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January 8:
Since the first mass displacements in the 1980s, Iran has served as
a refuge for Afghan refugees and migrants fleeing their war-torn
countryside. Now, however, the Afghan expatriate community in Iran,
swollen by their country’s six year war against the Taliban, has
been issued an ultimatum by Tehran: either leave or wind up in jail.
Since last April, Iran has expelled some 360,000 Afghan immigrants,
according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In
many cases Iran has simply “dropped them off along the
Iranian-Afghan border,”
reports eurasianet.org, “often without even informing their
families.” Those that have avoided the forced expulsions are facing
more subtle means of intimidation, such as obstacles to opening bank
accounts, buying homes, receiving passports, obtaining medical
insurance, or sending their children to public schools.
January 9:
Is China making
contingency plans for a North Korean collapse?
The London Telegraph reports that, according to a new study by
two leading Washington think tanks, the PRC may send troops into the
DPRK to stabilize the Stalinist state and secure its nuclear arsenal
in the event of a catastrophe. “If the international community did
not react in a timely manner as the internal order in North Korea
deteriorated rapidly, China would seek to take the initiative in
restoring stability,” says the report, compiled by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and the United States Institute
of Peace. After years of unanswered calls for reconciliation with the Taliban,
Afghan President Hamid Karzai can finally point to a small but
strategically significant victory. In early January, Mullah Abdul
Salaam, a former Taliban commander, was named the new district chief
of Musa Qala - a town infamous as hotbed of Taliban activity. Yet,
with the help of a defecting Salaam and his Alizai tribe, a
Coalition offensive restored government control to the contested
town late last year. Karzai and his allies in government insist that
such deal-making, which has its critics both within NATO and the
Afghan government itself, is essential to restoring peace to the
violent countryside. Now, they provide as proof the fact that
Salaam’s defection has brought “some 300 militia fighters to the
side of the Afghan government in a strategic part of Helmand
Province.” Another benefit of Salaam’s defection,
reports Radio Free Europe, is that “his allegiance to
Kabul helps extend the central government’s authority into an area
seen as a bastion of popular support for the Taliban.”
January 12:
Nestled between the Himalayas and Asia’s two biggest powers is the
small, landlocked country of Bhutan. After staying out of the
headlines for decades, this feudal monarchy-turned-democracy has
recently drawn intense interest from its two powerful neighbors,
China and India, raising fears that it is becoming “either a
strategic pawn or a malleable ‘buffer’” in their struggle for
regional influence.
The
Asia Times reports that the opening shots may have been fired
late last year, when “Chinese forces demolished several unmanned
Indian forward posts” in Bhutan’s Dolam Valley – which China has
laid claim to – “drastically distort[ing] the Sino-Bhutanese
border.” And in recent months, there have been several reports of
Chinese “intrusions” into Bhutanese territory along the disputed
“Line of Actual Control.”. For its part, India, traditionally closer
to Bhutan’s royal family, has “moved 6,000 troops to the
Sino-Indian-Bhutanese junction from the troubled states of Jammu and
Kashmir.” |
