As the global community marked International Human Rights Day earlier this month, millions of Afghan women and girls remained trapped in their homes, cast out of their schools, work and public life by repressive Taliban policy. Last year, in response to these then-already-ongoing human rights violations, the US government announced new sanctions against Taliban officials [...]
Exactly three years ago, I came back to Russia after treatment following my poisoning. I was arrested at the airport. And for three years, I’ve been in prison. And for three years I’ve been answering the same question. Prisoners ask it simply and directly. Prison officials inquire about it cautiously, with the recorders turned off. [...]
Though the fall of Syria’s Assad would appear gainful for Israel prima facie, a potential nuclear threat from Iran not only remains, but is plausibly greater than before. One reason for such a counter-intuitive suggestion is that Tehran is now more likely to feel “cornered” in certain crisis circumstances (both foreseeable and unforeseeable) and to [...]
On December 1, President Joseph Biden announced a pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, on charges of gun and tax violations, reversing his pledge not to pardon him if convicted. In his statement, the president wrote: Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter … The charges in his cases came about only after [...]
The Chagos Archipelago lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean and comprises 58 islands including Diego Garcia, which houses a major joint British and American military base. The Archipelago has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814. However, in October 2024, a joint statement was issued by the United Kingdom and Mauritius explaining that [...]
My grandfather told me once I was meant to be the heiress of a family-owned winery. Inside the courthouse gates, the ghosts of unfinished stories sit beside me in the cold, marble-columned silence. My grandfather’s voice echoes in my mind, recounting a spiel riddled with missing pieces about a winery that was never mine — [...]
The lightning-fast overthrow of Bashar al-Assad by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in late 2024 has dramatically changed the regional balance of power in Syria. After years of military dominance patronized by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the regime of Assad crumbled due to a combination of internal decay, declining morale among his forces, and strategic miscalculations. [...]
The sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria marks a turning point for the country, but the path forward will require a carefully managed political transition, accountability for war crimes, and implementation of UN Resolution 2254 to ensure a stable and representative government. The end of an era The fall of Bashar al-Assad was [...]
As the dust settles after the fall of the Assad regime, a significant chapter is closing in the tragic narrative of the Syrian conflict. The civil war, which erupted in 2011 following the brutal crackdown on peaceful student protests in Daraa, has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions. Yet, with the regime’s [...]
The Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean comprises Diego Garcia and more than sixty other islands. The Archipelago has been under continuous UK sovereignty since 1814 and was for most of that time administered as part of “British Mauritius.” In 1965, three years before the UK granted independence to Mauritius, it detached [...]
