While the United States is adapting to the challenges of a multipolar world and a global geopolitical recalibration, the People’s Republic of China is employing its geo-economic tools to identify power vacuums in the international landscape and to fill the void of American leadership. The combination of former President Donald Trump’s inward-looking foreign policy and President Joseph Biden’s emphasis on […]

In today’s environment of growing US-China competition, America’s allies are increasingly faced with a series of what international relations authority Dr. Victor Cha calls “binary choices” between the two powers. “Open competition in relations between the United States and China has dramatically changed the environment in which the US must operate,” Cha said at a recent East-West Center webinar titled […]

The past year has witnessed a spate of reports about Chinese ‘model villages’ coming up in disputed areas of its Himalayan border with India and Bhutan. In January 2021, NDTV had reported a Chinese village had come up on the banks of the Tsari Chu river in the Longju region, the site of the first Sino-Indian clashes in 1959. A […]

The Biden administration appears disposed to reactivate the existing alliance arrangements as well as to cultivate new allies in the Indo-Pacific. The administration following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan seems poised to divert more resources towards the Indo-Pacific theatre while imposing an unstable border on Beijing to remain embroiled in the Afghan trap. It sought to strengthen Washington’s network of […]

“Are we going to surrender [to TTP] once again?” — Justice Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed, Judge, Supreme Court of Pakistan Islamabad has always alleged that Indian consulates in Afghanistan were being used as covert bases by its spy agency Research and Analysis Wing [RAW] for orchestrating subversive activities inside Pakistan. It also maintained that the Ashraf Ghani government and Afghanistan’s […]

Association for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA) and International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) are concerned that authorities of Uzbekistan harassed and intimidated Khidirnazar Allakulov (Truth and Progress party / Haqiqat va Taraqqiyot), Mahmud Davronov (Free Motherland party / Ozod Vatan) and Jahongir Otajonov (Erk) and other outspoken opposition activists in the run-up of Presidential elections in October 2021 […]

The rapid fall of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) on August 15, 2021 was predictable to those who are familiar with the vast levels of corruption that plagued the country during the last twenty years. Widespread corruption, cronyism, extortion, and theft permeated all aspects of Afghan society, from the presidential […]

On 23rd October 2021, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) first dedicated law titled “Land Borders Law” which lays down provisions for border protection and integration of border areas. China currently has a 22,000-kilometre land border with 14 countries which is shared with Russia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Nepal, […]

China and Central Asian countries should actively assist Afghanistan in dealing with humanitarian crisis and bringing about a smooth transition of the situation in Afghanistan, said attendees at a think tank forum held in Beijing on Friday. The think tank forum of China and five Central Asian Countries focused on the new situation of Afghanistan, the security and development of […]

US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West said on Friday the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) letter to Congress this week “misconstrued the facts” about the country’s economic and humanitarian crises. In a series of tweets, West said: “The Taliban’s (IEA) letter to Congress earlier this week misconstrued the facts re Afghanistan’s economic & humanitarian crisis. Afghanistan was unfortunately already […]