Dr Rónán Lee is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at Loughborough University and the author of Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech “Places forgotten by maps” is how Rohim Ullah describes the sprawling complex of refugee camps where he lives alongside more than one million of his fellow Rohingya. It is a…
Simit Bhagat Is an award-winning Filmmaker, Journalist, musician and cultural archivist based in Mubai, India Some histories survive not in official archives, but in songs. In the Bhojpuri-speaking regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in northern India, folk music has long carried an emotional record of departure, labour, longing, and return. These songs were…
Dr Hassan Abbas is a US-based scholar and author of The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan After the Americans Left (Yale University Press, 2024). More than four and a half years after their return to power, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers appear more consolidated than many of their critics expected. Predictions of imminent fragmentation, a dramatic elite split, or the…
Muhammad Aqshadigrama is a postgraduate student at the Indonesian International Islamic University and a researcher at the Think First Institute in Indonesia Indonesia may soon reconsider one of the key reforms of its post-authoritarian democratic system: the direct election of regional leaders. A proposal gaining traction in parliament would return the power to elect governors,…
Lovejit Dhaliwal is a foreign policy analyst, former documentary maker and an award-winning journalist Last week, I had the privilege of attending a screening of the documentary The Last Ambassador, which chronicles the life and work of Manizha Bakhtari, Afghanistan’s current ambassador to Austria. Watching the documentary, I was struck by an uncomfortable realisation. Despite…
Charles J Sullivan, PhD is a political scientist and the author of “The Bear, the Eagle, and the Falcon: Russia, America, and the United Arab Emirates in a Time of Great Power Rivalry” in Asian Affairs (2024). The Islamic Republic of Iran’s targeting of the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the Gulf is part…
Suprina Thapa is an early-career journalist focusing on Nepal and South Asia Nepal has just witnessed one of the most extraordinary political transformations in its modern history. For the first time, a single party has secured more than 5 million votes in the proportional representation category, surpassing every record previously held by the traditional political…
James M Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies The jury is out on Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s newly appointed supreme leader. Judged by his track record, his appointment does not bode well for Iran or for a quick end to the war. His rise signals defiance, resilience, regime…
James M Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies Iran may have played into Israel and the United States’s hands by firing drones and missiles at Azerbaijan and Turkey. Beyond risking drawing these countries into the conflict, the attacks could inadvertently fuel ethnic unrest inside Iran, even though…
Dr Joanna Barnard is CEO of Prospect Burma, an NGO providing pathways to higher education for Myanmar’s marginalised young people In Myanmar’s dark and protracted tragedy, there are many points of light. Since the coup of 2021, the military junta has failed to consolidate the power it thought to claim. More than half the country…
