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.
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...
A Chinese state company has resumed preliminary work in Myanmar on a railway from China to the Rakhine State coast, two senior Myanma Railways officials have told Frontier. The railway is to be a key component of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, linking Kunming in China’s landlocked Yunnan...
A pickup truck with four-wheel drive rumbled down a small hill and then came to a sudden stop. For the past few hours, we had been winding through a long road in the northern part of Shan State, where the trees on both sides were so thick that we couldn’t see anything from the windows. I quickly jumped out...
Beijing’s apparent failure to pick up on an invitation for China’s Premier Li Keqiang to attend a regional meeting in Myanmar has been interpreted as a subtle snub to Naypyidaw’s military rulers by one of their most powerful patrons. China’s non-response to an invitation for a planned Lancang-Mekong Cooperation...
Promises of high-paid entertainment jobs lured the three Thai women to Myanmar, but they found themselves trapped into prostitution in Shan state near the Chinese border before they escaped, they said in telling the stories about their ordeal. Sisters A and Aoy, and their friend, Ploy – all in their late 20s – said...
Thousands of young people from Southeast Asia seeking job opportunities have been sold to gangs of Chinese scammers who force their victims to take part in crimes and physically assault them. Victims have been found mainly in Cambodia, but also in Myanmar, the Philippines and Laos. Chinese-run casinos in...
Renewed fighting in Myanmar’s far west between the military and a powerful rebel group is opening another deadly front in the country’s post-coup chaos, piling pressure on a junta still struggling to consolidate power. The military’s February 2021 coup and subsequent crackdown on peaceful protests set off a wave or armed resistance across...
With fighting now raging between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army in Rakhine State, many in the anti-junta movement may well hope this revived conflict could tip the scales in the nationwide civil war. But what’s going on behind the scenes with the AA’s main benefactors – China and the United...