What Pakistan’s war in the north reveals about post-conflict landscapes and the future of Syria

As the conflict in Syria unfolds Adam Weinstein argues there are increasing parallels with the conflict in north-west Pakistan. He writes that lessons learned by the US military in Afghanistan and their counterparts in Pakistan, when applied to current events in Syria show that no military strategy will defeat ISIS unless it is coordinated with key regional actors

The new president will face a crescendo of voices in Washington DC urging a restart to American interventions abroad.

The decade after 2001 saw US military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, with the relative failure of the aftermath of the Libyan intervention leading President Obama to adopt a more soft-power approach. Adam Weinstein writes that despite previous disastrous interventions, whoever enters the White House next January will face a chorus of calls from DC-based think-tanks for the US to become involved in the Syrian civil war, demands that the new Commander in Chief may find difficult to ignore

What US policymakers can learn about Iran from the life and death of Rafsanjani

On the eve of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani’s death, he was no longer a hardliner. But he wasn’t a reformist either. Many Western newspapers described him as ‘Iran’s ex-president’ in their elegies of him but his legacy dwarfs that characterisation. US policymakers should study both his life and the reaction to his death to understand the complexities of the Iranian nezam or system. At varying times and depending who you ask, Rafsanjani was a kingmaker, villain and tragic hero within that system. In his 2007 book, Iran: A People Interrupted, Professor Hamid Dabashi, a proponent of the revolution but critic of the resulting system described Rafsanjani as matching ‘Henry Kissinger’s politically criminal mind and Thatcher’s insidious statesmanship.

Terror and instability: sanctions stifle Pakistani development

Does Pakistan’s newfound independence signal a shift in foreign policy allegiances

When development threatens royal legitimacy

In the last year, an increasing number of news reports suggested that Saudi Arabia is in a financial bind. Scholarships for foreign study have been cut and government handouts lowered. Increasingly, the Kingdom is looking to diversify its economy and modernise its business sector. But is real development possible within a Saudi political system in which the Royal Family’s legitimacy is largely rooted in maintaining the status quo? An examination of Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a-majority Eastern Province provides some insight into that question

Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria – America’s foreign policy has a dangerous and counterproductive love affair with exiles

The two major US military actions of the last 15 years – the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan – were informed and spurred on by the voices of exiles writes Adam Weinstein. He warns that while listening to such exiles may be attractive to administrations in Washington DC, they should consider that the information they give may be inaccurate, and that exiles may not prove to be a positive force in their home countries after US military action has ended

Muscle Mass, Wing Morphology, and Related Flight Mechanics in Passeriforme Birds

Birds are an interesting field of study for a number of reasons, many of which are related to conflicting evolutionary demands. Birds are required to produce more lift than the downward force of gravity acting upon them. To this end birds have evolved in a number of ways, both in mass reduction and increased lift production. This paper looks into different variables associated with contrasting styles of flight, and how morphological differences allow for these different styles to occur, as well as variables associated with weight minimization

When minorities are killed with impunity extremists are only emboldened to attack the society as a whole

Pakistan’s Constitution provides for the protection of minorities but in reality discriminatory legislation, social prejudice and sectarian violence leave them vulnerable. In this article, Adam Weinstein and Zahra Dsouza discuss the threat that Deobandi-inspired extremists pose to tolerance in Pakistan, and write that the government cannot turn a blind eye to the treatment of minorities as this will only embolden perpetrators and result in wider and more indiscriminate attacks on society

Higher modularity of elliptic curves over function fields

We investigate a notion of "higher modularity" for elliptic curves over function fields. Given such an elliptic curve $E$ and an integer $r\geq 1$, we say that $E$ is $r$-modular when there is an algebraic correspondence between a stack of $r$-legged shtukas, and the $r$-fold product of $E$ considered as an elliptic surface. The (known) case $r=1$ is analogous to the notion of modularity for elliptic curves over $\mathbf{Q}$. Our main theorem is that if $E/\mathbf{F}_q(t)$ is a nonisotrivial elliptic curve whose conductor has degree 4, then $E$ is 2-modular. Ultimately, the proof uses properties of K3 surfaces. Along the way we prove a result of independent interest: A K3 surface admits a finite morphism to a Kummer surface attached to a product of elliptic curves if and only if its Picard lattice is rationally isometric to the Picard lattice of such a Kummer surface.Comment: Contains an appendix by Masato Kuwat