Asia

India Little is known in the West about the bloody clashes between India and its Maoist movement. However, India has been facing an insurgency by so-called Naxalite fighters for years. On 29 May alone, 17 people were brutally killed and more than 20 others injured in an ambush in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. Incidents like this are not uncommon …

Turkic Languages When talking about ‘Turks’, one usually means the people of Turkey. This seems a natural reference for a country called Turkey. However, the modern state of Turkey is not very old. It was only established in 1923 as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. During the Ottoman Sultanate period, the inhabitants of this political entity were not …

Myanmar, Burma Recently, more and more positive news has emerged from Myanmar (Burma) as the country transitions from military dictatorship to civil society. Burma has its own heroine in the struggle for freedom in the form of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. However, it seems that not everyone is destined for freedom. In the far west of …

Pakistan Until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, few people knew about either Afghanistan or Pakistan. It was through the struggle against the Soviet Union that the West became increasingly aware of this region of the world. The Mujahideen, the heroes of the Hindu Kush who drove the communists out of the country, were admired all over the world. …

China Since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, bringing the world’s stock markets to collapse, neither Europe nor the US had been able to stabilise its economic situation. The stock market rebounded briefly, only to crash again soon after, unnoticed. The most recent major event was the subprime mortgage crisis. In response, virtually all the national banks of western countries …