Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
Four hundred kilometres adrift of Yangon, featuring white sand beaches and crystal blue water, Great Coco Island looks like a tropical paradise. With a population of less than 2,000 as of 2014, it has the makings of a peaceful tourist haven. Yet despite boasting a 2.3 kilometre-long runway spanning nearly...
Ahead of the Buddhist new year in Myanmar last month, a few hundred locals congregated one morning in Pa Zi Gyi village in Sagaing region, in the country’s Buddhist heartland. It was supposed to be a happy event to mark the opening of a new office of the dissident national unity government, which opposes the...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning people to be wary of fake job advertisements used to lure applicants into scamming operations in Southeast Asia. Such schemes, perpetrated primarily by Chinese organized crime groups, have exploded in size in recent years, with Cambodia as the epicenter...
For Lin, getting to Dubai from Taiwan was easy—the scam company that had just hired him booked the flight and paid the airfare. Getting back home, however, was a lot more difficult. It was sometime in September 2021 when he arrived in Dubai, the glitzy poster-child of the United Arab Emirates. Lin said...
On April 15, in response to public protests, the Kachin Independence Organization cancelled controversial plans to allow new rare earth mining in the eastern district of its territory, in Kachin State’s Mansi Township. KIO chairman, General N’Ban La, made the announcement to more than 1,500 people..
With developments in Myanmar's remote Coco island located in the Bay of Bengal, India may soon face a new airbase close by in a country increasingly tied to Beijing, said a report, which analysed satellite images released by Maxar Technologies. Myanmar's Great Coco, which lies 55 km from India's Andaman and...
Since the early 1990s, Myanmar’s Great Coco – a small, remote island in the Bay of Bengal – has been at the centre of intrigue. Rumour had it that the island was home to a Chinese intelligence facility, a claim lacking hard evidence. Now concerns over the island, and its uses, have re-emerged. Satellite images taken in...
An immense humanitarian crisis has developed in the Southeast Asian Mekong region due to the growth of online fraud companies and illegal casinos. Despite attempts to crack down on criminal gangs, the ever-changing nature of human trafficking and illicit scamming activities is becoming an increasingly destructive...
In this second installment of a two-part interview, human rights campaigner Igor Blazevic asks Jason Tower, country director for the Burma Program of the United States Institute of Peace, about Beijing’s moves to keep the National League for Democracy and National Unity Government at arm’s length, its...
In this first installment of a two-part interview, human rights campaigner Igor Blazevic asks Jason Tower, country director for the Burma Program of the United States Institute of Peace, about Beijing’s recent moves in relation to the Naypyitaw regime and the ethnic armies on China’s border with Myanmar...