Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said Thursday talks with the United States over the frozen assets are ongoing and that he is hopeful the White House will release the country’s foreign reserves in the near future. He said both Washington and Kabul remained in contact with each other over the issue and over issues relating to the banking and […]

How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future Not long ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping was riding high. He had consolidated power within the Chinese Communist Party. He had elevated himself to the same official status as the CCP’s iconic leader, Mao Zedong, and done away with presidential term limits, freeing him to lead China for the rest of his life. […]

Pakistan’s Taliban accused the military Tuesday of breaking a fragile ceasefire, after the army said five soldiers and at least four militants died in a gun battle in the country’s northwest. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) declared an indefinite ceasefire in June to facilitate peace talks being brokered by neighbouring Afghanistan, but there have been regular clashes since then despite both sides […]

Over the past decade, development cooperation has become a hallmark of Bangladesh-India relations largely due to India’s line of credit (LoC) towards Bangladesh. A line of credit is an agreement between Bangladesh and India as borrower and lender respectively to support infrastructure and development programs in the borrower nation. The Indian Development Initiative (IDI), currently known as the Indian Development […]

Introduction The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also known as Global Goals, are a group of 17 goals adopted by all member states of the United Nations (UN) in 2015 in order to promote prosperity and safeguarding the health of the planet in tandem. The SDGs came subsequent to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – 8 MDGs in total – and […]

Does the commissioning of India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant—amid the wrangle over the visit of China’s Yuan Wang-5—auger well for the Indian navy and the country’s maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean? India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh categorically stated that INS Vikrant “will enhance India’s capability of fulfilling its requirement of collective security.” The reference to ‘collective security’ […]

The special regulatory framework for unsolicited proposals was deeply flawed, says Verite Research While it is true that Chinese loans to Sri Lanka have tended to be unproductive and a drain on the island nation’s slender financial resources, Sri Lanka’s regulatory framework is also to be blamed for the sorry state of affairs. This framework, established in July 2010, is […]

Background Businesses are rightly more concerned now over the outbreak of hostilities in the Taiwan Strait and its impact on physical security, assets/investments, and business continuity. Given the Chinese response to US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s 2-3 Aug 2022 visit to Taiwan, the risk of significant business disruption is perceived to have shifted up a notch from a […]

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 […]