Archive for the ‘PRESS’ Category

A new piece for the South China Morning Post, this one a short op-ed with Alex drawing on ideas to emerge from our Uzbekistan visit. Very interesting to see the degree to which Korea is a visible presence there, quite in contrast to any other power. At the same time, China is clearly a player, [...]

I have mentioned this briefly in a previous post as it was already up in the e-magazine format, but my latest longer piece for HSToday is now live online in a more standard format and so can be easily reposted here. The piece was the cover story and explores the security questions around the London [...]

A new piece for the HS Today website this time exploring the implications of Abu Qatada being featured in a number of videos or messages by extremists ahead of his possible expulsion from the UK. It looks more generally at the terrorist threat to the UK, something I explore in specific detail for the Olympics [...]

A new big think piece for The National Interest that has already been re-posted on The Atlantic’s site under the title ‘The New Great Game: Development, Not Domination, in Central Asia.’ It is another piece to emerge as part of the project that I have been working on with Alex and which is primarily housed [...]

Another short op-ed for the South China Morning Post (with Alex Petersen, co-editor of this other site), this time looking at Sino-Turkish relations in the wake of Erdogan’s recent visit, focusing particularly on how Central Asia figures between them. One of the most interesting things about this whole visit was Erdogan’s stop in Xinjiang which was [...]

A slightly delayed piece for CNN on a topic I have covered repeatedly, the subject of Lone Wolves and specifically the case of Mohammed Merah in France. It has also been a quiet period of late as I am travelling in a rather far-flung place, but more on that later. In France, a new type [...]

Veering away from my recent spate of terrorism related articles, a new op-ed for the South China Morning Post, a newspaper I have written for before on China-Central Asia with the same co-author, my friend Li Lifan. This uses the recent Russian election as a spring-board for some analysis of China’s relations with Russia and Central [...]

A new post for CNN on the British connection with al Shabaab. Have been talking to a lot of people about this of late, and am wondering when the story is going to take off. It may  be on the cusp of turning into something, but we shall see. For previous bits on the topic, [...]

A new article in today’s 东方早报 (Oriental Morning Post), a daily paper in China that I write a semi-regular column for. This was intended to come out last week talking a bit about China’s growing problems with citizens abroad and the dangerous places they are, and was meant to be pegged to the kidnapping the workers in [...]

A new piece for CNN, this time looking in a bit more detail at the group Boko Haram to try to understand what lessons can be learned from nearby al Qaeda affiliates and fellow travellers to see about its trajectory as an global terrorist threat. My sense is that it is unlikely to start actively [...]