The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani received a phone call from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday and discussed a number of issues including Afghanistan. According to Qatar’s The Peninsula, the two politicians discussed bilateral cooperation relations and a number of regional and international issues, especially developments in Afghanistan. […]

Afghanistan and Pakistan on Sunday added their voices to the growing condemnation of a far-right politician in Sweden for desecrating the Holy Quran, and called on Stockholm to take action to prevent such acts in the future. The Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), strongly condemned the burning and desecration of the Holy Quran and urged the […]

Qatar has vowed to stand with Afghan women amid the “irrational” restrictions imposed on them by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Tuesday. In an interview with CNBC Middle East, Sheikh Mohammed said Qatar has been reaching out to the IEA government to understand the rationale behind the restrictive policies […]

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday said that Pakistan will work with counterparts in the Afghanistan government to address the challenge of terrorism in the region. In an interview with Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the foreign minister said that Pakistan believes in a peaceful neighborhood. He said that it was decided by Pakistan’s civil and […]

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said Wednesday the international community has not done anything to warrant him convincing the IEA leadership to change policies. Muttaqi made the remarks during a meeting with visiting Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina Mohammad and her delegation of top UN officials. Among the issues under discussion is […]

The already volatile world of crypto has been upended anew by the collapse of one its largest platforms, which highlighted risks from crypto assets that lack basic protections. The losses punctuated an already perilous period for crypto, which has lost trillions of dollars in market value. Bitcoin, the largest, is down by almost two-thirds from its peak in late 2021, […]

International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised. Every moral condemnation of a regime’s conduct is bound to be shown up as an exercise in double standards, often implicating the accusers. In the case of the military regime in Myanmar, double standards are not only modish but expected. A number of international […]

According to the preliminary estimations published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 was RMB 121020.7 billion. Calculated at constant prices, there is an increase of 3.0% over the previous year. In terms of industries, the added value of the primary industry was RMB 8,834.5 billion, an increase of 4.1% over […]

ASEAN member states should consider using economic pressure to influence the behaviour of the ruling military junta in Myanmar. Myanmar is one of the least developed countries in ASEAN, which has created an asymmetric relationship between Myanmar and other ASEAN member states. This gap creates the opportunity for ‘weaponised interdependence’, through which stronger ASEAN member states can leverage their position […]

As the New Year brings new hope, sea trawlers with distressed Rohingyas are setting off on perilous journeys in the hopes of finding a safe haven. Recently two boats comprising more than 200 Rohingya men, women, and children reached the shorelines of Aceh Island in Indonesia in December 2021. Such immigration has been increasingly witnessed in the Andaman Sea for […]