Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, and he now holds the the appropriately named Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. Considered to be one of fathers of modern historiography and the social sciences, Ibn Khaldun is also one of history's most influential scholars of spontaneous nature of tribalism and its role in establishing social cohesion. The central thrust of Professor Ahmed's work is in that spirit. He aims to explain why discontent is so widespread throughout the former colonial world and how it is partially rooted in a complex history of oppressions of ethnic groups and in tribal rivalries throughout the region. This has created a welter of tensions between the weak central governments of the ex-colonial countries and their peripheral minority groups and tribes. Ahmed argues that these tensions have been exacerbated by our militaristic response to 9/11. He explains why military interventions by the U.S. and former European colonial powers will worsen the growing tension between central governments and these oppressed groups.