To most people, the idea that Mahatma Gandhi was more violent than Adolf Hitler would seem preposterous. When you’re speaking to Slavoj Žižek, however, such a suggestion is par for the course. Žižek has argued that Gandhi led a movement that challenged imperial hegemony and articulated an alternative to it, whereas Hitler’s violence was oriented...

This new paper in the Lowy Institute's Afghan Voices series provides two very different perspectives on Australia’s military and development efforts in Uruzgan. The first comes in the form of excerpts from an uncompleted draft on the subject by Omaid Khpalwak, an Afghan journalist tragically killed in July of this year. The second is an...

This report discusses discuss the current regulatory environment and the windows of opportunity for democratic reform in the media sector in Egypt and Tunisia. The world has been riveted by events occurring throughout the Middle East and North Africa that have come to be known collectively as the “Arab Spring.” Popular protests have toppled dictatorships...

Governments are struggling to meet the rising demand for secondary education, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are enough school places for just 36% of children of age to enrol. Girls face the greatest barriers as the gender gap widens across the region, according to the 2011 Global Education Digest. Produced by the UNESCO Institute...

The United States, its allies and the Iraqi Government will need to make some difficult decisions if they are to maintain hard won security gains in Iraq. In the wake of coordinated and deadly al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attacks in and around Baghdad, Lydia Khalil explores the uncertain road ahead and considers the role Australia...