On April 24, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, presiding over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, delivered an important speech devoted mainly to accusations of the collective West in revising the principles and values of the UN Charter (Mid.ru, April 24). In this... MORE

As President Xi Jinping said farewell to his host and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the end of his visit to Moscow last month, a few Western media outlets caught the Chinese strongman’s parting words to his good friend on the doorstep of  the Kremlin:... MORE

In recent weeks, Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) has been active in northern Afghanistan, which has prompted the Taliban to conduct a series of counter-terrorism operations against ISKP hideouts (Asia Plus, April 6). The location of these operations, the fact that Tajik and Uzbek... MORE

On February 17, the police chief’s office in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, was stormed by militants armed with grenades and automatic weapons. However, security forces killed at least three attackers after four civilians had already been killed inside the building (The News, February 17). The... MORE

Introduction In March, at the opening session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC), the top legislature of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced an annual defense budget of roughly 1.55 trillion yuan (about $224.79 billion) for fiscal year 2023, which is a 7.2... MORE

In mid-December 2022, the Maldivian Presidential Commission on Deaths and Disappearances (DDCom) submitted its final report on the disappearance of a prominent progressive journalist, Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla. Almost eight years after Rilwan mysteriously vanished from the capital Male’s suburb of Hulhumale in August 2014,  the... MORE

Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which operates in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, assassinated senior Afghan Taliban commander Daud Muzammil in a suicide attack on March 9 (Twitter.com/@Abdsayedd). This attack was ISKP's most significant blow to the Afghan Taliban since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan... MORE

The National Resistance Front (NRF), which is led by Ahmad Massoud, had intended to challenge the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country in August 2021. However, since the Taliban’s September 2022 claim to have killed dozens of NRF fighters at... MORE

On February 17, the Indian government banned the Kashmir-centric Islamic militant group called the Jammu and Kashmir Ghaznavi Force (JKGF) (egazette.nic.in, February 17). A relatively new entrant in the Kashmir landscape, JKGF emerged as a hybrid strike unit comprised of highly trained cadres of Pakistan-based... MORE

On March 19, gunmen stormed a gold mine near Bambari, in the heart of the Central African Republic (CAR), killing nine Chinese workers. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) Embassy in the CAR issued successive warnings for Chinese nationals to evacuate all areas outside of... MORE