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11. The Filmmaker

Author:
Franco Sacchi
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
The 18 year-old, $250 million Nigerian film industry produces some 2,000 movies a year—a number that puts Lagos in a league with Mumbai and Los Angeles. But in Nollywood, unlike Bollywood or Hollywood, movies can cost as little as $10,000 to make and take barely a week to shoot. The films are straight-to-VCR, VCD or DVD and cost around $1.60 a piece, though they can be rented for a fifth of that price and are also shown on satellite television. While their quality of acting and production may appear lacking when compared to the products of other film industries, Nollywood movies are avidly consumed throughout Nigeria, across Africa and beyond.
Political Geography:
Africa, Nigeria, and Mumbai

12. Social Inclusion in Mumbai: Economics Matters Too

Author:
Robert M. Buckley
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper questions the accuracy and validity of the criticisms made by Ananya Roy on the approach of a Mumbai based NGO, the Society to Promote Area Resource Centers (SPARC) and its partner grassroots federations in Mumbai. This includes the suggestion that the focus on sanitation rather than on land tenure is an appeal to middle-class values about cleanliness and that the support for relocating those who lived right next to the railway tracks made them agents of the state. But SPARC's support for community toilets was in response to what grassroots organizations asked for and these also have high social returns. SPARC's support for resettlement for those living along the railway tracks was for those who were going to be moved and this support allowed those who were to be resettled to have far more influence on where, when and how the resettlement took place. Here too, the social returns from faster, safer trains meant costs saved that were more than the costs of providing good quality accommodation for those who had to move.
Topic:
Development and Social Stratification
Political Geography:
India, Asia, and Mumbai

13. The Saudi Connection to the Mumbai Massacres: Strategic Implications for Israel

Author:
Jonathan Fighel
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
The Mumbai attacks have been linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and radical Islamic groups in Kashmir generally. Yet it would be a mistake to see Lashkar only as a local organization with only a local agenda. Saudi Arabia has contributed very much to what Lashkar-e-Taiba looks like, how it thinks, its motivation, ideology, and funding. Saudi Arabia presents itself as the protector and the spearhead of the defense of Muslims around the world against what they define as the Western cultural attack. The Saudis are very committed to recruiting, funding, and funneling ideology to embattled Muslim minorities, and use Muslim charities as their tool to implement this policy. The Saudi methodology is to take advantage of a humanitarian crisis to get a foot in the door. Who could be against assisting widows and orphans and setting up schools and clinics? Some of the money is indeed funneled to support terrorism - families of suicide bombers. The notion of global Islam has also penetrated to Gaza and exists under the umbrella of Hamas, which is enabling a revival of global jihadi organizations there such as Jaish al-Islam and others. This phenomenon is radicalizing the already radicalized society in Gaza. Hamas could agree to a hudna (calm) for fifty years, but there will be no recognition of Israel or a cessation of the struggle against it. If Hamas was ready to act pragmatically, it would no longer be Hamas. And then the frustrated factions within Hamas would break off and join up with the radical global jihadi organizations in Gaza.
Topic:
Political Violence, Islam, Post Colonialism, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Gaza, Arab Countries, and Mumbai

14. Countering Terrorism in South Asia: Strengthening Multilateral Engagement

Author:
Eric Rosand, Jason Ipe, and Naureen Chowdhury Fink
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Fourth Freedom Forum
Abstract:
Horrific acts of terrorism, such as the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, underscore the regional nature of the terrorist threat in South Asia, and they highlight the need for greater cooperation within the region to address it. This report explores waysto strengthen such cooperation, with a particular focus on the role that the United Nations can playin this regard. It urges the United Nations to build on the international community's solidarity in the wake of terrorist attacks—such as those recently in Islamabad, Lahore, and Mumbai—to forge stronger engagement between the United Nations and SouthAsia on counterterrorism and within the region itself.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Terrorism, United Nations, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
South Asia, Mumbai, Islamabad, and Lahore

15. Countering Terrorism in South Asia: Strengthening Multilateral Engagement

Author:
Eric Rosand, Jason Ipe, and Naureen Chowdhury Fink
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
Horrific acts of terrorism, such as the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, underscore the regional nature of the terrorist threat in South Asia, and they highlight the need for greater cooperation within the region to address it. This report explores ways to strengthen such cooperation, with a particular focus on the role that the United Nations can play in this regard. It urges the United Nations to build on the international community's solidarity in the wake of terrorist attacks—such as those recently in Islamabad, Lahore, and Mumbai—to forge stronger engagement between the United Nations and South Asia on counterterrorism and within the region itself.
Topic:
Political Violence, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
South Asia, Asia, United Nations, Mumbai, Alabama, and Lahore

16. Perspectives from Fragile Crescent: A South Asia Crisis Simulation

Author:
Steven J. Tomisek, Christopher S. Robinson, and Kenneth Kligge
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The Obama administration has arguably inherited the toughest national security environment since the end of World War II. Instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan has propelled South Asia to the top of a U.S. national security agenda already crowded with a long list of major problems that includes North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. The political, security, and economic trends in Afghanistan and Pakistan have taken a turn for the worse, as the two countries confront an increasingly violent Taliban-led insurgency and al Qaeda–linked militant jihadist groups. To make matters even worse, Pakistan's relations with India have been damaged by the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.
Topic:
Political Violence, National Security, War, and Armed Struggle
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Iran, South Asia, North Korea, and Mumbai

17. Lashkar-i-Tayyiba: One Year After Mumbai

Author:
Stephen Tankel
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
One year ago, 10 gunmen from Lashkar-i-Tayyiba (LT) laid siege to multiple targets in India's financial capital of Mumbai over the course of three days. The group's target selection revealed a desire to strike not only at India, but also at Western interests in the country. The coordinated attacks killed 166 people, including 28 foreign nationals, among them Americans and a Briton. While a strong anti-Western element has always been present in LT's ideology, the strikes represented the latest evolution of a peripheral jihad against Western interests.
Political Geography:
America, India, and Mumbai

18. Without Conditions

Author:
Deepak Malhotra
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Diplomacy appears ready to make a comeback. The United States, after years of reluctance, is reconsidering the role of negotiation in confronting extremism and managing international conflict. India has resisted an aggressive response to the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and is open to diplomatic engagement with Pakistan over Kashmir. Participants in the six-party talks have been scrambling to decide whether, when, and how to engage North Korea since its nuclear test of May 2009. The generals in Afghanistan are busier today than they have been in recent years, but so are the diplomats. Certainly, not everyone has rushed to the bargaining table -- witness, for example, the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. But governments around the world are asking themselves the same important question: When should they negotiate with their enemies? Determining the precise conditions for such talks is never easy. In the shadow of terrorism, the calculus is all the more complex. Not only can acts of belligerence or extremist violence strain or derail ongoing negotiations, but the persistence of violence is often the primary reason governments refuse to negotiate in the first place. This has long been the case in Israel, for example, where successive governments, especially those led by the conservative Likud Party, have refused to negotiate with Palestinian leaders until they bring the violence to a halt. The same dynamics influenced the peace process in Northern Ireland in the years leading up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. North Korea's recent provocations have elicited a similar response from hard-liners in Japan, South Korea, and the United States. The ability of extremists to derail negotiations through violence and belligerence presents policymakers with a high-stakes dilemma: Should the muzzling of extremism be set as a precondition to negotiations, or should negotiations be initiated in order to reduce support for extremism? Similar considerations have plagued peace efforts around the world, from Colombia, where the government has struggled for decades to determine when it should demand a cease-fire from FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), to Kashmir, where using violence to derail prospective talks has become a predictable tactic. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, surges in extremist violence are threatening to further destabilize already-weak governments.
Topic:
Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, Kashmir, and Mumbai

19. Iraqi Kurdistan: The Internal Dynamics and Statecraft of a Semistate

Author:
Matan Chorev
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
al Nakhlah
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
The semistate possesses many of the features commonly associated with the modern nationstate but remains unrecognized as a sovereign entity. Semistates (such as Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Iraqi Kurdistan) inhabit the central conflict fault-lines of Southwest Asia's strategic landscape at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In order to concoct effective conflict management approaches, policymakers must develop a framework for comprehending internal dynamics and statecraft of these entities. How do they function in the absence of international recognition? What impact did the dynamics of conflict and political development under such conditions have on the nature of the semistate? What is the entity's resultant worldview and statecraft?
Political Geography:
Mumbai

20. Like Father, Like Son – Personalized Succession: Bashar Asad and the New Challenges to the Ba'thist State

Author:
David Ethan Corbin
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
al Nakhlah
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
Historically, Syria has had a unique position in the Arab world. Today is no different. Though overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, Syria is run by a nominally Shi'a Islam, Alawi minority. Its population is a virtual ethnic and religious mosaic, comprised of Arabs, Alawis, Druze, Kurds and Armenians each belonging to various Muslim and Christian denominations and speaks Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian and Aramaic. To complicate matters further, Syria's main ally in the region is Iran—the decidedly non-Arab, Shi'a Persian state and, in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion in Iraq, burgeoning regional hegemon. Damascus also plays host to many non-state armed groups that pose a persistent threat along Israel's borders.
Political Geography:
Mumbai