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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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Batumi: Marseilles of the Caucasus
Hardly anyone ‘goes to Batumi’. It appears in travel accounts as the gateway to the Caucasus, the last place where you can have the advantages of a port city before you hit the mountains, the last place where you can think twice before you set off for winding roads and precipices. I would have followed…
Cazenove in Vietnam
Paul Cheeseright is a former FT correspondent, and also is a member of the Asian Affairs Editorial Board. Maurice de Cazenove was in his early 20s when he arrived at Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) as a young career officer of Marshal Leclerc’s Expeditionary Corps aiming to reclaim French control of Indochina. He was…
The Return of the Prodigal: A Turk visits Central Asia
Nagihan Haliloglu is an assistant professor at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and a resident of Istanbul. In his introduction to Mehmet Emin Efendi’s 1877 travelogue on Turkestan, Ahmet Mithat Efendi says that anyone interested in Ottoman history and culture ought to visit Central Asia ‘to appreciate how much a tribe that is originally…
An Englishman in Japan
Dr Carl Hunter formerly served as an officer with the Green Jackets, and is now the managing director of Coltraco Ultrasonics. He travels extensively in Asia, and is a member of the RSAA. Here, he writes a letter on a business trip to Japan. I smoked a cigarette on an immaculate sidewalk in Tokyo. A well-dressed…
Political Islam diminished
Robin Lamb was formerly British Ambassador to Bahrain and now the executive director of LBBC. He is also a member of the Council of the RSAA. Proposition Political Islam[1] has dominated political doctrine in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the last forty years. But jihadi[2] violence has contaminated its image (but not…
Dostum’s absence from Afghanistan – why is it important?
Sophia Nina Burna-Asefi is an undergraduate in Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen. Born in London, she lived in Uzbekistan for 6 years and has been travelling extensively in Afghanistan for the past 9 years. She is a member of the RSAA. The absence of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, first vice president…
Enduring Bonds in Dhaka
Dr Carl Hunter formerly served as an officer with the Green Jackets, and is now the managing director of Coltraco Ultrasonics. He travels extensively in Asia, and is a member of the RSAA. Politics used to dominate Bangladesh. Politics and corruption, or politics, corruption and poverty, or was it politics, corruption, poverty and indentured labour?
Qatar Sanctions – an analysis
Robin Lamb was formerly British Ambassador to Bahrain and now the executive director of LBBC. He is also a member of the Council of the RSAA. Here, he looks at the background to the current dispute between Qatar and its neighbouring Arab states. On 5 June 2017, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE broke off diplomatic…
Spring in the Pamirs
Jonathan Hibbert-Hingston and his wife Beth work for Operation Mercy in Khorog, Tajikistan. Jonathan will be giving a lunch-time lecture for the RSAA about some of their experiences in September. It was a slightly hazy afternoon when Nemat and I left our village on the outskirts of Khorog to go and look for his cows….
Strengthening Vietnam-Australia Trade Relations
Hang Nguyen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Australia. Here she considers the reasons for promoting Vietnam-Australia trade relations. Vietnam and Australia officially established diplomatic relations in February 1973 and have sought to foster their relationship since then. In 2009, Vietnam and Australia elevated their bilateral relations to…
Memoires of a Qajar Persian Prince
Michael Noel-Clarke, who studied as an undergraduate in Esfahan and later served in the British Embassy in Tehran (1970-74), has recently translated the memoires of Prince Arfa, a prominent member of the Persian establishment at the end of the 19th century. The book has been published by Gingko Library as Memories of a Bygone Age: Qajar Persia and Imperial Russia…
Pakistan’s Global Image: Perception and Causes
Nadir Cheema is an academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies and UCL, University of London. He specializes in economics and studies Pakistani socio-political issues. He is also a senior fellow at Bloomsbury Pakistan. The perception that Pakistan lacks credibility within the international community is a common one among analysts and academics working…
On the Issue of Palestinian Invisibility
Martijn van Gils is a Masters student of Comparative Literary research at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His research interests are postcolonial literatures and cultural memory and trauma. Along with Malaka Mohammed Shwaikh, a Palestinian award-winning human rights activist and writer, he co-authored an article on Palestinian Cinema in the latest issue of the Asian Affairs Journal….
Letter from Sri Lanka: Reconciliation, Resources and Elephants
Richard Fell CVO is a former ambassador and Books Review Editor of the Asian Affairs Journal. Here, he reports on a recent visit to Sri Lanka. I recently spent two weeks in Sri Lanka with a distinguished group of New Zealanders and Australians. Though primarily a holiday, we had opportunities to discuss developments in the…
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…