Asia

  Along the porous border between Syria and Turkey lies the notorious city of Gaziantep — a city making waves in the media as a regional capitol for spooks and spicy kebabs. Called “Antep” for short (formerly known as Ayintab, the sister city to Aleppo in Syria), Gaziantep is also — surprisingly for some — […]

Our children will have to deal with a more divided world. They’re going to grow up in a world where simmering racial tensions have boiled over into street violence, where a crowing xenophobe can become an elected President, and where religious fundamentalists are able to rouse thousands to perish in their name. To thrive in […]

BY JACK GAO AND DIANA ZHOU Imagine a world where cars operate on electricity alone. Cars are silent, engineless, odorless. Gas stations are replaced by individual electric charging stations located in homes, offices, and shopping mall parking lots. Roads and pavement use friction technology to charge cars as they drive. In dense urban metropolises like […]

BY MALIKA NOOR MEHTA “Birth. Marriage. Death. In India, these three landmarks are celebrated with zeal,” says Rajneesh Yadav, the India Country Director at Free the Slaves, an international NGO working to eradicate sex trafficking and debt bondage. “When families refuse to perform the rituals associated with each of these events, they are considered social […]

BY SHANOOR SEERVAI The resounding victory of Hindu nationalists at India’s federal polls in May 2014 is attributed to one man: Narendra Modi. Fed up with the corruption and complacency of the Congress—the party that led India’s anti-colonial struggle and governed for much of its independent history—the world’s largest democracy voted for a leader who […]

Since launching his presidential bid last year, Donald Trump has come under fire for promising to “take” Iraq’s oil, ban Muslims from entering the United States, and subject terrorism suspects to “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” So how does the Arab world – which is the focus of some of Trump’s most bellicose rhetoric – view […]

Dr. Noora Lori is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University. Her research broadly focuses on the political economy of migration, the development of security institutions and international migration control, and the establishment and growth of national identity systems. She is particularly interested in the study of temporary worker programs and racial hierarchies […]

International media and human rights groups place much focus on Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and its accompanied detrimental effects. However, outside the confines of this well-reported conflict is the lesser-known and lesser-regarded condition of Israel’s own Arab population.  While Israeli Arabs are offered equal citizenship, freedoms, and voting rights as Israeli Jewish […]

BY DIANA PARK On 6 January 2016, North Korean state media broadcast that it was now “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate [a] self-reliant A-bomb [atomic weapon] and H-bomb [hydrogen, or thermonuclear, weapon] to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation.”[i] Even though initial seismic readings from US intelligence agencies […]

Dr. Houchang Chehabi, PhD, is a leading expert in Iranian studies at The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University where he is Professor of International Relations and History. Houchang Chehabi has taught at Harvard and has been a visiting professor at the University of St. Andrews, UCLA, and the Universidad Argentina […]

BY MERISSA KHURMA, PANGYRUS This article is being published in collaboration with Pangyrus. A Jordanian woman in the Northeastern city of Mafraq had been nagging her husband for weeks to take her to the Za’atari refugee camp. Her request was a simple one, Magdoos, baby eggplants stuffed with walnuts and sun-dried red peppers and pickled […]

BY FUAD HUSEYNOV The World Bank estimates the current demand for infrastructure investment in emerging and developing countries at above $1 trillion a year as of 2015. Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank estimates a need for almost $169 billion in Central Asia alone from 2010-2020, of which $92 billion is needed for the development of […]