Blog

The blog echoes the remit of the RSAA, covering current affairs, culture, travel, exploration and recent history from the Levant to East Asia.

Opinions expressed in posts are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.

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A Criminal Justice Response to Assad Regime Criminality

William H. Wiley is the Executive Director of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability.  Prior to the establishment of the CIJA, he served with the Canadian war crimes programme, the United Nations tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the International Criminal Court, and at the Iraqi High Tribunal during the trials of Saddam…

Mekong at Risk: The Devastating Toll of Hydroelectric Dams

Eve Register is a Research Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation and member of NATO Defence Education Enhancement Programme’s Global Threats Advisory Group Hydropower is currently the world’s largest renewable energy source and accounts for over half of renewable electricity production globally. Dam construction skyrocketed in the late 1970s, driven by the reliability and cost-effectiveness of these…

Nadia’s Initiative

Nadia’s Initiative is a nonprofit organization founded in 2018 by Nadia Murad that advocates for survivors of sexual violence and aims to rebuild communities in crisis. In August 2014, ISIS surrounded the quiet Yazidi farming village of Kocho in Sinjar as part of an effort to ethnically cleanse Yazidis from Iraq. In the week leading…

Energy and Diplomacy: How Oman is Adapting to a Multipolar World

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey is an analyst and journalist, particularly focused on geopolitical and economic issues in the Gulf region, Middle East and North Africa Oman often flies under the radar as an understated actor in the Middle East, especially compared to its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) neighbours such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and…

The Sublime Post

Choon Hwee Koh is assistant professor of Ottoman history at the University of California In the 1840s information traveled at roughly the same speed as it had in 840 BCE. Before the telegraph and the steamship, relay postal systems were the premier technology for long-distance communication. Powered by horses, these overland relays were more reliable than…

Faxian and China’s Efforts to Court Sri Lanka

Marcus Andreopoulos is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation and a Subject Matter Expert with the Global Threats Advisory Group at NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme Having elected a new president and government at the end of last year, Sri Lanka looks set to chart a new course in its approach to foreign policy. Since…

South Yemen: Gateway to the World?

Karen Dabrowska is a journalist and writer focused on the Middle East South Yemen could be the Hong Kong of the Middle East. Centred on the strategic port of Aden located on the southern tip of Arabia there is tremendous potential for the development of a free trade zone or a special economic zone, a…

Kazakh-Afghan Relations: The Competition for Trade and Connectivity in Central Asia

Eldaniz Gusseinov is a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Haydar Aliyev Center for Eurasian Studies and a Columnist for Daryo In recent years, the relationship between Kazakhstan and Afghanistan has been changing significantly, driven by stronger economic and diplomatic ties. A major turning point came in December 2023 when Kazakhstan decided to remove the Taliban from…

ASEAN in 2025: Malaysia’s Narrative in the South China Sea

Fikry A Rahman is Head of Foreign Affairs at Bait Al Amanah and Vasey Fellow at the Pacific Forum and Karisma Putera Abd Rahman is Senior Analyst for Foreign Affairs at Bait Al Amanah Malaysia has always taken a non-confrontational approach to managing incursions, encroachment, and provocations in the South China Sea. While this stance has…

The Invention of Everything: Joseph Needham and the Rediscovery of Chinese Science

Sean Paterson is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society living in Guangzhou In 1620, the great polymath Francis Bacon published his magnum opus, the Novum Organum. Among an early draft of the scientific method, he considered three inventions that had, in his own lifetime, turned the world upside down. ‘It is well to observe…

How do Qatari Humanitarian Diplomats Navigate Complex Political Landscapes?

Mona Hedaya is a Research Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Qatar When we think of Qatar, images of gleaming skyscrapers and world-class sports events might come to mind. But there’s another side to this Gulf state making waves globally: its humanitarian diplomacy (HD). How does such a small nation make…

Remembering the Amu Darya

Oscar Fraser Turner is Co-Founder of Project Amu Darya which aims to record an oral history of the Amu Darya River Dusk fell across the muddy river. Somewhere in the bushes, the shrill howl of jackals serenaded the dying light. As their calls quietened, everything else grew louder – the hum of critters, the gurgle…

Maldives Strategy in the Indo-Pacific

Dr Athaulla A Rasheed is a former diplomat for the Maldives Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is now an academic in the Department of Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University President Dr Mohamed Muizzu’s October 2024 visit to India has heightened the developing relationship between Maldives and India. This favours the Indo-Pacific strategy that seeks to…

At Kazan BRICS Summit, Russia’s Eurasian Identity Looms Large

Eugene Chausovsky is Senior Director for Analytical Development and Training at the New Lines Institute Leaders from across the globe descended upon Russia on October 22-24 for the annual BRICS summit, which has emerged as one of the premier gatherings of the non-Western world. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the heads of state of the…

Gaza by the Sea: Palestine’s Cultural Flagship

Mahmoud Muna is a bookseller and cultural activist in Jerusalem and co-editor of Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture As I write, it has been a year since Israel launched unparalleled destruction against Gaza, in a war on Palestinian people and Palestinian culture that is in explicit violation of the Fourth Geneva…

The Taiwan Story: How a Small Island will Dictate the Global Future

Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. He is the author of the newly published book The Taiwan Story. In mid-October 2024, the second occurrence of military exercises around the coast of Taiwan, which the Chinese call `Joint Sword’, have apparently just concluded. The…

The Struggle for Safe Drinking Water in Coastal Bangladesh

Dr Sonia Ferdous Hoque is an Environmental Social Scientist, working as a Senior Research Associate in Water Security and Society at the University of Oxford When you think of coastal Bangladesh, picture a vast, flat landscape where the land meets the sea in a delicate balance shaped by both human intervention and nature’s forces. This…