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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Simon Phillips is an ethnobotanist with the Centre for Biocultural Diversity, University of Kent and Chris McCarthy is a Silk Road Scholar and Conservationist At a dry river bed in the Mongolian Gobi desert near the Chinese border, camels slowly drink water from holes dug by nomadic herders to the water table a little below…
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…
Professor Simon Mabon is Director of the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation (SEPAD) project at Lancaster University’s Richardson Institute and Chair in International Politics On 12 January, US and UK militaries struck targets across Yemen in an effort to prevent Houthi attacks against ships passing through the Red Sea. The Houthis, a violently intolerant Islamist group…
Wafi A. Momin is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Ismaili Special Collections Unit at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London The Ismailis form a branch of Shia Islam and, though numerically much smaller in comparison to the Ithna‘ashari (‘Twelver’) brand of the Shias, are among the most prosperous and progressive of the Muslim communities…
