South Asia Citizens Web

The protracted Rohingya refugee crisis and in particular the latest cycle of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people fleeing the massive military crackdown on an un-armed minority community should not be viewed as an isolated event. It should be examined in the context of the rivalry between China and the US, the West and India for control over Myanmar’s economic and mineral resources.

Commentary on Malala-hating business in Pakistan. It is a sad reflection on the state of our society that a young woman who is Pakistan’s pride and honour in a global context is despised by such a large number of people in her own country.

Intervention by Ahmed Rashid at the Panel on Regional Peace on 1 April 2018 as part of Pakistan-Afghanistan Pukhtun Festival 2018 held in Pakistan

The task of reviving the Left to once again become an effective player in the polity has been exercising minds in the surviving Left parties and groups for long but the achievement of this goal has proved difficult. It is therefore heartening to note the follow-up of the meeting of 10 Left parties and groups in Lahore on December 29, 2017 by the formation of a 17-parties/groups’ platform dubbed Lahore Left Front (LLF)

Sinhalese Buddhist extremism has been vehemently condemned for the violence by the United Nations, Western governments, media, academia, and non-governmental organizations and their Sri Lankan counterparts. There is no question that violence by any group against another must be condemned and perpetrators must be held accountable. However, in order to avoid descent into further “religious” violence, it is important to move beyond a simplistic depiction of a majority aggressor and a minority victim and consider the multiple historical and social structural causes of the conflict.