Having stagnated for years, the percentage of South Asians who have used the internet has finally reached 50 per cent. In South Asia internet use is synonymous with social media, with most users spending all their time on chat applications. Many of these users have low digital skills and are often passive consumers in a digital world that attempts to […]

A three-day gathering of thousands of religious scholars and tribal elders ended in Kabul on Saturday by voicing support for the caretaker government. More than 4000 religious scholars and tribal elders attended the gathering that began on Thursday and ended at 5pm Saturday by issuing an 11-artice resolution. In their statement, the participants called on the international community especially Islamic […]

A 75-bed field hospital and a medical team have arrived from the UAE to treat survivors of a recent earthquake in southeastern Afghanistan. The Emirates News Agency WAM reported the relief was flown into Afghanistan by three planes on the directives of UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. Before dispatching the field hospital, with two operating rooms, the UAE sent […]

What is happening, and why is it important? A new, worrying pattern is emerging in Indian-administered Kashmir, where militants are targeting members of the small Hindu community for the first time in decades. Plagued by turmoil since separatists took up arms against the Indian state in 1989, Jammu and Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority region. Indigenous minorities include Hindu brahmins, […]

Residents and international human rights watchdogs are criticizing the Taliban for grave rights abuses that have been reported in its military campaign against a dissident commander in a remote part of northern Afghanistan. Civilians in Balkhab, a rural district in the Sar-e Pul Province, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that they have faced atrocities and collective punishment — including extrajudicial executions […]

CCP leader Xi Jinping swears in former cop John Lee to the top job amid accusations of broken promises of freedom. By Chen Zifei, Lee Yuk Yue for RFA Cantonese and Qiao Long for RFA Mandarin 2022.07.01 — Chinese leader Xi Jinping swore in a new, security-focused government in Hong Kong on Friday, 25 years after Britain handed the city […]

India and Afghanistan neither shares border nor have a direct rail and road links between the two countries but due to Afghanistan’s fluctuating relations with Pakistan, India has long been an active player in Afghanistan. In the previous Taliban rule (1997-2001) the relation between the two countries were uneasy and India’s ties with the Northern Alliance were not only close […]

In 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India had achieved Open Defecation Free (ODF) status after his government built over 110 million toilets. The federal government’s flagship program, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), was the largest sanitation intervention of its kind globally. Its aim was to construct toilets to end open defecation and meet Sustainable Development […]

Pakistan army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa’s post-Article 370 abrogation rant that “Pakistan Army firmly stands by the Kashmiris in their just struggle to the very end,” and that “We are prepared and shall go to any extent to fulfil our obligations in this regard” was undoubtedly the public formalisation of Rawalpindi’s proxy war in Kashmir. While armies of democratic […]

The US special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights says she stayed away from meetings with Taliban officials in Doha. Rina Amiri tweeted on Saturday she was not part of the delegation, led by US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West, which met Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and members of the team he headed. She opted out […]