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The RSAA blog publishes new posts every week, covering the whole range of Asian current affairs, culture, travel, exploration and recent history from the Levant to East Asia. Browse our recent posts!
Opinions expressed in posts are those of the contributor, not necessarily of the RSAA.
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Bangladesh: under militant siege
Dr Amit Ranjan is a research fellow of the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi. Here, he considers the reasons behind the upsurge in militant violence in Bangladesh. Over the last decade, Bangladesh has turned into a militant hotspot where home grown militants have killed thousands of people. Their main tactics have included…
Turkey: Diary of a Failed Coup
Nagihan Haliloglu is an assistant professor at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and a resident of Istanbul. Here, she records her observations and thoughts on the recent coup attempt in Turkey. I first heard that something was not quite right in Istanbul as I was sitting by the Aegean shore in Çeşme, supposedly looking…
In Search of Nasir Khusraw – Persian Philosopher and Poet
Huw Thomas, co-author of the Odyssey Guide to Tajikistan and the High Pamirs, goes in search of the birthplace of Nasir Khusraw. Nadir Khusraw [1004 – 1077] is recognized as one of the great poets of the Persian language and as an important Muslim philosopher. He was one of the greatest travellers of the eleventh…
Russia and Eurasia
This month sees the launch of Black Wind, White Snow by Charles Clover, former Moscow FT Bureau chief. Bijan Omrani, Editor of the Asian Affairs Journal, attended a speech by Clover this week at Pushkin House in London to mark the book’s release. What reasons can be given for Vladimir Putin’s belligerence? How is it…
Following the Heroin Trail of Tajikistan
Malgosia Skowronska is a graduate of the War Studies Department of King’s College London, and the producer of Narkomen, an independent film on the problems faced by heroin addicts in Tajikistan. The day comes to an end. The sun had almost gone down behind the surrounding peaks of the Pamir Mountains. Mirzo, with his slow…
Climate Change: Co-operation in South Asia
Prateek Joshi, a post-graduate international relations student at the South Asian University in New Delhi, reports on the recent visit of a retired Pakistani Defence Secretary to India, and his call for South Asian co-operation against the threat of climate change. South Asian politics, whose dominant narrative is India-Pakistan relations, witnessed a unique idea of…
The Burial Place of Genghis Khan
Robin Ackroyd is the author of Genghis: Sacred Tomb, Secret Treasure. He recently addressed the RSAA on his search for the tomb of Genghis Khan. IT is hard to imagine a more important place to the Mongols than the sacred mountain Burkhan Khaldun. I travelled there on horseback and stood at the top of the…
In search of ancient Christianity: The Nestorian Caves of Tajikistan
Huw Thomas is the co-author of Tajikistan and the High Pamirs: A Companion and Guide (Odyssey Publications). In this article, he describes a search for relics of ancient Christianity near the banks of the Oxus in the heart of Central Asia. It is especially poignant that with the turmoil in Syria and Iraq, there is the danger that…
Stephen Green: The Changing Face of China
Stephen Green (Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint) was Group Chairman of the HSBC Group from 2006-2010. He was subsequently until December 2013 a Minister of State for Trade and Investment in both the Department for Business, Investment and Skills and also the FCO. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England. This is…
Postcard from Uzbekistan: RSAA Uzbekistan Tour
Sophie Ibbotson, who sits on the RSAA Council, writes from the RSAA Uzbekistan Tour which visited the country last month. There is no benefit in my writing to you of the wonders of Khiva, Bukhara or Samarkand. These are well enough known that each of us already has in our own mind a picture…
HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal: Islam against “Fahish”, The obscene “Islamic State”
HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal is a member of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia. Until 2001 he was the Director of the Saudi Arabia General Intelligence Directorate, and later served as Ambassador in London and Washington DC. He more recently established the King Faisal Foundation to promote education in Saudi Arabia, and is the…
Asian Affairs: Summer issue preview – Yemen, India and the Middle East, British in Iraq…
The summer issue of the Asian Affairs Journal is now available online – click here for the contents page. Some articles are free to view by all visitors (as indicated); others are only available for free to RSAA memers/JSTOR/Taylor & Francis/Academic subscribers. Highlights include “Yemen and the Huthis: Genesis of the 2015 Crisis” – an…
Methods of Manipulation: an Analogy between Vietnamese Water Puppetry and State Propaganda
Seb Rumsby is the holder of an RSAA Sir Peter Holmes Memorial Award. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Hanoi’s Thăng Long Water Puppet Theatre, located on the bank of Hoàn Kiếm Lake next to the Old Quarter. Water puppetry has become an iconic representation of nation, and is now seen as an…
Deeper than Indigo: RSAA lecture by Jenny Balfour-Paul
Helen Crisp reports on a lecture to the RSAA last week by Dr Jenny Balfour-Paul. Jenny Balfour Paul gave a fascinating talk to the RSAA based on her new book, Deeper than Indigo, describing how she tracked the life of Thomas Machell, a mid-19th century indigo planter and traveller, after being directed to his journals…
India-Bangladesh Border Settlement: a model to follow?
Dr Amit Ranjan, Research Fellow at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi, comments on the recent border accord between India and Bangladesh, and asks whether it could be a model for solving other boundary disputes between India and China, and India and Pakistan. With the forthcoming implementation of the Land Boundary Agreement…
Asian Affairs Journal 100th Anniversary: Free historic articles
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Asian Affairs Journal, we are giving free access to 25 historic articles published in the Journal by such luminaries as Sir Wilfrid Thesiger, BBC correspondents Frank Gardener and Mark Tully, Freya Stark, Frances Wood, and Bill Deedes. The articles are available here until the end of June.
The Hour of the Kurds
Manuel Martorell is a Spanish journalist and one of the founders of the national daily El Mundo, where he held the posts of Editor-in-Chief and Foreign Editor. He has been covering the Kurds since 1983 and has published three books on the subject and produced a number of television documentaries. 8 February 2015. This will…
Letter from Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Richard Fell is a former diplomat; he was latterly British High Commissioner in New Zealand, but served in Vietnam earlier in his career. He is the Book Review Editor of Asian Affairs. Forty years ago, in April 1975, North Vietnamese forces defeated the army of the South, captured Saigon and ousted the South Vietnamese government….