Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base — a facility in the Gulf of Thailand — has in recent years been the subject of interest from major powers competing for influence in Southeast Asia. China’s efforts to access the base first surfaced in July 2019 after the Wall Street Journal reported an alleged agreement allowing the Chinese military to use the base. The […]

An explosion tore through a crowded mosque in western Afghanistan on Friday, killing a prominent cleric close to the country’s Taliban regime, officials said. At least 18 people were killed and 23 more wounded in the blast, according to a statement sent to CBS News’ Ahmad Mukhtar and other Afghan journalists by Mawlawi Hamidullah Mutawakil, a spokesman for the Herat […]

In the year since the fall of Kabul, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated exponentially from an economic, humanitarian and human rights perspective. Millions of Afghans are facing severe food insecurity due to lost income and rising food costs, while advances made post-2001 towards women’s rights and media freedom have been rolled back. The Taliban of today are recreating their […]

The ISIS group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing near the Russian embassy in Afghanistan’s capital on Monday that killed two embassy staff and four others. An ISIS fighter “blew up his suicide vest in a gathering attended by Russian employees” near the embassy, the extremist group said in a statement via Telegram channels.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the consular section of Russia’s embassy in Kabul on Monday, killing a top diplomat, a Russian security guard and four Afghans, according to Russian and Afghan officials. Afghan police reported that Taliban guards at the embassy shot dead the attacker, but his device still detonated. The blast happened as the embassy’s second secretary […]

Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in a former Taliban stronghold near the border with Afghanistan Monday, triggering a shootout that killed five soldiers and four insurgents. Acting on intelligence, security forces launched the raid in North Waziristan, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a military statement. North Waziristan and other former tribal regions in northwestern Pakistan […]

When the school year began in Afghanistan in March 2022, journalists were poised to cover the return of girls to secondary education. Taliban leaders in Kabul had committed to allowing separate education for girls so long as they followed the Taliban-mandated dress code. Instead, the cameras recorded disappointed girls being sent back home. The Taliban’s decision-making process is opaque to […]

It is heartening to see Indian career diplomats of recent vintage penning their understanding of the complex India-Pakistan relationship. Soon after The People Next Door (Harper Collins, 2017)by T.C.A. Raghavan, India’s high commissioner in Islamabad from 2013-2015, we have India’s Pakistan Conundrum (Routledge Books, 2022), by Sharat Sabharwal, his predecessor in Pakistan from 2009-2013. Both Raghavan and Sabharwal also served […]

China aims to expand its influence in the “Lithium Triangle” as a component of a broader campaign to construct a near-monopoly in the global lithium market. The Lithium Triangle, comprising Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, accounts for approximately 56% percent of global lithium supply. Beijing’s acquisition of multiple Argentinian, Chilean, and Bolivia lithium mining operations enables China to dominate regional lithium […]

In December this year, India will assume presidency of the economic grouping, G20, which comprises major developed and developing economies. For one year thereafter, New Delhi will be in the driver’s seat. It is not expected to be an easy ride given the rather difficult economic bends and steep geopolitical humps that will have to be negotiated. In fact, the […]