The US-Taliban Deal: A Year Later

This issue is all about complicated contradictions.

The U.S.-Taliban “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” has so far yielded few concrete results and bloody fighting and attacks are continuing across the country.

In the South China Sea, the EU’s raison d’être – the rule of law and peaceful coexistence – is under threat. What can Brussels do about it?

How did Taiwan manage to make the best of 2020’s worst situation?

Despite his resignation from the presidency in March 2019, Nursultan Nazarbayev’s shadow lies heavily across the “new” leadership. The January parliamentary elections confirmed the paradox.

What does 2021 hold for Southeast Asia?

As U.S.-Taiwan engagement deepens, how will China’s strategy for Taiwan change?

China’s first free trade agreement with an African country will also be important for its Indian Ocean strategy.

The official document casts light on how China’s aid program has grown and evolved since 2014.

Things look promising for an expansion of ASEAN-China ties – but some formidable hurdles remain.

In Hong Kong, the pandemic has fanned the flames of a more silent epidemic: systematic racism. 

The country has weathered the pandemic relatively well, but still has its share of hurdles ahead.

Less than six months into his tenure, Japanese Prime Minister Suga is seeing his leadership tested.

The 2016 Candlelight Revolution finally ended with the Supreme Court’s final sentence for Park. Now the focus turns to a potential pardon.

As the pandemic exacerbates poverty rates among single mothers, the shortcomings of womenomics reforms are on full display.

After the Workers’ Party’s Eighth Congress, North Korea held a military parade to display its missiles, with an emphasis on SLBMs (and a curious absence of ICBMs). 

New Delhi remains wary of Beijing’s potential next moves. 

A minority group in Sunni-majority Pakistan, the Shia Hazara community has been at the receiving end of violence in Pakistan for decades.

Administrative decentralization has led to a vast improvement in the delivery of healthcare in Nepal. This is one district’s story.

Agreeing on an agenda quill prove a difficult task, with the Afghan government prioritizing a ceasefire and the Taliban a political arrangement. 

Illegal logging is depleting forest cover in the region, aggravating the fallout from climate change.

A visit to the Kaysone Phomvihane Memorial stirs up the dust of history.

Amending the 1989 Philippine constitution would liberalize foreign investment rules, but it may be a gambit to eliminate progressive opposition to the government.

Singapore’s hawker culture has been recognized by UNESCO, but there are questions about its sustainability.

Could the cleric’s release from prison reinvigorate Indonesia’s fragmented jihadi movement?

Thailand wields a controversial law in its attempt to stamp out a campaign of student-led protests.

The small Central Asian country isn’t out of the political woods yet.

Tomato pests, quickly forgotten, suggest the brief ban on some Uzbek imports was of a political nature.

A trial is ongoing, but behind closed doors, while citizens complain of unfair distribution of promised compensation.

The January 2021 World Bank Global Economic Prospects report is out, heralding a “subdued” recovery for the world. How fares Central Asia?

Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have all suffered in recent months from shortages and blackouts, their citizens experiencing cold nights and darkened lights.

Due to social factors and structural bias, Indigenous Australians are grossly overrepresented in the country’s jails.

Yes, the potential sale of Digicel to China is concerning. But Australia should think twice before swooping in on the troubled company.

The growing cost of sub-standard climate policies on Australia’s international standing may soon outweigh any domestic political gains.

Beyond environmental questions, the project’s long-term and more troubling impact may be the altering of the political conditions on the frozen continent.

Focusing on democracy as the impetus for unity will likely alienate more countries than bringing them together.

Past history gives a blueprint the incoming administration can use to push for better relations between two important East Asian allies.

What would it mean for the U.S. government to officially declare the Myanmar atrocities “genocide”?

How did the Trump administration do in pursuing its own goals in the Indo-Pacific?

The path to robust, reliable military autonomy is long and winding – with a lot of potential dead ends.

China’s military buildup, coupled with existing problems associated with imports from the U.S., may make such a move a necessity.

A January 19 news article by a well-connected Indian journalist calls recent claims to question.

The stories of three musicians remind us of South Asia’s merging musical traditions but also the region’s separated peoples.

Online game store GOG canceled a plan to re-release the game, which drew controversy last year over an Easter egg comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

The British colonial government never worked out a coherent and precise way of spelling Indian names.