In early November, Oman’s government announced plans to institute an income tax on high earners by 2022. The policy will break precedent in the oil-rich Gulf, where states tend to pay their citizens, rather than requiring citizens to pay the state. The question now is whether this decision will fundamentally …

In mid-August, Poland’s ruling right-wing Law and Justice party, or PiS, introduced a bill that would ban non-European ownership of Polish media properties. Detractors saw a blatant attack on TVN, the biggest independent television news source in the country and frequent PiS critic, which is owned by U.S. media conglomerate …

The NATO defense ministers who met yesterday and today in Brussels had a long list of issues to discuss, from the alliance’s role in confronting a rising China to its plans for countering a resurgent Russia. But NATO is also confronting more fundamental questions about its identity that have taken …

The collapse of the Afghan government over the weekend, culminating in the Taliban’s entry into Kabul and declaration of an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, stunned most observers with its rapidity, even if the outcome itself was not a surprise. Ever since it became clear that U.S. President Joe Biden would …

In early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific coast, to issue a call to action. Russia, he said, needed a new generation of pioneers to revive the country’s eastern frontier. “The development of the Far Eastern region …

Informed sources revealed that Iranian militias emptied the T4 military airport in the eastern countryside of Homs, and transported its equipment to the Shayrat airbase in the south of the governorate (in the center of the country). Ain al-Furat (Eye of the Euphrates, anti-regime, editor’s note) quoted unnamed sources saying …

The presidents of Iran and Russia weighed plans to finalize a comprehensive agreement on long-term cooperation and broaden the regional and international collaboration between the two countries. In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin highlighted the common stances of Tehran and …

There are some countries where a single predicament highlights what is wrong with their internal and foreign affairs. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threat to expel 10 Western ambassadors has been withdrawn: Turkey though is still experiencing a continuous human rights crisis. The joint statement by the ambassadors of the …

The well-known American geopolitical thinker Robert D. Kaplan in his famous book “Revenge of Geography” points out that the only way to end Afghanistan conflict is creation of “Greater Pashtonistan and “Greater Tajikistan”. Through this statement we can infer Kaplan’s belief that the root cause of all instability in Afghanistan …

Association for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA) and International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) are concerned that authorities of Uzbekistan harassed and intimidated Khidirnazar Allakulov (Truth and Progress party / Haqiqat va Taraqqiyot), Mahmud Davronov (Free Motherland party / Ozod Vatan) and Jahongir Otajonov (Erk) and other outspoken opposition …