By SOMINI SENGUPTA Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree …

By HUSSEIN IBISH When, at its March summit meeting, the Arab League announced that it intended to create a unified command for a joint Arab military force, eyes rolled. Given how divided the Arab states are, and how poorly most historical efforts at Arab military coordination have fared, this …

By Elliott Morss of Morss Global Finance The media is doing a more than adequate job of covering the futile dance between the Eurozone “leaders” and Greece. But Greece is not the only country facing fundamental economic challenges. This article identifies other countries in the most dire straits …

Robert Fisk It amazes me that all these warriors of the air don’t regularly crash into each other. Let me try to get this right. The Saudis are bombing Yemen because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in …

Kazakhstan wants to develop advanced transport infrastructure to become a key part of China’s future transport network from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea. Kazakhstan plans to invest over $20 billion by 2020 into its transportation industry to become the main transit country between the booming Chinese market and Europe, said Zhenis …

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will come to Moscow on May 8-9, attending Victory Day celebrations in the Russian capital as part of his first foreign visit after re-election, the president’s press service announced in a Monday statement. Nazarbayev will also participate in an informal meeting of CIS leaders, as well as a …

Patrick Megahan and Oren Adaki The Saudi-led international coalition operating in Yemen announced last Tuesday it had ended the first phase of its nearly month-long campaign in the country. Though the coalition fell short of its stated goal of returning Yemen’s internationally recognized government to power, it insists that in …

Richard Javad HeydarianTruong-Minh Vu With China tightening its grip on much of the South China Sea, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is struggling to adopt an appropriate and unified response. Ironically, this year is supposed to be the “Year of China-ASEAN Maritime Cooperation”. Since Cambodia’s disastrous …

By  Mary Habeck For several months, I have been writing about signs of cooperation—generally on a local level—between al-Qaeda (AQ) groups and others that have sworn fealty to the Islamic State (IS). It might seem counterintuitive that the two, which have accused each other ofassassinating leaders, engaged in …