When Swedish singer Loreen won the Eurovision Song Contest last year in Baku, she emerged as an outspoken champion of human rights in the former Soviet Union.

She angered host country Azerbaijan by meeting with activists and saying rights in the oil-rich nation were abused "every day."

Two months later, during a trip to Belarus, she criticized President Alyaksandr Lukashenka for jailing opponents and visited the wife of imprisoned activist Ales Byalyatski, saying the plight of the divided family "breaks my heart."

As the contest has expanded east to include new, post-Soviet countries, watchdogs have seized the opportunity to highlight rights issues -- particularly in the years when Azerbaijan, Russia, and other ex-communist countries play host.

So as Sweden prepares to host the 58th Eurovision final on May 18 in Malmo, there may have been hopes the liberal EU nation would follow suit and use the contest to gently push human rights onto the agenda.

Instead, Sweden is facing a rights liability of its own, with the communications giant TeliaSonera serving as the event's main sponsor.

TeliaSonera made international headlines last year when it was accused of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan's president, in exchange for access to that Central Asian country's massive mobile-phone market.

But even earlier, the mobile operator had come under scrutiny for its practice of granting post-Soviet client countries access to private phone and Internet records that were used to harass and even prosecute political opponents.

An investigative report, aired on Sweden's "Uppdrag Granskning" news program in April 2012, documented cases in which TeliaSonera subsidiaries had provided security forces in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan with a real-time feed of citizens' private communication activities.

In one of the most egregious examples, the "Uppdrag" report found that KGB forces in Belarus used its access to life:), the local division of TeliaSonera's TurkCell, to physically track and arrest scores of protesters in the wake of Lukashenka's dubious reelection in December 2010.

The co-producer of the "Uppdrag" report, Joachim Dyfvermak, has reported extensively on TeliaSonera's activities in the former Soviet Union. He says the company, whose majority owners are the Swedish and Finnish governments, knowingly made unsavory deals in order to enter the lucrative post-Soviet market.

"They took the risk, knowing about those countries' participation in crimes against human rights, knowing about the price they had to pay like in Uzbekistan, where they paid the regime money," Dyfvermak says. "They got the licenses thanks to the agreements with the regimes, giving the security intelligence total access to their customers 24-7. They're stuck with agreements with all these dictatorships."

In Azerbaijan, where press freedoms are among the world's worst, records obtained by "Uppdrag" journalists showed that TeliaSonera's local branch, Azercell, had allowed the phone of journalist Agil Khalil to be tapped after he published a piece about being beaten by government agents for his critical reporting. Khalil later fled the country after a second attack.

Ironically, Azercell had already become notorious for a scandal tied to Eurovision in 2009, when Azerbaijanis were summoned to the National Security Ministry to explain why they had voted for regional rival Armenia in that year's contest. An investigation revealed that Azercell had provided the government with the phone records of Azeris who had cast their impolitic votes by SMS.

None of these concerns prevented the European Broadcasting Union, which oversees the national broadcasters in all 56 Eurovision member states, from naming Azercell as the competition's main sponsor when Baku made its lavish debut as host last year.

Annika Nyberg, EBU's media director, says the organization examines the records of all potential sponsors and includes freedom of expression among the values formally outlined in the union's statutes.

"We're not a human rights organization," she says. "We're a media organization, representing media companies. But we do have a set of values that we adhere to. And we look at sponsors based on our values and based on cooperation with them, and we are certainly very careful in choosing them."

Nyberg says the EBU opted to award the latest sponsorship contract to TeliaSonera in November after receiving assurances from the mobile operator that it was doing its best to address concerns about its business practices abroad.

Both the EBU and Eurovision are quick to distance the actual contest, with its glitzy pop traditions and a sometimes combustible mix of nations, from the more cynical world of politics.

But as the contest has expanded east to include new, post-Soviet countries, many watchdogs have seized the opportunity to highlight rights issues -- particularly in the years when Azerbaijan, Russia, and other ex-communist countries play host.

Eurovision's Sietse Bakker, who supervised last year's Baku extravaganza, says he and other organizers "do not connect the contest to any political goals." But he acknowledges that the flood of media attention surrounding the song contest -- both positive and negative -- could "contribute to improvements" in the country.

If rights violations in Azerbaijan are one thing, in Sweden they are quite another. TeliaSonera, which is facing years of investigation and potential criminal charges, has scurried to buff its image. The company's embattled CEO, Lars Nyberg -- no relation to the EBU media director -- has already vacated his post, as have a number of board members.

The company has also signed on to new industry principles on freedom of expression and privacy, although the guidelines -- which conclude with a call for civil society to "engage in constructive dialogue with governments and industry to collectively seek" solutions to privacy and free-speech issues -- are tepid at best.

TeliaSonera did not respond to a request for an interview but has defended its position in the past by saying its subsidiaries were aiding in law-enforcement efforts according to the legislation of the countries in which they were operating.

Then-CEO Nyberg, speaking at a shareholders' meeting in the spring of 2012, went one step further, saying phone and Internet services can contribute to creating an open society, and that TeliaSonera was right to maintain a presence even in countries "that leave something to be desired with regards to human rights."

Not everyone, however, is convinced. Isabel Sommerfeld, a Swedish rights activist, says TeliaSonera has done nothing to earn the right to sponsor Eurovision, with its handsome profits and a worldwide audience of 125 million.

"I think it's really undeserved PR for them," says Sommerfeld, who frequently travels to Belarus and witnessed the 2010 arrests firsthand. "TeliaSonera is an unethical company nowadays. They're still cooperating with regimes in the oppression of people. Other countries should not help the dictator with his oppression. And this is exactly what TeliaSonera is doing."

This post appears courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.    

A soldier stands guard on a road while a vehicle carrying internally displaced people flee military operations in Tora Warai, a town in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, on July 9, 2011. (Khuram Parvez/Reuters)

Sharif loves using his mukhabera. "I use it daily, mostly at night time, because signals are clear at that time," he says. "I am in touch with most of my friends this way."

Mukhabera means walkie-talkie in Pashto. For Sharif, this tool is what a mobile phone might be to other young men around the world: a cheap, reliable way to keep in touch with friends and family, so long as they are within an 18-mile range. Every week, he spends about 100 rupees, just over one U.S. dollar, on batteries. In the evenings, his group of friends all tune in to "hang out" on the same frequency.

"Everyone in my village is schizophrenic. You hear screams in the middle of the night from people having bad dreams about the drones. Everyone is always angry or suspicious of everyone else."

Sharif likes to stay connected, and not only for fun. His life depends on it. Sharif, 28 years old and unemployed, lives in Datta Khel, a town located on the border with Afghanistan in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

FATA is one of the most underdeveloped regions of Pakistan. Decades of crisis, underpinned by poor governance and regional conflict, has kept the region in a perpetual state of instability, poverty, and isolation. Sixty-six percent of FATA 's residents live below the poverty line. Unemployment is estimated at 60 to 80 percent.

Datta Khel is also a dangerous place. Since 2008, U.S. intelligence operations have launched over 40 separate drone strikes in Datta Khel, killing more than 240 people . One particularly lethal attack in March 2011 killed approximately 40 people and sparked anti-American protests across Pakistan.

"Everyone in my village is schizophrenic," says Zahir, a 24-year-old man from North Waziristan. "You hear screams in the middle of the night from people having bad dreams about the drones. Everyone is always angry or suspicious of everyone else."

In the face of enduring insecurity, FATA's residents use mukhabera as lifelines for gathering and sharing information about the threats around them. When they learn of a drone strike or other attack nearby, they immediately contact friends in search of anyone with first-hand knowledge of what happened. Often they speak in code.

"I hear today's match was thrilling," one person might say, implying that clashes in the area were intense. "Did the players hit any balls into the crowd?" someone on the other end of the line will ask, which means did mortars or rockets hit houses in the village.

The downside to mukhabera, essentially a two-way radio, is that FATA's residents never know who else is listening. Talking in code helps evade informers for militant groups who might be on the same radio frequency.

Residents regularly discuss and analyze the information they gather with those closest to them, fact-checking for veracity. They often only trust friends and family. Other credible sources are in short supply.

Across FATA, residents face severe constraints accessing reliable information on the issues and events that most affect their lives. At less than 5 percent , internet connectivity is far from widespread. While 64 percent residents have access to a mobile phone , signals are intermittent at best. Satellite dishes remain a luxury that is out of reach for many, given that FATA's $250 annual per capita income is half the national average.

The media that penetrates the region most widely, namely Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Television, are state-owned and heavily censored, focusing overwhelmingly on conflict reporting. A 2012 study found that over half of the journalists surveyed in FATA admitted that 75 percent or more of their stories are about terrorism or conflict .

"All the time, we have to select [news] topics which have the potential to be linked with terrorism," explains Farooq, a radio producer in North Waziristan. "For example, the simple and general problem of inflation can be linked with the economic depression and destruction caused by terrorism."

While the conflict narrative in FATA's news media is a reflection of its people's most pressing concerns, reporting often lacks relevance to their daily lives. News stories tend to cover incidents rather than patterns and challenges rather than solutions, offering little in the way of useful knowledge for personal security or community development.

In the absence of alternatives, FATA's residents turn to each other, relying on the breadth of their social networks to secure the information they need to navigate an environment of ongoing existential threats and longstanding underdevelopment.

This communal nature of information-gathering can be limiting. Information passed from person to person introduces error and bias, keeping residents even further from reliable sources. But the premium placed on finding eyewitness accounts and credible media is also empowering a subtle shift in the social fabric of FATA.

Traditionally influential sources of information, such as tribal elders and religious leaders, are increasingly unable to answer for their communities' most pressing challenges -- militant activity, drone strikes, and persistent poverty. In some cases, they are even distrusted. Many feel the rise of mullahs in politics over the last 15 years has undermined their authority as trusted spiritual leaders, making them one less source of credible information and one more source of possible misinformation.

Abdul, a researcher in North Waziristan, claims, "[P]eople have realized that they are being used by the mullahs and other religious leaders... People have become mature now and they know that they have been used in the name of Islam."

Disappointment with traditional leaders is, however, matched with a rise in the social status of those with access to information from a variety of sources.

Barbers, for example, are seen as well-informed about local news because they converse with a wide range of people daily. Despite the mobility constraints in many parts of the region, all men -- rich and poor, educated and uneducated -- still go to the barbershop. Sultan, a barber in Khyber, thinks of himself as "a computer where people feed and receive information."

Similarly, diaspora populations are increasingly important providers of information to FATA's residents. Living outside of the region, migrants often learn about local events before their families and call home when they do. In the past, when his phone rang at 4 a.m., Atif from Orakzai would think, "What has happened to someone that I love?" Now he worries, "What might be happening to me?"

As technology increasingly -- albeit slowly -- penetrates the region and opens new channels for information access, the influence of the literate and technology-savvy is also growing among FATA's communities. Young people, especially those with higher education, are the strongest example of a demographic becoming the "eyes and ears" of their communities as a result.

In decades past, "youth were not allowed to sit on chairs or charpoys [traditional bed] in front of the elders even," explains Subidah, a teacher in neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, "but now the technology is changing this whole social structure."

The nature of the shifts occurring in FATA today points to a potentially more encouraging future where access to information both within and about the region is more widely available. Despite the U.S. government's "targeted killings" of militants narrative, many ordinary people in FATA live in fear that they could be caught in the crossfire of the conflict engulfing the region. A more nuanced picture of FATA's residents can inform an honest accounting of the policies that affect their lives.

This article is an adapted excerpt from a forthcoming study on the information landscape in FATA. The names of individuals in this article have been changed to protect their identity.    

An Afghan boy runs after catching a kite on a hilltop in Kabul on November 2, 2012. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

Khaled Hosseini first took us on a tumultuous journey to 1970s Afghanistan in the 2003 best-seller The Kite Runner, and followed it up in 2007 with A Thousand Splendid Suns, a novel about two women in Hosseini's homeland. On May 21, his third novel, And the Mountains Echoed, hits store shelves. Unlike his previous works, it jumps across continents, weaving together a tale about love and loss across generations. Here, the author talks about his newest title, his view on writing, and his hopes for Afghanistan with Wajahat Ali, a writer and attorney.

Your first two novels were set mostly in Afghanistan. For your latest, the narrative, although rooted in Afghanistan, branches out across generations, time periods, and the globe: Greece, Paris, and California. What inspired you to "leave Afghanistan" and tackle a global canvas?

"Family is so central to Afghan life. It's the way you understand yourself, those around you, and how you perceive yourself in the world as part of this whole."

It was a conscious decision, and the natural flow of the book demanded it to be more global. I wanted to create a story-world that didn't necessarily begin with Kabul and end in Kandahar. I wanted to expand the geographic milieu for my characters in part because I've travelled a lot in the past 10 years and I wanted to stretch my literary legs as a writer. Many writers write boundless and wonderful books practically set in the same town for their entire career, and I admire them for that, but I wanted to go out for a breath of fresh air.

This book started so small, so small, with such a simple idea of a father and his two little children walking across the desert toward Kabul, and it just kept snowballing. And I had this particular image of this trunk of a tree with all these branches that went everywhere -- it wasn't a conscious decision to say I'm going to go France now, and then Greece, it just sort of developed organically that way. I wanted to see how far this story echoed and how many lives it could touch. I was excited to explore that.

You're also experimenting with style and structure. Each chapter shares a unique perspective from a different character but is connected to the overall mosaic. One chapter is in the form of a letter, another is a magazine interview, and most resemble short stories. Why break with traditional form and employ an unorthodox approach for this particular novel?

I was interested in looking at people and situations from different points of view. I thought the magazine interview (set in Paris) was a perfect vehicle to get inside the mind of this woman, a complicated poet, and get her idea of how she understands herself, her life, the world she was raised in and how she understands her place in it. Because we've seen her before in an earlier chapter, and she's been described through the eyes of her Afghan chauffer; she's also being described by her own daughter in the later chapters. So, we have these different accounts of a single person full of contradictions and conflicts and we get to see her from multiple angles.

This is unlike the sort of archetypal characters I wrote in Kite Runner. There weren't too many ways of interpreting those characters, like Hassan, who was such a lovely, angelic character. But there are different ways of interpreting this woman. That's what this shifting perspective and structure allowed me to do; see different people in different situations in different storylines from various angles.

Throughout the novel, I noticed the characters have a persistent need and search for an existing but absent love -- one that is eventually earned but often at a burdensome cost. For most characters, it seems sacrifice is necessary to truly appreciate and understand love's reality. This reoccurs in all your novels. What keeps drawing you to this theme?

You're right. It's something I'm drawn to. The very first chapter of this book, which is a fable, sets up questions that are raised throughout the book, albeit in a realistic way and not an allegorical way. It begins with the notion of "family." I'm from Afghanistan, and family is so central to Afghan life. It's the way you understand yourself, those around you, and how you perceive yourself in the world as part of this whole.

That opening fable asks what does family mean to you? To what length will you protect its unity? How far will you climb for it? How would you measure your own personal happiness or what you owe to those around you? Are you capable of inflicting a deep, resounding loss upon yourself out of love for someone else -- for the greater good? Also, I'm interested in the role of memory. In the fable, the div (a supernatural creature in Afghan folklore) gives the father, Baba Ayub, a potion and relieves him of the burden and pain of remembering his son, whom the div has captured and hidden in his fortress). This recurs at the end of the book with the character Abdullah.

Is memory how we make sense of the life that we've lived? Or is it a protector of that part of us that shine brightest? Or is it a curse that makes you re-live over and over the parts that hurt and pain you? Or is it both? These themes are raised in this relatively short fable but are revisited over and over in the novel.

You touched upon memory. What do you believe is the future of Afghan narratives and storytellers? Can it, and should it, escape the memory of 9-11 and finally move beyond discussions of the war on terror, the Taliban, and a narrative often associated with "the graveyard of empires."

As a writer living in exile, it's easier for me to do. Because my immediate reality is not living on the streets of Kabul where on every corner I can see a living reminder and living relic of the tragedy of the past 30 some-odd years. My reality of living in the U.S. is different and the distance affords me a compulsion to write about that is not as powerful as if I was writing from ground zero in Kabul. I think the enormity of what's happened to Afghanistan is far too powerful a black hole -- a vortex -- and a far too great a looming presence in the daily life of Afghan writers living there. Ultimately, you hope for a day when there's stories, songs, poetry coming out of Afghanistan that have nothing to do with the painful realities of the past 30 years. But, I think it's too early. I think the story is still unfolding. I think people are still licking their wounds, and there are people literally walking around still wounded, also psychologically wounded. It's far too great a reality to turn away from.

Speaking about stories, you've said that in Western media, "There are still myths about Afghanistan , such as that the country is stuck in the 12th century. There is an element of romanticism too, as well as the idea that Afghans hate the west." Your novel Kite Runner remains one of the most popular, mainstream narratives of Afghanistan for many Americans. There's been a criticism that your narratives have been used to promote stereotypical generalizations of Afghans and certain political agendas. What's your response?

I thought the perception of the region was more nuanced than it got credit for in The Kite Runner . The criticism is often leveled at me by older, more conservative, religious members of my community who feel the books have somehow blemished the reputation of Afghanistan in Western eyes. I don't see it that way. Most of my Western readers -- particularly Americans I've met for a better of a decade now -- never have that impression. My understanding is that the books have depicted a far different picture of Afghanistan that my accusers seems to fear it has.

Most readers have come away with a sense of empathy for Afghanistan and its people; there's been awareness of the richness of its culture, its heritage and its history. And as a result of connecting with the characters of my novels, they have achieved a more nuanced understanding of Afghanistan, and they certainly feel a sense of personal stake when they hear about an Afghan village being bombed. I've received emails and letters to this effect. So, many of these fears are unfounded. And I think by and large, I hope my novels have raised the profile of Afghanistan in a constructive and hopefully instructive way.

You say Kite Runner is an example of pop culture being constructive and instructive. You've also mentioned that American shows depicting Muslims and the Middle East, such as Homeland , need to be done in a "responsible way" and not push an agenda. What is your opinion of America's depiction of Central Asia and Muslims; if it's negative, how do you counteract it using storytelling?

I think it's transforming. In our traditional mainstream media news, I think there's far too many stories dealing with "the radicalized Muslim." We get a lot of those stories in the news media, and I do understand that -- I certainly think this is timely given what happened in Boston. Just like in Afghanistan, the story of 9-11 still looms large even more than a decade after it happened. That said, I do hope we can move away from that.

I see an opportunity for America to engage with the Muslim world. Perhaps we haven't done it to the fullest extent. For example, in Afghanistan, we're looking at a very young population -- over 60 percent of Afghans are under the age of 25. And most of them are not radicalized or have any hopes or desires of becoming radicalized. There are people with energy, vigor, entrepreneurial dreams; people who want to engage the modern world through technology and education, and I hope we move towards a form of engagement with the Muslim world that is more constructive than simply depicting large sections of a billion people under umbrellas that are pejorative.

Speaking about new narratives, I want to go back to this novel in which you seem very comfortable merging classical, Afghan folklore storytelling with modern narrative fiction. This particular novel casually references the supernatural, such as divs and jinns. Often, it seems Western fiction condescends and rejects the mystical in favor of realism. Do you think Western fiction could benefit, or learn, from Afghan storytelling?

"Over 60 percent of Afghans are under the age of 25. And most of them are not radicalized or have any hopes or desires of becoming radicalized. There are people with energy, vigor, entrepreneurial dreams."

There is room for everything. I think if you reject a certain kind of storytelling you handicap yourself and limit your options. I think current Western contemporary fiction rejects even more than the mythical, it rejects the "sentimental" story. An instinct that has any aspirations of appealing to the reader on a deep emotional level is occasionally branded as sentimental in a kind of professorial, condescending way. My background has never been in literature. I've gone to medical school. So, I don't consider myself part of "that" world. So what is said does not affect me all that much. But I do think we are seeing an enrichment of contemporary fiction in this country by the rise of new, young voices from Pakistan, India, Iran and hopefully Afghanistan. This can only add dialogue, make it more interesting and instructive as well.

Aside from your career as a novelist, you've spent considerable time and energy as a goodwill ambassador to Afghanistan. That nation has endured decades of warfare and tragedy, most recently the post 9-11 U.S. invasion. What are the grievances that Afghans have with the U.S.? Is the rift irreparable, or can the wounds be healed?

There's an abandonment complex in Afghanistan which had its origin in the wake of the Afghan-Soviet war. I'll relate the generic Afghan voice I've heard over and over again in many Afghan communities, which says that once the Afghan-Soviet war was over and Afghanistan had served its purpose by playing a major role in the downfall of the Soviet Empire and ending the Cold War, the West abandoned Afghanistan and its people. Afghanistan was then exploited by thugs, the militia men, the Taliban and so forth. That is the main grievance leveled against the U.S. and its allies by the Afghan people. That has echoes to what we're seeing in Afghanistan now.

Afghan people are a sovereign people. It's well-documented that they don't like foreigners on their soil. However, there is an anxiety, a sense of trepidation about what will happen once U.S. and NATO forces fall back in 2014. Are we going to see a repeat scenario that we witnessed after the Soviet War? Is the country going to unravel and revert back to ethnic war of the 1990's? Is there going to be mass displacement of ethnic populations? Are we going to see another Afghan refugee crisis? Are we going to see the return of power of peoples for whom democratic ideals are not a priority? These are the views of the Afghan people, and the grievances they have against the West. They want the West to assure them they won't abandon them so it reverts back to this previous state.

We should remember that a great deal of promises were made to Afghanistan after 9-11. I happen to be one of those that say that significant things have been accomplished in Afghanistan. There's been improvement in the health care sector, education sector, and personal freedoms and so on. For many Afghans, however, the reality they currently face falls short of the expectations they had after the U.S. invasion of 2001. Much of that is also leveled against the current Afghan government and its shortcomings and inability to provide for the Afghan people.

Afghanistan's problems seem so overwhelming and insurmountable. What is the proper way for Americans to "help" Afghanistan and Afghan people?

People need to understand who the Afghans are and their wishes and aspirations. There's a myth that suggests that Afghans want the U.S. and the West to just give them all the money in the world and rebuild their country for them. I think it's important for Westerners to know that's not the case and it's not a constructive way to view Afghans.

Afghans are not beggars; they are fiercely proud and extremely resourceful. They are a very determined people who want to rebuild their country. What the Afghans do want is economic and civic space to accomplish these things. It's been a challenge to deliver this to them in the past 10 years. The U.S. has done some of it but it hasn't gone that far. There are more aid organizations in Afghanistan than you can count and the rebuilding needs are massive.

There is a fatigue when it comes to Afghanistan. This is a particular concern of my own. The Afghan narrative, I have noticed personally, has changed a lot in the past 10 years. People seem far more receptive to the idea of "let's support Afghanistan and its people, let's invest in the country and let's rebuild," but it's very hard to get traction for that particular story.

I understand why because this war has been long and costly in all sorts of ways. As an Afghan I can't help but hope that the gains that have been made in Afghanistan - and they are significant - that those gains are not lose once more when the U.S. packs its bags and leaves.

You have had a unique journey toward becoming a storyteller. A child of immigrants, you first became a physician and then a novelist at 36. In many immigrant communities, children are told to abandon their creative ambitions to pursue the safety of the "holy trinity" of professions: doctor, engineer, and businessman. As such, many of us have become successful professionals, but we haven't produced many modern artists. What's your advice to the aspiring creatives, especially the children of immigrants, who want to pursue their artistic passions but must deal with immense family and community pressures?

This is a brilliant question and touches upon something I've experienced firsthand. I think this is something that will sort itself out. Because the reality for the next generation, for example my children, is very, very different from mine.

When I came to the United States with my family in 1980, there were nine of us. We lived in a small house near East San Jose. We lived on welfare. In that kind of incredibly stringent, stressful environment where day-to-day life was uncertain and you're living on government sponsored aid, the idea of nurturing artistic aspirations is esoteric at best. You develop a sense that the world is unstable and you must make your future solid and stable and you have to make sure you never end up in this position again. For the parents, they think "Okay, our life is gone, but for the children, we have to make sure they don't live a life like this." So, they instilled in us the idea of getting a "serious" profession and the whole idea of "the holy trinity" that you mentioned.

I already see it being different for my children. I have a 10-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old boy and I don't think I've once told them that I want them to be a doctor, engineer, or lawyer, and I don't think I do want them to be those things. They live in a completely different world than I do with far more opportunities, far more chances, far more leisure to choose exactly what it is that speaks to them so they can pursue it.

I wanted to be a writer so badly growing up that coming to America as a 15 year old, not speaking a word of English, it seemed outlandish that I would make a living writing stories in a language I didn't speak. I think the next generation we will see musicians and artists and poets and painters and our usual motley crew of physicians and engineers and lawyers.

Rumi, the spiritual poet of Islam, was born in Afghanistan and wrote those beautiful words in Farsi. At the same time, we see that the Taliban's interpretation of Islam has initiated a reign of religious terror for the Afghan people. As a person who has lived in Afghanistan and frequently gone back, what role should religion play in modern Afghanistan, and can it be reclaimed from tyrants?

I wish it was quite that simple. I don't think the terrorists have necessarily co-opted the religion. I think the insurgents have conveniently and strategically tapped into an existing mindset in Afghanistan. Islam is alive in every facet of Afghan life. It dominates everything.

I am more or less a Westernized person at this point. I believe strongly in the separation of church and state. However, I'm not so naïve to think that day is coming for Afghanistan. Right there in the Afghan constitution it states that no law of the land shall contradict the principles of Islam, and that's open to all sorts of troublesome interpretations. For the time being, I see religion playing an important, dominant role in Afghan life, politics, and culture. Afghanistan is a deeply pious country. That's just the way it is.

The Taliban has taken religious principles to unacceptable extremes for the majority of the Afghan population. There is very little public support for the Taliban and polls have borne that out. But, it's not like the Taliban came and invented the burqa or child brides. The nucleus of those things were alive and well in the culture -- not everywhere, but certainly in the tribal provinces. There's certainly modernism in Kabul, but most of Afghanistan is rural and much of it is very, very conservative.

There is room for everything. I think if you reject a certain kind of storytelling you handicap yourself and limit your options.

Your book begins with this famous English translation of a classic Rumi quote: "Out beyond of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." They say in the 21st century the world is a battleground. So, where is this field and how do you think we can reach it?

The more we understand that we are connected; the more we understand that what happens in another region of the world echoes with us. The more we understand that we no longer live in a world that is insular, where the actions of other people, the fate of other people, the plight of other people who are different from us have no bearing on our life. The more that we understand those things, the more we will identify with each other. We will realize we all have common goals. It behooves us to help each other. It behooves us to come to each other's aid.

On the few occasions that people have asked me to speak at commencement ceremonies, the message I always tell this coming generation is that you cannot afford to say that you are alone. You cannot afford to pretend that what happens in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Peru has no bearing on you. It does. The days of our living in a compartmentalized existence on this planet are dying. We have the internet; our modern life has completely changed that. It'll never go back to the way it was.

I can only hope that we can be in the field once we see how connected we are and how we are part of one giant organism. I perhaps echo your question's sentimentalism and idealism with my answer.

Your critics accuse you of sentimentality, but your sentimentalism also makes your stories beloved to the masses. If you can be self-critical and do a self-audit, what are your strengths and weaknesses as a storyteller?

I think my strength is in telling a story. That's my strength. I can keep a reader's interest. I can bring a sense of anxiety to every page; bring a sense that something's at stake in every page. Certainly that's my goal, but to what extent I've achieved it is for the reader to decide. I also write in a way that emotionally resonates with the audience. I want something to be at stake emotionally for every story I write. To some extent, the readers feel the same.

My weaknesses? I have a long list. I'm well aware of my limitations as a writer. I will never be stylish. I will never have a particularly interesting prose. When I read contemporary fiction, I recognize prose that is beyond my grasp.

I do think I have a modest but sturdy set of skills that have served me very well. They have allowed me to create stories that to readers at least, feel very authentic and connect with them on a deep human and emotional level. And that's good enough for me.

    

Russian federal troops control a street in downtown Grozny, in the Russian region of Chechnya, on Feb. 16, 2000. (AP)

For many people, the recent Marathon Bombing in Boston is a story of evil terrorists from faraway places. For others, it is a story about the heroism or the failures of the FBI, Homeland Security, or even President Obama. And for others still, it's about individual self-radicalization on the Internet, two boys gone wrong.

The story of the Boston Marathon bombing is about a region of the world that has been engulfed in trauma for the past 23 years and for two centuries before that -- the story about the conflict between two nations.

I want to tell a different story about a region of the world that has been engulfed in trauma for the past 23 years and for two centuries before that. This is a story about the conflict between two nations, the Russians from the north and the Chechens and Avars from the mountains of the south. The Tsarnaev brothers are half-Chechen (on their father's side) and half-Avar (on their mother's). According to the Russian and Kyrgyz press, they grew up in at least four places: Kyrgyzstan, Dagestan, Chechnya, and the United States, as well as possibly Kalmykia and Kazakhstan. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar had at least two passports and a green card: one from the Kyrgyz Republic (Dzhokhar and perhaps Tamerlan were born there in 1993 and 1986 respectively), one from Russia because their mother is from Dagestan and they moved there in 2001, and a green card from the U.S. from 2007. The younger son, Dzhokhar, received U.S. citizenship on September 11, 2012. As I have pieced together the story, the two brothers were triple or quadruple refugees in their short lives, moving from Kyrgyzstan to Chechnya back to Kyrgyzstan to Dagestan to the U.S., possibly with time as well in Kazakhstan and even Turkey. When they entered the U.S., they claimed political asylum. Perhaps they were more economic refugees than political, but what is sure is that everywhere they went, the family faced high unemployment (Kyrgyzstan), war (Chechnya and Dagestan), and discrimination as new arrivals.

Technically, today Chechnya and Dagestan are two of the 89 regions of Russia, somewhat like our 50 states in the U.S. But both are restive, in rather different ways. After two wars between Russia and Chechnya in the mid-1990s and again in the early 2000s, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his representative, Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, have on several occasions announced the end of what they refuse to call a war: it is an "anti-terrorist operation." Still, the violence continues, and it was endemic in the early 1990s when the boys were young.

Two issues have been at the core of the struggles between Russia and the North Caucasus: a) the issue of territory and sovereignty; and b) the issue of oil, which was first drilled outside the capital of Grozny in 1893.

***

For the Russian Empire, the issue of the North Caucasus became especially troublesome during the reigns of Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I. In 1801, Alexander I and the Russian army were able to annex Georgia on the far side of the high Caucasus Mountains (at 18,000 feet, they are higher than the Alps), and in 1812 they defeated Napoleon, the superpower of his day. Yet it took 25 years of fighting (1834-1859) to conquer the North Caucasus.

At least one historian has said these 19th< century wars were a turning point, establishing Islam and a certain religious nationalism as a unifying (if still fairly moderate) force in the region that was once multi-ethnic. In a region of enormous ethnic diversity, the common denominator became religion. These wars were known as the Murid Wars because the North Caucasians practiced a form of Sufism known as muridism, in which the warrior follows a teacher in a spiritual path.

In the late 19th century, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote a novella, Hadji Murad, about the Avars, specifically Hadji Murad (a historic figure) and his muridim, in which he portrayed them as more religious, more upright, but also more entangled in clan relations than the Russian leaders (who were prey to bickering, exaggerating their own vainglory, and senseless violence). The story is a meditation on the senselessness of war, the absurdity of differences that seem enormous but are not so in reality.

The oil in the northern Caucasus (Maikop, Grozny, and Baku) became a magnet for the Nazis in 1942, drawing them deeply into the region before Stalin's Red Army repulsed them. Historians debate the degree to which the Chechens and others in the North Caucasus aided or even conspired with the Nazis, but Stalin's retribution against suspected collusion was swift and brutal. The entire population of the Northern Caucasus nations - men, women, and children - were shot or deported en masse from February 23 to March 9, 1944. They were thrown into cattle cars for deportation to Central Asia, just as Hitler had deported his own Jews, homosexuals, communists and Roma. The name of the operation reflected Stalin's twisted sense of humor: Operation Chechevitsa, a word in Russian that means "lentils," but which sounds like the name of the Chechen nation.

About 99,000 of the 600,000 deported Chechens and Ingush ended up in what was then the Kyrgyz Soviet republic. The extended Tsarnaev family seem to have been among those deported to Kyrgyzstan, settling in a town called Tokmok, 40 miles from the capital Bishkek, a small city of 50,000. Accounts from Tokmok suggest that the whole clan lived on one street. Many members of the family came to have higher educations, quite a few becoming lawyers. Anzor, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar's father, was himself one of ten siblings. Gradually, in the course of the 1990s, the many siblings began to move back to Chechnya, their homeland, which had declared its independence from Russia in November 1991.

Anzor himself has claimed he worked for the equivalent of the district attorney's office in Tokmok, but was forced out because of discrimination against Chechens. Neighbors have disputed that, saying that he worked for the local police department. The local police department disputes even that. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Anzor worked principally in repairing and selling foreign cars, a quite common profession in the turbulent 1990s. Zubeidat, the mother, stayed at home.

The most probable version of the family history is that they moved to the town of Chiti-Yurt in Chechnya in 1993 (after the birth of Dzhokhar) to a house that the grandfather had built. Chiti-Yurt, though, is just 20 miles south of Grozny. When war broke out between Russia and Chechnya in 1994, Grozny experienced the brunt of the aerial attacks and all-out bombing. By 1996 it was reduced to rubble.

The Tsarnaev family now fled back to Kyrgyzstan, and Tamerlan went to second grade (age 9). Looking at him in a photo from May 1995, his teacher remembers that in those years he was rather withdrawn. But for these children, this was normal - their spirit had been trammeled by the wars.

A month after that photo was taken, a group of some 80 to 200 Chechens under the leadership of rebel leader Shamil Basayev crossed into Stavropol krai (the same region that Gorbachev was from) and took at least 1,500 people hostage in the Budyonnovsk hospital. In January 1996, a group of Chechen rebels instigated another hostage crisis in Kizlyar in Dagestan. By August 30, 1996 Boris Yeltsin's government had been forced to sign a humiliating treaty with the Chechens at Khasavyurt.

One of many strange aspects of this story of the Tsarnaev brothers is that so many different nations have denied knowing them or being affiliated with them.

But that did not mean the late 1990s were quiet. During this time hundreds, perhaps thousands of civilians were taken hostage by both sides and returned to their families (alive or sometimes dead), but only after elaborate bribes were paid. Throughout the '90s, the Russian armed forces ran dozens of filtration camps -- or detention facilities -- in which they arrested and often tortured some 200,000 Chechens (out of a total population of one million), most of them young men. As both Human Rights Watch and the Russian human rights group Memorial have documented, most of those interned were young men who were captured principally for the purposes of intimidation and psychological terror. Many were held in pits in the ground during the winter with no place to sit or lie down except on the bare earth.

In Kyrgyzstan (which had also declared its independence in 1991, but which, unlike Chechnya and Dagestan, had been able to establish its full independence as a nation), there was less violence, but by the beginning of the 1990s the country was facing a different problem: escalating unemployment rates, moving from 7 percent in 1999 to 11 percent in 2001 and 14 percent in 2002. Whether in search of economic improvement or political asylum, in 2000 or 2001, the family moved to Dagestan, which turned out to be just as dangerous as Chechnya in the 1990s. Dzhokhar went to first grade, but in the middle of the year (March 2002) he and his parents headed to the United States, which they entered on Kyrgyz passports and where they requested political asylum.

If we place their story against the story of the region, we see the confluence of war and violence -- the maelstrom that they were caught up in. Chechnya and Dagestan were themselves changing dramatically in these years. From a movement that had initially been directed against Moscow for nationalist reasons, the independence movement had now become dominated by radical Salafi preachers who teach that there must no nationalist differences among the nations of Islam. Russian commandos further radicalized the situation by assassinating one of the moderate Sufi religious leaders, Sheikh Said Afandi, in August 2012. Since 2007, the insurgency movement under Doku Umarov has begun to refer to the region of Chechnya and Dagestan as the Caucasus Emirate.

One of many strange aspects of this story of the Tsarnaev brothers is that so many different nations have denied knowing them or being affiliated with them. Russian President Putin, Chechen President Kadyrov, and the Caucasus Emirate, as well the administrations of Kyrgyzstan and Dagestan, have all claimed that the Tsarnaev brothers do not belong to them and did not act on their behalf. While much of the story of the Tsarnaevs' attacks on the Boston Marathon resemble the attacks made in the name of Al-Qaeda, this piece is anomalous. No one has claimed the attacks as "theirs." And in a certain sense no one has claimed the young men as theirs, either.

But did Tamerlan and Dzhokhar claim Chechnya and Dagestan? Yes and no. On the one hand, investigators have found evidence that they claimed their "real" targets were the U.S. because of its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, historically Chechnya has not viewed the United States as its enemy. Moreover, Doku Umarov has publicly stated, as recently as February of this year, that his movement should not harm civilians. Yet the Tsarnaevs' pressure cooker bombers were directed precisely at civilians.

Of course, much has rightly been made in the press of Tamerlan's six-month stay in Dagestan (January-July 2012). What hasn't been noted is the level of violence in the time he was there. In the first half of 2012 alone, there were over 185 terrorist attacks, making it the most dangerous place in Europe. On May 4, while Tamerlan was in the region, two car bombs exploded in Makhachkala, killing at least 13 people, just three days before Putin's inauguration for his third term as President. Journalists speculated at the time that the bombs were being prepared for the Victory Day celebrations to be held on May 9 (a holiday celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany). Victory Day explosions in Dagestan had also killed dozens of people in 2002, 2004 (including then President Akhmad Kadyrov), and 2010. Dzhokhar has now confessed that he and Tamerlan were preparing their attack for July 4, but since the bombs were ready, they looked for an earlier holiday. As most people in Massachusetts are well aware, April 15 was Patriot's Day. Since there is no May 9 celebration in the U.S. to mark Victory Day, perhaps Patriot's Day would suffice.

Finally, one must consider the split in the family over religion. How are we to understand Zubeidat, the mother's, call to her son to become more religious? How are we to understand her own transformation from someone who wore stylish dresses and high heels to someone wearing a hijab? Clearly this was something that made her own husband Anzor and his brother Ruslan extremely uncomfortable. Ruslan, who would later tell reporters on April 19 that the boys were "losers," broke with the family in 2009. In 2011, Anzor and Zubeidat had divorced.

Perhaps the mother's calling her son to adopt a more militant version of Islam is also part of the story of a war-torn region where children and young people have lost their way. Throughout the Middle East, including Bulgaria and the North Caucasus, Muslim women are turning to religion in hopes that it will help them curb their men's turn toward alcoholism and despair. Perhaps by praying and submitting to the will of God, the thinking goes, the men will return to their families.

It seems that that turn to Islam went terribly awry in the case of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Senator John McCain and others have called for Dzhokhar to be treated as an enemy combatant. Yet, as many have argued, the ultimate vindication of our democracy must be that we apply the law to all who have transgressed. And we must also apply history so that we can see how history shaped these two brothers.    

A pharmacist arranges drugs in a pharmacy in Athens on March 1, 2012. (John Kolesidis/Reuters)

One day in late March, European finance and health ministry officials met at the OECD's Paris office to discuss how healthcare systems are faring in times of austerity.

On the second day of the two-day conference, Greek finance ministry official Evdoxia Andrianopoulou read from a series of brown-colored PowerPoint slides riddled with details of attrition and savings. Greece's cuts were deep, of the sort commonly seen in a corporate turnaround - but rarely on a government's balance sheet, and almost never to healthcare expenses.

Greece's budgetary ax fell unduly hard on its healthcare sector, which was slated to grow at around 4 percent annually, but which has instead been jolted by a series of wage freezes, firings, and drug rationing programs.

The takeaway from the meeting - according to two people who attended it - was that Greek officials knew that these huge cuts would result in the curtailing of essential services for their people. But the officials were working under the stress of having to meet a financial target set by their tri-party group of creditors: the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank. And so they delivered.

According to an Austrian finance ministry official who attended the meeting, participants in the room "were in a state of shock" after Andrianopoulou concluded her talk. Another attendee who asked that he not be quoted said "a pin-drop silence" filled the room.

Meanwhile, across the Channel in London, academics were preparing to release a study in "The Lancet" on the healthcare crisis that has followed deep budget cuts in Southern Europe.

One of that work's principal researchers, David Stuckler of Oxford University, warned that not just Greece, but also Spain and Portugal, faced a potential healthcare disaster due to their own steep budget cuts.

Yet of the three crisis-stricken countries, Greece seems to have suffered the most.

"Greece is an example of perhaps the worst case of austerity leading to public health disasters," Mr. Stuckler explained in a telephone interview.

"After mosquito spraying programs were cut, we've seen a return of malaria, which the country has kept under control for the past four decades. New HIV infections have jumped more than 200 percent," he noted.

Malaria returned because municipal governments lacked the funds to spray against mosquitoes. HIV spiked because government needle exchange programs ran out of clean syringes for heroin addicts. By Stuckler's estimate, the average Greek junkie requires 200 clean needles in a given year.

"But now they're only getting three a year each," Stuckler said.

Athenian drug addicts sharing needles or malaria-carrying mosquitoes biting Spartans have put Greece in the media spotlight over the past few months. But a decidedly less headline-grabbing fact is this: cuts taken over the last two years could look even worse a few years from now.

"The thing about healthcare systems," the OECD's Ankit Kumar explained in a telephone interview, "Is you cut the money today, and start to see the cuts' impact at least three to four years from now. You know that people aren't getting their medications. But it takes a couple of years before this manifests itself in high levers of sickness, fewer people being able to work, and more people facing shorter lives. Given the consequences of what has happened in Greece, these outcomes are just going to get worse and worse."

Some experts have suggested that Greece's budgetary ax fell unduly hard on its healthcare sector, which was slated to grow at around 4 percent annually, but which has instead been jolted by a series of wage freezes, firings, and drug rationing programs. Economists around the world warned of the cuts' consequences - but it was the Greeks themselves who opted for deep gashes to their healthcare system.

"IMF doesn't say 'you have to cut 10 percent of your economy, but you can't close hospitals or schools.' Where the cuts are made remains a country's sovereign right," Kumar explained.

This spring has been an important time for healthcare research in Europe because data now confirm - as if there was any doubt - that in healthcare, too, the gulf between Europe's north and its south has continued to widen.

Last year, while Greece went about adjusting to its new slimmed-down healthcare reality, German's ministry of health contacted the OECD for its help in studying the exact opposite problem. German healthcare costs were ballooning, but only a third of the growth could be linked to Germans becoming sicker or aging.

The OECD's research on Germany was published this spring, at nearly the same time that the full picture of Greece's healthcare tragedy came into form.

OECD researchers compared Germany to its peers, and came to a simple conclusion: German doctors seem to be prescribing treatments, operations, and hospital stays more often than might be medically necessary. That this is occurring while Germany's neighbors just a two-hour plane ride away in Athens face the worse healthcare and societal crisis in their history only underscores the much publicized idea that Europe is growing apart.

One statistic was especially telling: the OECD average for hospital beds per 1,000 patients sits at 4.9; in the case of Germany, it's 8.3. France has 6.4, while the U.S. has 3.1.

"The difference in the medical science between the United States, Germany, and France is not so great that it can justify 70 percent higher numbers in Germany than the OECD average," Kumar said.

Kumar and his co-author, Michael Schoenstein, theorized that because Germany has more hospitals than it needs, doctors and hospitals appear to be steering patients towards more expensive in-patient procedures and then tacking on multiple night hospital stays in order to fill hospital beds and submit payments to Germany's essentially unlimited system of insurance reimbursements.

"These are big institutions that want to be busy," Kumar said. "After investing millions, and in some cases billions of dollars, into the infrastructure, no one wants to have these institutions running at 60 percent. They know that if hospitals aren't full, someone's going to point the finger and say 'hold on a second, you're running at 60 percent capacity regularly, why do you have all of these empty beds, we need to get rid of that.'"

***

The OECD lacks clear data on how many Greeks have been denied medical care during the country's economic crisis. But anecdotal reports have shown that people are being deprived care.

The New York Times reported that "breast cancer patients often have to wait three months now to have tumors removed" and that at least 2,000 patients in need of bypass surgery haven't been scheduled for procedures.

Could the solution to Greeks' healthcare crisis be to send patients north to Germany's hospitals? With Europe's common market, citizens' freedom of movement, couldn't Greeks just fly north for treatment?

"Yes, EU citizens can travel to other EU countries for treatment," OECD's Michael Schoenstein explained, "But for planned treatments like cancer treatments, they need prior approval from their healthcare insurers at home. It's theoretically possible, but practically very difficult."

    

A burnt vehicle is removed from the site of an Al Qaeda in Iraq bomb attack in Baghdad on March 29, 2013. The group's activities have proven problematic for Al Qaeda's larger messaging. (Reuters)

The idea that the Internet facilitates Al-Qaeda's recruitment and messaging campaigns is not new. However, more than ever, the changing landscape of the online environment is allowing for dissent from within the ranks of Al-Qaeda's supporters. Gone are the days when Al-Qaeda's senior online ideologues could control the flow of information by operating their own bulletin board-style forums. While Al-Qaeda and its supporters still facilitate discussion through their own web communities, the nature of jihadi discourse today is much more democratic, with jihadi personalities claiming inside knowledge dispersed across the online environment. The evolution toward platforms such as Twitter that empower the individual are allowing Al-Qaeda's supporters to avoid forum censors and promote their own personal narratives, which are not necessarily in agreement with that of Al-Qaeda's messaging strategy writ-large.

The move to platforms that empower the individual are allowing Al-Qaeda's supporters to promote their own personal narratives, which are not necessarily in agreement with Al-Qaeda's messaging strategy.

This phenomenon was at center stage in early April when Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq (AQI) committed an unthinkably reckless strategic messaging error. On April 9, AQI announced the incorporation of Jabhat Al-Nusra in Syria into an AQI-administered Islamic state aspiring to govern Iraq and Syria. Effectively, AQI attempted to define Al-Nusra as no more than a subordinate to AQI. Al-Nusra, one of the Syrian opposition's most effective fighting groups and indisputably Al-Qaeda's most popular affiliate, was quick to respond. Just one day later, they denied knowledge of the merger and professed a direct pledge of loyalty to Al-Qaeda senior leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Despite the State Department placing Al-Nusra on it list of foreign terrorist organizations in December 2012, this was the first time that Al-Nusra's leadership had publically acknowledged their link to Al-Qaeda.

These events led to a flurry of debate on jihadi web forums that support Al-Qaeda. Many jihadists were quick to criticize AQI and began openly wondering how an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, a group that is notoriously careful in crafting its messages, could commit such a blunder. However, jihadi forum moderators suppressed commentary that criticized AQI, and the lack of free speech within Al-Qaeda's movement was unmistakable. Just several years ago it might have ended there without any serious repercussions, but today's is a different Internet environment. The rise of social media platforms championing the power of the individual has changed the online jihadi landscape. While the new model works to the benefit of Al-Qaeda so long as its proponents promote a unified message, the new reality also magnifies dissent.

Soon after Al-Nusra refuted the merger with AQI, one of the most widely trusted jihadi political analysts on Twitter attacked AQI's integrity as an organization. Abdullah bin Muhammad, as he identifies himself on his account (@Strategyaffairs), criticized AQI's decision to carry out attacks during a recent period of Sunni protests in Iraq, remarking that such actions "do not serve [anyone] but the Iranian enemy." Additionally, Abdullah bin Muhammad produced a document in which Ansar Al-Islam, an old AQI ally from the days of the resistance against the American forces in Iraq, listed crimes that AQI operatives allegedly committed against Ansar Al-Islam members. According to Abdullah bin Muhammad, Ansar Al-Islam asked him to intervene to end the feud. Armed with this information, Abdullah bin Muhammad alleged that unknown parties had infiltrated AQI and were attempting to translate that effort into influence over Al-Nusra in Syria. Such an open deviation from the prevailing AQI narrative on mainstream sites is historically very rare.

On a typical jihadi forum, Abdullah bin Muhammad's inflammatory accusations would not survive long before being deleted. But in the free market of ideas that is Twitter, where Abdullah bin Muhammad has over 35,000 followers, his comments were re-tweeted hundreds of times as Al-Qaeda junkies across the web discussed the spike in jihadist criticism of AQI. Additionally, agreement by Assad Al-Jihad2, a long-time online proponent of Al-Qaeda's global jihad whose articles have been published by official Al-Qaeda media sources and who is nicknamed "The Spearhead of the Mujahidin" by his followers, only placed more credibility on Abdullah bin Muhammad's allegations.

The ability of Abdullah bin Muhammad's Twitter accusations to travel far and wide was illustrated when his comments were re-posted on sites such as The Yemeni Council, a vibrant and largely moderate Arabic discussion forum where current events receive spirited debate and where Al-Qaeda supporters are actively attempting to win the hearts and minds of the site's mostly Yemeni participants. Feeling empowered by the legitimacy that comes with the endorsement of Abdullah bin Muhammad and Assad Al-Jihad2, a staunch supporter of Al-Qaeda on The Yemeni Council admitted to his own deeply held concerns about AQI's trustworthiness. Interestingly, this Al-Qaeda ideologue also expressed regret over making a statement so critical of AQI on a mainstream site, but remarked that he was sure that such a comment would not be welcome on a jihadi forum. As this post shows, the suppression of the allegations against AQI pushed Al-Qaeda's supporters' criticism into more moderate areas of the online social media environment, a development that is at best an embarrassment to Al-Qaeda.

It's clear that Al-Qaeda is increasingly less able to control the conversation by hosting it on its own sites and indoctrinating the participants to the point that they no longer dare to diverge from Al-Qaeda's lines of persuasion.

Today, some of the group's most successful online advocates, such as Abdullah bin Muhammad, Assad Al-Jihad2, and the plethora of Al-Qaeda sympathizers on Arabic web forums like The Yemeni Council, are making independent judgments about how to present Al-Qaeda's activities to the world. In this case, that process translated into a difficult decision: Al-Qaeda supporters either (1) amputated the disease-ridden limb that is AQI so that the larger Al-Qaeda body could flourish, or (2) remained steadfast behind an affiliate that has been a mainstay in the Al-Qaeda family for most of the last decade. At this early stage, it is difficult to know which faction is in line with Al-Qaeda's senior leadership, but certainly the two opinions are mutually exclusive. Only time will tell as to how Al-Qaeda's old guard will respond to this and other debacles that result from jihadis going rogue on Twitter.

    

A woman dances as she takes part in a Pink Dot Sg event at the Speakers' Corner in Hong Lim Park in Singapore June 30, 2012. About 15,000 people took part in the event to promote acceptance of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community in Singapore. (Tim Chong/Reuters)

While Western countries debate the merits of gay marriage, countries in Southeast Asia remain far less accepting of homosexuality.

"It's really about changing the stereotypes, and changing the community itself."

In socially conservative Singapore, where sexual contact between men is still punishable with up to two years' jail time, an online-only magazine targeted to gay men in Asia launched last month, with a second issue due in June. It is something of a test case for media and cultural barriers.

For a population that both shows signs of slowly accepting of gay culture, and embraces the digital media formats that allow the publisher to bypass local media licensing requirements for print publications, the timing may be right for Element, a magazine that covers fashion, entertainment, fitness, and issues relevant to the Asian gay community.

"It's an excellent moment," said Hirokazu Mizuhara, the managing director and creative force behind the bi-monthly e-magazine. "A few years back a digital magazine probably wouldn't be able to garner a lot of attention. In Singapore, given that it's a very digital society, a purely e-magazine can have the same effect as a printed version."

By limiting the publication to an electronic version -- available on digital platforms such as the Apple App atore and the Android Market -- and using an Internet host server based in the United States, Element bypasses licensing requirements set by the Singapore government, which regulates locally produced content, and eliminates the need for a print distribution.

While the e-magazine's publisher touts the lucrative market for the "pink dollar" in Asia, Singapore is surrounded by countries where homosexuality remains illegal (such as Malaysia) or meets with strong disapproval (such as Indonesia). That makes the online-only gambit seem necessary.

Mizuhara, 27, teamed up about six months ago with Noel Ng of Epic Media, 31, an e-magazine publisher who has wanted to produce a gay-themed e-magazine for several years. But Ng, who is straight, didn't have the right business partner until he met Mizuhara, who is gay.

For Ng, this new venture is in some ways a labor of love. Like many Singaporeans, he had been of the view that being gay is a conscious choice. When his eyes were opened by gay friends, and he saw that "they weren't treated properly and feel condemned, nobody's there to help them lead a life." For him, the magazine is a way "to restore the dignity and worth of every gay man."

The magazine bills itself as "the voice of gay Asia" and, while similar to other men's lifestyle magazines, is geared toward the gay male audience in Asia.

The price is $1.99 per issue or $9.99 for six issues, and the magazine reports sales of 6,500 subscriptions since its launch. Thanks in part to Mizuhara's past work as a marketing manager at Harper's Bazaar in Beijing, the magazine has lined up a respectable number of high-end advertisers, including Paul Smith, local nightspot Avalon, the Small Luxury Hotel Group, and underwear brand Private Structure.

Its pitch to advertisers cites studies showing the Asian gay community is a lucrative market, showing "a higher interest level in fashion, grooming, traveling, fine-dining, tech gadgets, nightlife, entertainment, and socializing."

"It's really the concept of the magazine that interests them," Mizuhara said of the advertisers. "After they've seen the magazine, that's when they're confident enough to come in."

Each issue will contain the digital equivalent of 90 to 100 print pages.

Ng and Mizuhara compare their magazine to Attitude, a British gay magazine that is available both in print and e-versions. But they are quick to distinguish their publication from men's skin magazines. "Ours is not the typical explicit gay magazine that shows you almost nude guys or tells you where to go for sex. This is a lifestyle magazine," Ng said.

The gay community in Singapore is decidedly low-key, although there is a gay nightlife scene and a yearly event called PinkDot, an open-air gathering to support LGBT rights.

Section 377A of Singapore's penal code criminalizes sexual contact between men. While the law is not aggressively enforced, some are challenging it in the courts, while others see it as anachronistic for a nation that aspires to cosmopolitanism.

Earlier this year, Singapore's prime minister signaled no interest in changing the law. "Why is that law on the books? Because it's always been there and I think we just leave it," he said.

Ng and Mizuhara say Element will not be overtly political, but will push an agenda of societal acceptance and understanding of the gay community.

"It's really about changing the stereotypes, and changing the community itself, to help the community move in a healthier direction and to get involved with the mainstream society," Mizuhara said.

    

Men walk past Israeli flags raised in preparation for Israel's Independence Day in Tel Aviv April 26, 2009. Israel marked its 61st Independence Day, according to the Hebrew calendar, on April 29th of that year. (Gil Cohen Magen/Reuters)

"There's a fear down here we can't forget hasn't got a name just yet
Always awake, always around singing ashes to ashes all fall down."

--The Grateful Dead, "In the Dark"

Since its birth as a state 65 years ago, Israel has faced one existential challenge after another: hot wars, cold wars, terrorism, and rejectionism; early near-death experiences for the fragile and unlikely Jewish state, surrounded by hostile neighbors; the persistent equation of its very rationale as a state -- Zionism -- with racism and imperialism; and beneath this, the ongoing real racism that never seems to die, a dark form of intolerance that repeatedly rises like the soul of Lord Voldemort: anti-Semitism.

As a state still heavily shaped by the traumatic circumstances of its birth, out of the ashes of the Holocaust; as a people who have come so close historically to annihilation, Israel has a natural and understandable proclivity to feel insecure and to fear the worst. When a state has fought seven wars in 65 years, and a roughly equal number of other military conflicts, it has reason to feel that its survival is constantly on the line, and to spend, tax, draft, and innovate heavily and relentlessly to defend itself. Against the long odds of these formidable challenges, Israel's development ranks by any measure as one of the most remarkable achievements of any post-World War II nation. It is a story not merely of survival but of booming success: the entrenchment of vigorous democratic institutions and freedoms, the flowering of the desert, cutting-edge scientific and technological inventions, and rapid economic development that has propelled this embattled nation of immigrants into the ranks of the world's rich, highly industrialized democracies. Today, Israel ranks 16th On the United Nations' Human Development Index.

Despite the astonishing leaps in Israel's military power and technology, Israel cannot relax. At the moment it is not at war, but it is also not at peace.

But the dominant mood in Israel today is anxiety more than celebration. The principal source of this anxiety is not the ongoing deep internal divisions in what has long been, and has increasingly become, a deeply divided society. Neither is it the gathering international campaign, gaining momentum particularly in Europe, to "boycott, sanction, and divest" from Israel. The root of this anxiety remains what it has always been: an abiding sense of insecurity. Despite the astonishing leaps in Israel's military power and technology (as symbolized by the success of its "Iron Dome" air defense system in shooting down an estimated 90 percent of the rockets launched from Gaza last year against Israeli civilians), Israel cannot relax. At the moment it is not at war, but it is also not at peace. Much deadlier and more accurate weapons lie in the vast arsenals of a Syrian state that is slowly disintegrating in a civil war. Hence the recent Israeli air strikes on Syrian weapons caches that were apparently about to be shipped across the border in Lebanon to Hezbollah.

The Syrian crisis is only a small fragment of a new security reality that confronts the state of Israel. Throughout the Arab world, longstanding pillars of political stability are falling down. As many Israeli strategists see it, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over in Egypt and Gaza, has the upper hand in Tunisia, and could still gain power in Libya, or even possibly in Jordan, where the massive flow of refugees from Syria is badly straining the economy and social order. Or even more radical Islamist forces could conquer power in some places (including potentially Yemen). The Gulf States are nervous. The region is in crisis.And then there lurks what most Israelis regard as the ultimate existential challenge to their national security: the Iranian regime's intense pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. That is a line that Israel's political and military leaders feel they cannot allow this Iranian regime to cross. And President Obama himself, who is hardly eager for any more American military actions abroad, declared, in an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, "... when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say."

Strangely, however, the one area of relative, or at least transitory, calm in the region is the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Since the second Palestinian Intifada ended around 2005, there has been no broad new violent uprising in the West Bank. Rather, there has been of late relative peace in the West Bank and something new and potentially game changing: Palestinian development. The past six years of government under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have been a period of state-building and economic growth unlike anything the Palestinians have seen since the creation of Israel, with economic growth averaging 11 percent in 2010 and 2011 (though slowing to about half that since). The signs of this development are particularly evident in the seat of the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, Ramallah.

Palestinians have begun to taste what peace and cooperation could bring; but they have a bitter taste in their mouths, meanwhile. This is the continuing humiliation and injustice of an Israeli occupation that has swallowed up a steadily increasing amount of land for Israeli settlements and carved up the West Bank into fragmented pieces separated by 10-foot high concrete blast walls, topped by razor wire, and dotted relentlessly by prison-like watchtowers and military checkpoints. The entire look and feel of this presence exudes the inescapable character of occupation as domination and control. Until it is ended, there cannot be peace, and therefore Israel cannot ever feel really secure. That is the great paradox of the occupation.

There is no higher act of friendship that the United States can perform for Israel than to help it find a way to a two-state solution before the option disappears.

Many Israelis feel this is a reason to worry about the long term, but not the present. With the region in turmoil, with peace treaties shaky, with Iran seeking the bomb, with everything that seemed stable at risk of falling down, this is hardly the time to take chances for peace, they say. And so, in the recent Israeli election, the existential question of war, peace, and occupation did not much figure in the campaign.

Yet there are two other elements to the current conundrum that deeply worry many Israelis, and even some current and former leaders of politics and government. One is their mounting concern about what the occupation is doing not simply to Palestinians but also to Israelis -- that the country is losing part of its soul in the dehumanizing task of dominating and controlling another people for decades on end. For more than 45 years, well over two-thirds of Israel's existence as a state, it has occupied the West Bank. Even as governing authority over economic and social matters has been transferred to the Palestinian Authority over a portion of the territory, and even as security cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security officials has notably improved, the occupation has become institutionalized, the settlements have relentlessly expanded, and a sense of despair has settled into populations on both sides of the divide. As we approach the half-century mark in occupation, with a steady expansion in settlements deep into the West Bank that have the look, feel and even intention of permanence, it becomes increasingly difficult to regard the phenomenon as a temporary reality waiting for a lasting resolution.

This raises the second concern, what many feel is the most acute existential threat to Israel's survival as a Jewish state. For at least two decades now, thoughtful Israelis have worried that Israel cannot be a democracy, a Jewish State, and Greater Israel, for a simple reason. They could see that the demographic trends would eventually produce an Arab population majority in the combined territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. That was twenty years ago. Now, "eventually" has arrived. There are roughly 6 million Jewish citizens of Israel. If we combine Israeli Arab citizens (about 1.6 million, or slightly over 20 percent of all Israelis) and the Palestinian populations in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (4.4 million), the total is now about the same as the Jewish population (or even slightly higher). And the Arab population growth rate is higher (in fact, among Israeli Arabs, significantly so). In a single bi-national state, Arabs would vote -- democratically -- to eliminate the Jewish character of the state. This is why a growing number of West Bank Palestinians, particularly youth and intellectuals, are now calling for a single unitary state. And it is why President Obama declared in Israel on March 21, "Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine."

After thousands of years of Jews being a minority and frequently persecuted in many parts of the world, and after a Holocaust in the last century that killed 6 million Jews, it is hard to imagine that the Jewish people of Israel would give up having a state of their own, where they constitute a substantial majority and can protect themselves from the many threats that are still around them. Thus, the choice that confronts Israel with increasing urgency is democracy or indefinite occupation.

Even many moderate and pragmatic Palestinians are growing weary with the daily humiliations and limitations of the occupation. If they judge that a two-state solution cannot be achieved, or that what is being offered as a "state" is so fragmented and feeble that it is not viable, then Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestine Liberation Organization could hand back to Israel the responsibility for governing all of the West Bank and demand the creation of a single unitary state. That is one of two ultimate, drastic cards they believe they have to play. The other is to ask the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli officials. Either move would destroy the fragile hopes that remain for a negotiated two-state solution. This is why many pragmatic Israeli leaders of the center and even center-right feel that time is running out for a two-state solution, and that this issue, above all others, represents the biggest threat to the survival of Israel as a Jewish state.

Many professionals in the State Department and the U.S. foreign-policy community feel sorry for Secretary of State John Kerry. In launching immediately into the forbidden desert of the "Middle East Peace Process" they feel he has taken on a doomed mission--that he will fail as every other American Secretary of State has failed to settle this insoluble problem, this "mother of all conflicts." Looking at the turmoil throughout the Arab world, the polarization in Egypt, the chaos in Syria, the massive, destabilizing refugee flows into Jordan and other neighboring states, the looming conflict with Iran, the recent resignation of the Fayyad government, the deadlock between Hamas ruling in Gaza and the PLO ruling in the West Bank, they wonder what Kerry must be thinking -- or smoking.

But here is what he could have in view: There is no escaping the inextricable link between American security and two other objectives -- the security of Israel and a stable peace in the region. If the two-state solution falls off the table, the Palestinians hand back governing authority to Israel, and pressure mounts from Palestinians, Arab Countries, and around the world for a one-state solution, while Hamas grows more powerful in Gaza and the West Bank (as it likely would), the resulting destabilization would diffuse to other parts of the Middle East, strengthening radical forces and undermining a wide range of U.S. interests.

Moreover, a time of radical reshaping of the parameters of Middle East stability is a time of new possibilities, new calculations, and new urgency for peace. The ground is rapidly shifting. A regional window of opportunity has opened with the latest Arab Peace Initiative, which now accepts the idea of territorial land swaps and reiterates the offer of a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict if Israel negotiates peace with the Palestinians. The occupation is not sustainable in its current form. Time is running out for a two-state solution. And the United States is the only actor with the power and credibility on all sides to mediate it, and inevitably, guarantee it in security terms. There is no greater imperative for American interests in the Middle East and no higher act of friendship that the United States can perform for Israel than to help it find a way to a two-state solution before the option disappears.

    

Afghan policemen keep watch during celebrations for Afghan New Year (Nawroz) in Kabul on March 21, 2013. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Many Americans think we're winding down in Afghanistan by the end of next year, for better or for worse.

We're not.

Despite America's evident desire to extricate itself from the nation's longest war, Taliban fighters, criminal gangs, and other insurgents continue to terrorize much of Afghanistan, making travel around the country as difficult as it's ever been. And the grim bargain that has dogged U.S. efforts in Afghanistan since the beginning of President Obama's "surge" still holds: The United States must find a way to supply and support an Afghan national army and police force that Washington has largely built but which is barely in its adolescence, although it is already 10 times the size of the fierce Taliban insurgency it is fighting.

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Senior commanders with the American-led International Security Assistance Force, which consists of 28 NATO countries and 22 other participating nations, say that substantial aid and military support is going to be necessary well after the scheduled withdrawal at the end of 2014. "For some time to come, it's our expectation that we will need to supply the Afghans [with] air support, certainly, counter-IED support, logistic support, and a number of areas where their capabilities are not at the level where they need to be at," Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, the deputy ISAF commander, said in an interview in Kabul over the weekend. "It's our expectation that we'll need to continue to build those areas for some time to come and probably beyond 2014."

Asked how many years that role might go, Carter, a British officer, said he believes that ISAF will need to "set the horizon out to 2018 ... It will take between three and five years to achieve. And it's important for people to understand that."

Within weeks, probably by the end of June, ISAF is expected to move to the final, and fifth, phase of its "handover" to the Afghan army and police. At that point the combined Afghan National Security Forces, as they are known, are expected to take the nominal lead in planning and directing all missions nationwide against the insurgents; currently ANSF is said to be doing that for about 85 percent of the country. The U.S. and other ISAF countries are then to assume a purely "train, advise, and assist" role. But Carter and others say ANSF is still falling short in effective leadership; command and control; logistics and medical evacuation; training its personnel effectively; and integrating the army's warfare strategy with the Afghan police and central and provincial government agencies. These deficiencies will continue long after 2014.

In the end, securing Afghanistan's future is likely to be more far expensive than Washington and other NATO capitals have fully reckoned with yet. It won't be an easy political choice, either, coming at a time when the U.S. defense budget has been slashed by the sequester and European NATO nations must conform to economic austerity policies.

Indeed, the rhetoric back in Washington often does not seem to square with the reality over here. Since last year's presidential election, Obama administration officials have indicated that America's military is heading for the exit in Afghanistan as quickly as possible. "This year, we'll mark another milestone -- Afghan forces will take the lead for security across the entire country," Obama said at a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in January. "And by the end of next year, 2014, the transition will be complete -- Afghans will have full responsibility for their security, and this long war will come to a responsible end."

But Carter, in a blunt assessment, indicated that ISAF is under no illusions about the war ending in the foreseeable future and that, even after years more of effort, the optimal results will not be pretty. Asked whether the ultimate outcome ISAF is aiming for would be a version of the somewhat cynical term attributed to a former ISAF commander, Gen. David Petraeus --"Afghan Good Enough," meaning a democratic government that remains corrupt and weak, and an unsatisfactory Afghan security force that barely holds the country's center -- Carter said he prefers to use another term to describe Afghanistan's likely future: "a stable instability." Outside of major cities such as Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, he says, substantial portions of the country will not be very "connected" to the central government. But at the same time the Taliban will not be able to take over the country again, said Carter, who serves as deputy to Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, the ISAF commander.

That's not necessarily a disaster for ISAF, Carter said, adding, "I'm sure that's going to be the case in large parts of Central Asia for some time to come." In many parts of Afghanistan, especially rural areas, a combination of local, often corrupt interests will be dominated by warlords, drug lords, tribal leaders or insurgents who will "pursue their own interests." He said that it was "rather like West Virginia" or "parts of the United Kingdom and Europe where groups pursue their own interests."

Still, most details of these more ambitious plans have yet to be negotiated, Carter said. While Obama is committed to withdrawing the remaining 63,000 or so U.S. troops by the end of 2014, his administration is still negotiating a post-2014 strategic partnership with Karzai that calls for a residual U.S. force numbering from 5,000 to 10,000 troops, according to various reports. Karzai, meanwhile, recently revealed that he has been discussing the use of as many as nine military bases to be used by the United States and ISAF after 2014. Carter confirmed that ISAF is considering the need for that many bases to support and supply six Afghan corps, as well as provide a headquarters, air-support mission, and training facility.

Reflecting the grim assessment, NATO defense ministers recently announced that they would seek to maintain the ANSF at its current strength of 334,000 (the Taliban is said to number about 30,000, although no one is certain of the total) or higher, rather than cut it down to about 230,000, as previously planned.

So far, however, of the NATO countries only Germany has officially offered to provide up to 800 troops to supply training after the 2014 deadline.

A January report by the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction concluded that the Afghans had failed to supply accurate numbers in meeting their goal to "train and field" 352,000 ANSF forces by October 2012, and that "Afghanistan is expected to have a 'financing gap' of $70 billion during the transformation decade of 2015-2024, with billions of additional dollars needed for years to follow."

Carter indicated that it was critical for ISAF to support ANSF in substantial ways after 2014 in order to address Afghan fears of abandonment. "We would regard the center of gravity in this campaign as being Afghan confidence," he said. "We have to demonstrate a commitment to them that goes beyond the pledges at Chicago and Tokyo," referring to the May 2012 NATO summit in Chicago and an international conference on Afghan development aid later that year in Tokyo, at which the U.S., Germany, Japan, Britain, and other donors offered some $16 billion.

Senior Afghan officials also say a longer-term commitment is the only way to marginalize the Taliban. In an interview on Sunday, Mohammad Stanekzai, the CEO of the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, said that NATO's "credibility" is at stake.

    

A supporter of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood holds up a Koran during Friday prayers at a rally in Cairo on December 14, 2012. (Amr Dalsh/Reuters)

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announced a cabinet reshuffle recently that included a number of new ministers from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood's leadership. This development seems to have confirmed the worst fears of the Egyptian opposition, which has raised concern over the "Brotherhoodization" of the country. Although the increased representation of the Brothers in the government is cause for alarm for Egypt's secularists and liberals, they should be concerned about a quieter, but more worrying process -- the Islamization of Egypt's political institutions -- which is likely to be far more durable than the Brotherhood's grip on political power. This phenomenon is not just underway in Egypt, however. Islamist power and the Islamization of society are what the the future holds for Egypt, Tunisia, post-Assad Syria, and likely other countries in the region.

Given that the noticeable evidence of the Islamization in the Middle East is few and far between, the idea that Islamization is the trajectory of the region might seem misplaced. Egypt's Muslim Brothers and Tunisia's Ennahda have not declared alcohol forbidden, forced women to don the hijab, or instituted hudud punishments (i.e., specific punishments for specific crimes set forth in the Qur'an or hadiths). It was big news in Egypt several weeks ago when the Le Roi Hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada poured out all its alcohol and established a female-only floor and swimming pool, but only because there have been so few incidents along these lines -- observers tend to forget that what was Cairo's Grand Nile Tower (formerly the Hyatt) went dry well before anyone ever contemplated Hosni Mubarak's ignominious fall.

Even if alcohol remains readily available in Egypt, that does not mean that the process of Islamizing its political and social institutions has failed.

Yet the fact that Egyptians and Tunisians can still drink Stellas and Celtias should be cold comfort. There will not be a moment -- a decree, for example -- that will indicate that a given Middle Eastern society will hew closely to the tenets and values of Islam. Rather, it will be a slower, more subtle process in which a country's political and social institutions are Islamized.

There is widespread confusion about what constitutes an "institution" and there is bound to be misunderstanding of the concept of "Islamized institutions." To clarify, institutions do not have doors and offices. Neither the UN nor the World Bank is an institution. The improperly named Brookings Institution is actually an "institute." Rather, institutions are frameworks that direct the behavior of society through the establishment of incentives, disincentives, and norms.

Thus far in Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey, Islamists have won, which means the political institutions of the state will, to varying degrees, reflect the priorities of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda, and the Justice and Development Party (AKP), respectively. Yet what does it mean to "Islamize institutions"? It is a process in which Islamic legal codes, norms, and principles are either incorporated into existing laws, or supplant them. By grounding certain institutions in Islamic tenets, Islamist elites create an environment in which religion plays a greater role in society, including in areas that have not been directly Islamized.

The second article of the 1971 version of Egypt's constitution stated "Islam is the religion of the state; the principles of the Islamic shari'a are a principal source of legislation, and Arabic is the official language." In 1980, Anwar Sadat amended the constitution to say: "Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic its official language. The principles of shari'a are the principal source of legislation." Sadat's change represented a step in the direction of Islamizing Egypt's political institutions, which matched some of the measures the Egyptian president took in the mid-1970s in the cultural and educational spheres that gave a prominent role to religion in these areas. First, it provided an opportunity for Islamists to delegitimize the state on specifically religious grounds, given the gap between the constitutional requirement for Islamic law-based legislation and the reality that much of Egypt's laws paid little heed to shari'a. Second, the article helped pave the way for the further Islamization of the Egyptian political system 33 years later. The new constitution, which was adopted in December 2012, includes a number of innovations that clearly sets Egypt along an Islamist trajectory. Consider, for example, the following excerpt:

Al-Azhar is an encompassing independent Islamic institution, with exclusive autonomy over its own affairs, responsible for preaching Islam, theology, and the Arabic language in Egypt and the world. Al-Azhar Senior Scholars are to be consulted in matters pertaining to Islamic law.

As a variety of Egyptians and other observers have noted, this provision places the ulema in a position to determine the validity of legislation based on religious principles. Although al-Azhar's Senior Scholars are ostensibly independent from the government and do not have as broad a reach as Iran's Guidance Council for example, the two bodies are clearly analogues.

In addition, the new constitution includes Article 219, which to the uninitiated is extraordinarily difficult to decipher, but is intended to guard against the kind of expansive view of shari'a that Egypt's highest court had previously used in assessing legislation . The combination of all of these constitutional principles significantly advances the Islamization of Egyptian society and renders it unnecessary for leaders to promulgate a decree or law that specifically bans alcohol, for example. Of course, President Mohammed Morsi could take this dramatic step, but he would not need to unless there is political pressure -- say, from Salafis -- to do so. In a relatively short period of time, alcoholic beverages would become scarce because of the powerful disincentives associated with the religious tenets and norms that are now codified in Egypt's political institutions. The effect of this codification is similar, if slower, to an outright ban on liquor, as Egyptians will be compelled through both opprobrium and possible penalty to give up their beloved Stellas and Johnny Walker.

Yet, even if alcohol remains readily available in Egypt, that does not mean that the process of Islamizing its political and social institutions has failed. In Turkey, raki, Efes Pilsner, and a few passable varieties of red and white wines are plentiful. In fact, the wine bar has become a bit of a thing in Istanbul these days. Even so, one of the reasons--along with a strong record on the economy -- that the ruling AKP has been so successful for more than a decade has been its ability to foster an environment in which Turks can more freely express their Muslim identity. Part and parcel of this is the steady Islamization of institutions in the decade since the AKP came to power.

In March 2012, for example, the AKP paved the way for graduates of imam-hatip (preacher) schools to enter the bureaucracy by making it easier for them to matriculate at Turkey's universities -- a traditional feeder for public servants. In the context of Turkish politics and the Republic's history of aggressive laicisme, the change was controversial. Turkey's preacher schools are, as their name implies, intended to train prayer leaders for Turkey's 82,693 mosques and, as such, about half the curriculum is devoted to religious subjects while the remainder of the curriculum coincides with what the Ministry of National Education prescribes for non-religious high school students. Previously the vast majority of graduates of preacher schools went into the clergy -- Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan being a prominent exception -- and had difficulty entering Turkish universities. They either lacked the preparation as Turkey's predominantly Kemalist academic elites argued or they were subject to discrimination as pious Turks claimed. Either way, with larger numbers of imam-hatip graduates entering Turkish universities, larger numbers will enter careers in Turkey's sprawling bureaucracy. Although this development is far less dramatic than the innovations contained in Egypt's new constitution, the effects are similar: the slow, but steady, Islamization of society. Of course, not all imam-hatip graduates are Islamists, but together with their Islamist colleagues, they are well-positioned to funnel state resources to projects and causes that they favor regardless of who is in power.

It has always been a misnomer to refer to "secular republics" in the Arab world.

From the time the Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 the hicab (headscarf) became an underlying and neuralgic issue in Turkish politics. To many pious Turks, the headscarf is an important test of freedom of expression while to their secularly-minded fellow citizens, the hicab represents a threat to the political system that Mustafa Kemal (known commonly as Ataturk) built some 80 years earlier. In 1925, the Law of the Hat banned the Fez and discouraged women from wearing the headscarf -- both head coverings since regarded among Republican elites as symbolic of an age of corruption, obscurantism, and backwardness. This was why in 2007, the General Staff opposed (among other reasons) Abdullah Gul's move from the foreign ministry to the presidency. The prospective first lady of Turkey, Hayrunnisa Gul, wore a headscarf. The AKP moved in early 2008 to lift the ban on headscarves specifically at public universities, a restriction that dated back not to Ataturk's reforms of the 1920s, but rather to the 1980 coup d'etat. The party -- in conjunction with the National Movement Party -- succeeded in parliament only to have the legislation overturned in the courts on constitutional grounds. Yet what seemed to be a resounding defeat in the effort to Islamize Turkey's political institutions provided an opportunity for the AKP to undertake a broader effort to alter Turkish politics and society. Stymied in their effort to change Turkey's institutions further, Prime Minister Erdogan championed a constitutional amendment, which passed in a September 2010 referendum, that altered the way in which judges were selected for Turkey's highest courts. No one disputes that Turkey's judiciary was badly in need of reform, but while the United States and the EU praised the change, the amendment merely substituted Kemalist court-packing with Islamist court-packing. With the parliament firmly in the hands of the Justice and Development Party, no viable opposition, and a judicial system that is set to be transformed, the Islamization of Turkey's political institutions will proceed apace. The irony of the Turkish situation is that the changes that the AKP have wrought were done, in part, to remedy past institutional discrimination against pious people. And while Turkey is perhaps more democratic than it was 20 years ago, it is less open than it was eight years ago.

In Tunisia, the effort to Islamize political institutions has confronted a significant backlash. Proposals to enshrine in the country's new constitution criminalization of blasphemy and subtle changes that would have reduced the equal status of women were beaten back after ferocious protest. Yet even in Tunisia, where the state brutally suppressed Islamism and an aggressive secularism was a hallmark of the political system, the Islamist Ennahda was elected. Even if the party is a closer approximation to Turkey's Justice and Development Party than Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, as the Ennahda leadership claims, the incorporation of Islamic codes and norms in Tunisia's political institutions are not far behind, despite early setbacks. Tunisia, often described as "the most secular" of Arab states, is experiencing an Islamist renaissance with new expressions of piety ranging from the sudden emergence of the niqab, Salafis, and demonstrations over the availability of liquor.

It is hard at this point to imagine anything other than a future in which religion plays a broad and decisive role in Egyptian, Turkish, and Tunisian societies. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the spread of theocracies is in the offing. Theocracy suggests a totalitarian-like Taliban rule or an Islamic Republic of Iran style of politics whereas certainly in Turkey and perhaps in Egypt and Tunisia, there is likely to be room for secularists to contest politics and the nature of the political order. Still, with the slow Islamization of political institutions, maintaining familiar lifestyles and even livelihoods of non-Muslim and/or non-pious citizens will become more difficult. Egypt's Coptic community is not imagining the pressure they feel even as President Morsi reassures incredulous Christians that they are an integral party of society.

Only in the context of the Arab uprisings, with its inspiring and emotional stories, can the Islamization of political institutions be a surprise. Various Islamist movements have been open about their goals for some time. In addition, it has always been a misnomer to refer to "secular republics" in the Arab world. In Hosni Mubarak's three decade-long political struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood, he, his party, and the propaganda machines of the state borrowed Islamist symbols and language. What, after all, is secular about a country that at one end of the scale identifies an official religion and at the other pipes the call to prayer into the subway system? Even Turkey is not secular, which implies freedom of religion. Rather, central to the republican system that Ataturk founded was laicisme, meaning the control of religion. More germane is the fact that secular elites in Turkey used religion when doing so served their interests. Thus, the oft-referred to "staunchly secular" Turkish military went on a mosque building binge in the 1980s, flaunted the fact that the chief-of-staff could recite the Qur'an from memory, and encouraged the growth of piety in the belief that religion would depoliticize society. All of this set the stage for the Islamization of political institutions once religious politicians came to power. The inevitable result is going to be a region in which particular interpretations of shari'a will play a direct role in shaping people's lives in unprecedented ways.

    

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev walks in front of the monument "Stronger than Death", devoted to the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, in Semei on June 18, 2009. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

As international attention continues to focus on the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, a less-discussed Asian country has quietly emerged as a leader in responsible nuclear development: Kazakhstan. In addition to its much-praised stint hosting last month's international talks on the Iranian nuclear program, Kazakhstan is now in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to host a global nuclear fuel bank. (Proponents of the bank claim that it would serve international non-proliferation efforts by providing a secure emergency supply of low-enriched uranium for peaceful purposes.) Meanwhile, Kazakhstan is moving forward with plans to build a civilian nuclear power facility for domestic energy needs, possibly on the Aktau site of a now defunct Soviet-era plant.

Although the human and environmental tolls of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk remain an open wound, the experience armed Kazakhstan with the credentials to play an active role in global nuclear politics.

For many Kazakhs, these steps are proud evidence of the country's developing status as a major player in international nuclear policy. They are, however, also a painful reminder of the Soviet-era nuclear traumas that continue to haunt millions of Kazakhs today.

"Kazakhstan's people and environment have endured tremendous suffering as a result of Soviet nuclear weapons testing," said Dr. Togzhan Kassenova, an associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The majority of people, if asked, would express support for global nuclear disarmament and would display pride of Kazakhstan's own record in shutting down its nuclear testing site and removing all nuclear weapons from its territory."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 1,410 nuclear warheads. Under the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbayev (who is still the president of Kazakhstan today) the country renounced its nuclear weapons arsenal, which had been the fourth largest in the world, and voluntarily repatriated its warhead inventory back to Russia. In later years, Kazakhstan signed START-1 , the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and was instrumental in establishing the Central Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone along with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

But Nazarbayev's most cathartic move, perhaps, was the August 29, 1991, closure of Semipalatinsk, the world's second largest nuclear weapons testing site. At the beginning of the Cold War, Stalin chose the remote corner of northeastern Kazakhstan, also known as "The Polygon," to test the first Soviet bombs. When Lavrenti Beria, the head of the KNVD secret police, selected the site, he claimed it was "uninhabited." It wasn't. Today, the area (which is not surrounded by a barrier of any kind to prevent humans and animals from roaming freely) has been called the " world's worst radiation hotspot."

"The nuclear threat strikes a deep chord within Kazakhstan. For four decades, our country was used as the backdrop for nuclear tests," wrote Nazarbayev in a 2012 op-ed for the New York Times. "Although it has been over 20 years since the last test, their devastating impact is still being felt."

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first successful test of a 22-kiloton nuclear weapon, called First Lightning, at Semipalatinsk. (Although Soviet authorities knew that wind and rain would make local populations susceptible to the nuclear fallout, they disregarded the risk.) Between 1949 and 1989 the Soviet Union went on to conduct an additional 456 nuclear tests in the area --340 underground and 116 above ground -- with no regard to any environmental or humanitarian impact the tests might have. The residents of Dolon, a village located 100 kilometers northeast of Semipalatinsk, for example, were exposed to an estimated radiation dose of 140 rem during the first year alone. For comparison, the average American is exposed to a radiation dose of roughly 0.62 rem each year.

And the medical devastation wasn't isolated to that one village. According to a 2006 study from the Research Institution for Radiation Biology and Medicine at Hiroshima University, approximately 1.6 million people directly suffered from the tests, and an additional 1.2 million continue to experience the after-effects today. The health impacts of radiation exposure include genetic disease, cancer, severe birth defects, infertility, and suicide. (The 60-kilometer zone around the test site has a suicide rate that is more than four times the national average.) In fact, Japanese and Kazakh scientists determined that symptoms experienced by people exposed to nuclear radiation in the Semipalatinsk region were not dramatically different than the ones suffered by survivors of the nuclear attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition to the human toll, an estimated 300,000 square kilometers of land were environmentally affected by the tests.

"A ninth of Kazakhstan's territory, comparable with the territory of Germany, was turned into a nuclear wasteland," said Nazarbayev in a speech at the 20th anniversary of the Semipalatinsk closure in 2009.

Semipalatinsk also inspired the formation of "Nevada Semipalatinsk," the first anti-nuclear movement in Soviet territory. In 1989, Kazakh poet and candidate for the Congress of People's Deputies, interrupted his nationally televised poetry reading to criticize the nuclear testing at the Polygon site. Two days later, 5,000 people filled the National Writers' Union headquarters in Almaty and held the first meeting of the Nevada Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement (named in partial recognition of similar protests in the American state of Nevada). In subsequent years, that campaign put significant pressure on the Soviet and Kazakh governments to destroy all nuclear facilities. Their eventual success when Kazakhstan became the first country on earth to close a nuclear test site set the tone for the country's continued role as a responsible voice in global nuclear policy over the following decades.

"It is the experience of the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing and the long-lasting tragic consequences of it that explain why the population was overwhelmingly supportive of the government's decision to get rid off the Soviet nuclear weapons left on its territory," said Kassenova.

Today, Kazakhstan's nuclear legacy and ambitions to position itself as a " model nonproliferation citizen" remain at the heart of the country's foreign policy. Although the human and environmental tolls of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk remain an open wound for most citizens, that experience did arm Kazakhstan with the credentials to play an active role in global nuclear politics.

"Kazakhstan's nuclear history and how it dealt with it is a very important part of its national identity. The Soviet past did a lot of damage," Kassenova said. "But at the same time, part of Kazakhstan's current strength in the field of nuclear energy and even in its ability to contribute to nonproliferation projects is due to the infrastructure and expertise rooted in the Soviet program."

    

Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz political party, casts his vote for the general election at a polling station in Lahore on May 11, 2013. (Mohsin Raza/Reuters)

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is poised to form his country's next government following elections notable for a high turnout in the face of Taliban violence.

Unofficial results and projections on May 12 indicated that Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League is heading toward a majority in the parliament.

Based on current predictions, his party looks set to secure nearly 130 of the 272 directly elected seats in the national assembly. It should also gain the support of some independent deputies to cobble together a majority.

Sharif's party will also get a large share of seats reserved for women and religious minorities to establish his majority in the 342 seat parliament.

This means that Sharif should be days away from a third term as prime minister.

Unofficial results suggested that former cricket hero Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (Movement for Justice) has received strong support, heralding the arrival of a potent young faction.

The Pakistan Peoples Party and the Awami National Party -- the outgoing coalition partners -- appear to have endured major losses amid voter unhappiness over their handling of the country in the past five years.

In a victory speech in Lahore, Sharif called for cooperation among political forces to battle Pakistan's many problems.

"For the sake of the nation, for your sake, for the sake of Pakistan's 180 million people, and in order to end this curse of power cuts, inflation, and unemployment, I want to ask them [opponents] to come and sit down with us," he said.

Peace Initiatives?

Sharif's party is regarded as having a pro-business stance, tilting toward regional cooperation and peace with the country's neighbors.

Zahid Hussain, an Islamabad-based journalist and author, suggested that, once in power, Sharif is likely to forge a cooperative relationship with Washington and confront Taliban violence despite previous statements that he would pull Pakistan out of the war on terrorism.

"I think that it will be a normal relationship," he said. "I don't see any major change in Pakistan's foreign policy towards the United States under Nawaz Sharif. In 1993 to 1998, when Nawaz Sharif was the prime minister, he was cooperative with the United States. There were some kinds of misgivings, but I doubt very much that there will be any major change in Pakistan's policy towards the United States."

Nonetheless, Hussain maintains that Sharif will not have the final say in Pakistan's policy toward Afghanistan.

"The military actually will continue to run this policy with the consent of the government," he said.

However, Tariq Fatmi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington believes Sharif's administration is likely to back a peace process in the country.

"On Afghanistan, there are a few things that are notable about Mr. Nawaz Sharif," he said. "First of all, he believes that any peace process in Afghanistan that stands a chance of success must be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led. In other words, it has to bring about the various constitutional elements in Afghanistan."

Sharif, 63, is a wealthy steel magnate from Punjab Province. He has been a leading player in the Pakistani political establishment for years, alongside the Pakistan Peoples Party of current President Asif Ali Zardari and the slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Sharif was in power when Pakistan tested its first nuclear weapon in 1998.

He was toppled in a 1999 military coup by former army chief General Pervez Musharraf, and spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia before returning to Pakistan in 2007.

His movement came second in the 2008 elections.

Obama And Regional Leaders' Congratulations

In related news, the United States' President Barack Obama and the leaders of Afghanistan and India have congratulated Pakistan on holding parliamentary elections.

In a statement issued on May 12, Obama said Washington was ready to work with the government that emerges "in supporting a more stable, secure, and prosperous future for the people of Pakistan."

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif to congratulate him over victory in the elections. He also invited him to visit India.

A government statement said that Singh "expressed India's desire to work with the new government of Pakistan in charting a new course for the relationship between the two countries."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai praised Pakistanis for participating in the elections in large numbers despite the threats of terrorist attacks.

This post appears courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.    

Mohammed Jawad, one of the youngest detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is photographed at a family home in Kabul August 25, 2009, the morning after he returned to Afghanistan. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)Deep in Pakistan's Swat Valley, a 24-year-old man named Farooq was busy making a wooden lute called a rubab in a classroom last month. But Farooq isn't a woodworker -- he's a former Taliban fighter who was sent to the school by the Pakistani army with the goal of reforming him. With enough vocational and religious re-education, they hope, he won't be tempted to join up with extremist groups after his release.
"The Taliban had misguided me," he told NPR. "They told me I had to wage jihad against the Pakistani army. But now I understand that they used me. The army and this school helped me understand that."
The past few weeks have seen an increased momentum behind the years-long push to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. A high-profile hunger strike by the detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release, has now expanded to about 100 men -- more than half of the remaining prisoners. President Obama last month called on Congress to close the facility.

One obstacle to the prison's shuttering has been the unresolved question of where to send the cleared detainees. Of 166 inmates, 90 are from Yemen -- a country administration officials are wary of returning them to lest they join up with militant groups (again or, in some cases, for the first time.)

If the inmates are ever repatriated, one option that's been repeatedly floated to prevent them from linking up with al-Qaeda is good, old-fashioned rehab -- the kind Farooq and other repentant jihadis have undergone in various countries over the past decade.

In an attempt to induce the U.S. to close Guantanamo, Yemen in 2010 offered to build an $11 million rehab facility for cleared detainees, as a sort of halfway house between indefinite detention and normal civilian life.

The center is still nonexistent -- talks between the U.S. and Yemen to build it fell apart over funding -- but Yemen still says it's willing to construct it if it means Gitmo would be closed.

If it's ever constructed, it would be one in a surprisingly long line of attempts to rehabilitate both former Guantanamo detainees and other suspected militants in order to make them functional members of society.

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Yemen, 2002

Prior its most recent effort, Yemen had already entered the extremist emotional-healing business. In 2002, Yemeni President Abdullah Ali Saleh pitched a program that would reintegrate detainees with suspected ties to al-Qaeda and release them back into society. The U.S. hated the idea, thinking it was little more than a revolving door. They turned out to be mostly right. The Toronto Star did a great profile of the program back in 2009:

Hamoud al Hitar was in charge of the program, called the Committee for Religious Dialogue, which, by his own admission, primarily involved talking. The goal was to lure jailed militants away from violence by engaging them in what al Hitar calls "theological duels."

The way it worked was this: Prisoners would come to the center, stay a few days, and meet with Islamic counselors who would try to convince them that the Quran does not, in fact, invite Muslims to blow things up.

A later West Point report on the project found that it focused on the wrong objective. It aimed to get the cleared detainees to swear not to commit acts of violence in Yemen specifically, but not to foster permanent, ideological change within the men. Some of them reportedly simply pretended to change their ways just to be freed.

The Committee also didn't provide the released men with any social services or financial support, and it apparently made little effort to keep tabs on them after they re-entered society. The Yemeni government isn't sure what happened to the 364 people who entered the program -- some escaped, some were killed in Iraq, and some simply vanished off the government's radar.

Thanks to a lack of political will and funding, the program died in 2005.

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Saudi Arabia, 2007

Unlike Yemen's emphasis on religious dialogue, the Saudi's rehabilitation program included financial and emotional support.

"One of the things they learned early on is that they need to support people and people's families, because if they don't, someone else will," Christopher Boucek, an associate at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Star.

At the Mohammed bin Naif Center for Counseling and Care, alleged militants enjoyed buffet meals and classes in everything from Islam to art therapy. Their strategy? Have imams explain to the men that not everyone can issue a fatwa -- an Islamic legal pronouncement -- only religious leaders can. Some of the men had apparently been issuing fatwas from their al-Qaeda cells, according to CNN, therein committing their entire group to radical action.

When they graduated, the men in the Saudi program received a lump sum of $2,665 and $700 a month for their first six months on the outside. The government then helped them find jobs and wives.

"I have good life, a good wife," Khalid Suliman al-Jhari, a former Guantánamo prisoner, told the Christian Science Monitor. "I believe that this idea is working because the people ... are honest about fixing [ex-jihadis].... It's not just a job."

The program's recidivism rates have been relatively low (Saudi officials say just 3 percent), but there have been a few high-profile re-offenders. In September of 2010, Yemeni authorities have detained Jabir Jubran al Fayfi, who re-joined al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula after graduating from the Saudi rehab program. Said Shihri, another former Gitmo detainee, moved to Yemen after he finished the program and became the second in command for the local Al Qaeda cell.

In 2010, Reuters reported that around 25 Saudi former Guantanamo detainees had returned to militancy after going through the rehabilitation program. The same year, Saudi Arabia said it planned to build five more rehabilitation centers, each of which would be able to accommodate 250 people.

A just-built Riyadh facility that can house up to 228 people offers luxury as an incentive to drop extremism: "In between sessions with counselors and talks on religion," the AFP reports, "prisoners will be able to relax in the center's facilities which include an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool, a sauna, a gym and a television hall."

Behave well, and you get a two-day break to spend with your wife.

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Pakistan, 2012

Inspired by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan set up its own program, complete with sessions with psychologists, imams, and job counselors. With the help of international funding, the country has opened two jihadi rehabilitation centers: one called Mishal, for teenage militants, and another called Sabaoon, for even younger boys.

"I would never admire what I did 11 years ago," 20-year-old Shahbaz Ahmed told the Los Angeles Times. "It was a blunder on my part. I was immature, but it was my decision and I am still paying the price for it."

Like in Yemen, the imams in the Pakistan program try to convince jihadis that killing innocents in the name of Allah is morally wrong. There's also job training and a small stipend. The focus is on skill-building -- MS Word and wood shop -- rather than dialogue. Perhaps most crucially, graduates are checked on by counter-terrorism officers even after they return home.

The program targets combatants, not former Guantanamo detainees, and it has already graduated thousands of men. According to local police, recidivism hasn't become an issue -- at least not yet.

***

If these past experiments are any guide, there seem to be few ways to completely prevent recidivism among former militants, but some money to start a new life appears to help. One issue with Yemen's newest rehab proposal is that the man agitating for it, Abd' al-Majid al-Zindani, has been labeled a "specially designated global terrorist" by the U.S. Treasury, and a clerical school he started has graduated the likes of Anwar al-Awlaki and John Walker Lindh -- two men who aren't exactly brochure material for jihadist reform school.

There's no telling when or if the new Yemeni center will be built, but for now human rights groups are tempering their enthusiasm for such an institution with the concern that it might become just another indefinite detention center -- except this time, beyond the reach of the U.S.

"If it is built, we want to ensure that it does not become another Guantanamo with window dressing," said Letta Tayler of Human Rights Watch. "Detentions must be voluntary unless the detainees are charged and convicted of crimes in fair and impartial proceedings."

    

A woman is rescued from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building 17 days after the building collapsed in Savar on May 10, 2013. (Reuters)There was some rare happy news out of Bangladesh today as Reshma Akhter, an 18-year-old seamstress, was dug out and rescued after 17 days of being trapped in the wreckage of a collapsed eight-story garment factory building where 1,045 other people have perished. The Rena Plaza incident is officially the worst disaster in the history of the global clothing industry, and it renewed calls for improved safety protections and building code standards in Bangladesh -- a country that owes much of its recent economic growth largely to low-wage clothing work.

The dangerous conditions have been partly blamed on price-conscious businesses, some of whom go with the cheapest and often least-safe local suppliers at the expense of protections for workers. After a November fire that killed 112 workers, brands like Wal-Mart, Gap, and H&M refused to sign a new union-proposed safety plan, which would have introduced more rigorous safety inspections, saying it was "not financially feasible."

That price pressure comes from consumers, too, though. In a story that's so darkly uncomfortable it reads like it's from The Onion -- but is in fact from Bloomberg -- a young British shopper explains how she loves her bargains even though she's troubled by the plight of workers in developing countries:

"It bothers me, but a lot of retailers are getting their clothes from these places and I can't see how I can change anything," 21-year-old university student Elizabeth McNail said, clutching a brown paper bag from clothier Primark the day after a building collapse in Savar, Bangladesh, killed at least 381 people. "They definitely need to improve, but I'll still shop here. It's so cheap."

This consumer cognitive dissonance raises the question: just how much more expensive would our clothes get if factories in Bangladesh were safer?

There aren't many clear-cut studies on the matter because it would depend on how much the retailers passed on the price increases to customers, as opposed to taking a hit to profit margins. Scott Nova at the Worker's Rights Consortium, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, made this calculation:

We have a general cost estimate for the renovations, upgrades and retrofitting of buildings that is needed across the industry in Bangladesh to make the factories safe. The figure is $3 billion. That translates to about 8 cents per garment at factory price.

That $3 billion, Nova says, would go toward properly constructed fire exits and fire escapes, emergency lighting, proper alarm systems, electrical rewiring, closure of structurally unsound buildings, and the relocation of factories to safe structures.

The impact to retailers' profits, he argues, would be minimal:

For a major retailer, with 5 percent of its production in Bangladesh, which is typical, the increased cost would be about four one-thousandths of a percent of total corporate revenue.

A tiny fraction of one percent isn't much, but that's not the end of a t-shirt or tennis shoe's life-cycle:

On the other hand, if all of the increase is passed along to consumers, and subjected to mark ups, and assuming the increased costs are spread across a company's product line (rather than just raising prices on the garments from Bangladesh), consumers could see a cost increase of a penny or two across all of a retailer's apparel products.

Okay, so your H&M bikini becomes $10 rather than $9.99 -- no big deal. If retailers passed along the increases just to clothes made in Bangladesh, though, it might run you a quarter or more:

The scenario that would lead to the largest increase in retail price is as follows: all of it is passed along, with full markup, and all of the increase is put only on products from Bangladesh. This would mean a retail price increase of 25 or 30 cents at retail, with no impact on retail prices for any product not made in Bangladesh.

Of course, these are calculations from just one, non-retailer source, but it does give a sense of perspective as to how much -- or in this case, how little -- consumers would feel these factory safety improvements.

In the cut-throat world of retailing, though, even a small amount might make all the difference.

"There's also a collective action problem ... with the buyers, who are looking for the cheapest possible price for the product and aren't willing to raise that price a bit if their competitors aren't," Kimberly Ann Elliott, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told the Washington Post. "It feeds into a vicious cycle."