Ahmed Rashid at PostGlobal

Ahmed Rashid

Lahore, Pakistan

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, was the Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, for 22 years until the magazine was recently closed down. He presently writes for the Daily Telegraph in London, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Review of Books, BBC Online, The Nation, and academic and foreign affairs journals. He appears regularly on international TV and radio stations such as CNN and BBC World Service. Close.

Ahmed Rashid

Lahore, Pakistan

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, was the Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, for 22 years until the magazine was recently closed down. more »

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Tribes Can Support Democracies

Lahore, Pakistan - "Traditional" tribal societies in many parts of the third world are often considered backward, discriminatory against women, and politically incorrect. However, states must still treat tribes with patience and political respect.

Tribes can be brought into the modern world through education and job creation in ways that do not totally upset their social structure, such as the present attempts being made in Afghanistan by President Hamid Karzai. Most times such efforts fail and tribal societies dissolve with disastrous results.

Often tribes are struggling against oppressive military or dictatorial rule, such as the present Baloch struggle for greater autonomy against the centralizing attitudes of the Pakistan army. In such cases, tribal societies form part of the wider trend of desire for democracy. In other cases across Africa, tribes fail to see why they should submerge their identity beneath a wider national identity. Ultimately states are responsible for ensuring that tribes become part of the political system. Only democracies can ensure that.

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