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By Countercurrents Collective
This article is the 9th in a series of joint productions of South Asian Outlook and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.
NEW DELHI (IDN) – The 27-member delegation of European Parliament members visited the troubled region of Jammu and Kashmir. It’s the first foreign delegation allowed to visit Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reportage on the war in Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, we, the Taliban, have the time.”
“Play it again, Sam” was said in “Casablanca”. It should be played, said and listened to in Kabul and Washington today. This is America’s longest war ever – 18 years and counting. It has cost over one trillion dollars and taken 2,500 American lives. President Barack Obama, blind-sided by the generals, he confided later, pumped up the numbers of troops to 100,000.
By Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, Scroll.in
This article first appeared on Scroll.in on 14 October 2019.
MUMBAI (IDN-INPS) – Abhijit Banerjee, the renowned economist who was one of three awarded the Nobel prize for economics on October 14, put together some prescriptions for what the Indian economy needs right now. The last item on the list? “Pray.” On the next list, for the longer run? “Pray more.” Banerjee was speaking in response to Raghuram Rajan, another renowned economist and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian prime minister, as part of the OP Jindal Lectures at Brown University in the United States.
By Katsuhiro Asagiri
NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan (IDN) – 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the end of nuclear weapons testing in Semipalatinsk, the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons, the 10th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia, and the ratification by Kazakhstan as the 26th country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Kazakhstan is known for its commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons. An estimated 1.5 million of its people suffered the effects of the testing of 456 nuclear weapons at Semipalatinsk over four decades.
Viewpoint by Manish Uprety* F.R.A.S. and Dr. Yiyong Liang
NEW DELHI (IDN) – Informal meetings are a rarity between two formal regional powers, more so between two tea-drinking nations that comprise over 37% of the human population. The Modi-Xi informal meeting in Mamallapuram – a World Heritage Site in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu – falls into the very category. What and where shall it lead to is anybody’s guess?
Viewpoint by Dr Palitha Kohona
The writer is former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, and former Foreign Secretary.The following is based on a presentation made at the Annual Convention of the Organisation of Professional Associations. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of any agency.
COLOMBO (IDN) – Winston Churchill once said that "Her Majesty's government has no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests".
Applicable universally, this would be a good starting point when examining Sri Lanka's foreign policy options as the presidential candidates (realistically, only two have a credible opportunity of success) and their advisors mull their choices once anointed with the sinecure (the 19th amendment to the Constitution has sharply reduced presidential powers) top post.
By Kalinga Seneviratne
This article is the 35th in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate. Click here for previous articles.
COX BAZAAR, Bangladesh (IDN) – Most of Bangladesh’s 1 million Buddhists live in Chittagong (now officially known as Chattogram), Chittagong Hill Tracks and here in Cox Bazaar areas. The latter is home to the teeming Rohingya refugee camps sheltering those who fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the 2016 skirmishes with the Burmese military. Over an estimated 900,000 Rohingyas are sheltered here in what is believed to be the world’s largest refugee camp today.
Viewpoint by Wang Yi
The following is the statement of Wang Yi, State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of The People’s Republic of China, at the General Debate of the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 27 September 2019
NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In 1945, the United Nations was born in response to the call of the times. Four years later, the People’s Republic of China was founded, and the Chinese nation reemerged before the eyes of the world as a completely reborn nation.
Viewpoint by Somar Wijayadasa*
NEW YORK (IDN) – On October 1, China’s President, Xi Jinping, celebrated 70 years of Communist party rule, and its rise to superpower status, at Tiananmen Square in Beijing that consisted of a military parade and hundreds of thousands of people participating in the event ending with a grand pageant.
The main attraction was the unprecedented military parade of around 15,000 military personnel, 580 pieces of military equipment and 160 aircraft including new hypersonic drones, and the Dongfeng-41 missile capable of striking the United States in 30 minutes with 10 nuclear warheads at once, each with a different target - irrefutably, a display of China’s military might.
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali *
FREMONT, California, USA (IDN) – Amid rising tension over Kashmir between the two nuclear neighbors, India and Pakistan, a new U.S. study examines how such an hypothetical future nuclear conflict would have consequences that could ripple across the globe. [Read also New Study Warns of Devastating Global Consequences of an India-Pakistan Nuclear War.]
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, over the span of less than a week, kill 50 to 125 million people that is more than the death toll during the six years of World War II, according to the research by Colorado University Boulder and Rutgers University.
