At the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Hanoi in July, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi―fuming at the temerity of 12 countries who had raised the contentious South China Sea dispute―stared at his Singaporean counterpart and thundered “China is a big country and other countries... MORE

China’s naval presence on the global stage is expanding. While counter-piracy and escort operations in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea have significantly contributed to the Chinese navy's growing profile, foreign port visits by its naval vessels to the Gulf region are emerging as... MORE

The chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Kabardino-Balkaria, Anas Pshikhachev, was murdered on December 15 in the republic’s capital, Nalchik. An official with Kabardino-Balkaria’s Investigative Committee was quoted as saying that two unidentified men arrived at the mufti’s home, asked him to come... MORE

As peacekeepers pull out of a notorious and remote corner of Africa known as the “Triangle of Death,” bands of gunmen are pouring in to fill the void in security. At the core of this problem is a former French colony that became a nation-state... MORE

The Saudi leader of a Lebanese militant group has urged Sunni Muslims to refuse cooperation with institutions of the Lebanese state, which he claims are infiltrated and dominated by the Shiite Hezbollah movement. The criticism of Lebanon’s security structure was contained in a November 24... MORE

Residents in the Kurram Agency of tribal northwest Pakistan believe that the Pakistani military has once again postponed military operations in North Waziristan Agency after its plan to shift the so-called “moderate Taliban” (including the notorious Haqqani Network) was exposed and severely criticized by some... MORE

The prospects for resolving the Karabakh conflict are as uncertain as ever after the inability of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s presidents to reach any tangible agreements on the margins of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana on December 1-2. It... MORE

On December 11, the largest ever Russian nationalist riots in modern Russia broke out in Moscow. The protesters, consisting of about 5,000 soccer fans and members of several Russian nationalist organizations, gathered at Manezh Square, which is adjacent to the Kremlin and Red Square. They... MORE

Despite the statements from the NATO Lisbon summit about partnership with Russia, it did not take long for Moscow to demonstrate why partnership with it is so difficult, as well as revealing why there is little East-West trust. On November 30, RIA Novosti rebuffed a... MORE

On December 11 in Ashgabat, the top officials of four participant countries signed agreements on a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, favored on and off (currently on again) by the US government. Presidents Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, and Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari,... MORE