A drawdown of US troops from Washington’s 18-year-old war in Afghanistan will facilitate their redeployment to the Asia-Pacific region as part of the US military buildup against China, US Defense Secretary Mike Esper told reporters this week. The remark came amid reports that some 4,000 of the roughly 13,000 US troops now deployed in the…
When visiting China, when working there regularly, things all of a sudden appear to be extremely familiar. I feel here like I did in Russia, during the end of the reign of Boris Yeltsin. Many people then, used to welcome everything European and North American with open arms. All that the Soviet Communists used to…
Traveling the Pamir Highway, we’re not only facing a geological marvel and a magic trip into ancient history and customs. It’s also a privileged window on a trade revival that will be at the heart of the expansion of the New Silk Roads. Khorog is the only town in the Pamirs – its cultural, economic…
Desperate for cash, Tajikistan is about to sell yet another vital asset to China at a time that countries like Sri Lanka and the Maldives are demanding renegotiation of debt settlements that either forced them to surrender control of critical infrastructure or left them with unsustainable repayments. The pending Chinese acquisition of a stake in…
This is arguably the ultimate road trip on earth. Marco Polo did it. All the legendary Silk Road explorers did it. Traveling the Pamir Highway back to back, as a harsh winter approaches, able to appreciate it in full, in silence and solitude, offers not only a historical plunge into the intricacies of the ancient…
In 2019, I have written a long analysis about “the Uyghur issue”; analysis which will be soon published as a book. For some time, I have been warning the world that the West, and the United States in particular, are helping to radicalize the Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province and outside. And not only that: I…
