Asia’s navies are planning tougher action to combat the menace of piracy along Somalia’s coastline and in the Red Sea region. The well-organised pirates have targeted Asian ships...

India’s navy hosted its first Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in Delhi in February to promote cooperation amongst 26 states in the region. Its aim was to foster...

As Western governments consider placing sanctions on Kenyan leader Mwai Kibaki and his ministers for refusing to negotiate over the disputed elections, Asian states have maintained a near...

Ever since the abduction of two Chinese oil workers by antigovernment rebels in Sudan three years ago, policy-makers in Beijing have wrestled with how best to manage strategic...

China is trying to strengthen its diplomatic and commercial relations with Sudan despite the international opprobrium that those relations have attracted. Meanwhile, Khartoum’s ruling National Congress (NC, aka National Islamic Front) is...

Facing no opposition, the Front Patriotique Rwandais (FPR) won an unsurprising landslide in the parliamentary elections on 15 September, the second since the 1994 genocide. The European Union’s...

The rebel Congolese Tutsi General, Laurent Nkunda, has called for an uprising against the Kinshasa government. The 3,000-6,000 men of his Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple...

Those who thought that the 1999 split in the National Islamic front, when Hassan Abdullah el Turabi was officially sidelined, would seriously change Khartoum’s Islamist regime might be...

The threat of an indictment for war crimes of Sudan’s President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir by the International Criminal Court has not diminished the Khartoum regime’s willingness...

The political parties are waking up to the potentially ruinous implications of the new Political Parties Act. Passed into law in the run-up to last year's ill-fated general...