分类： politics

Nearly five years after one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in South Asian history, a Sri Lankan High Court has delivered a landmark verdict against the island nation’s former top law enforcement official over his role in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed over 260 people. On Friday, the three-judge bench found former Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara guilty of gross criminal negligence, ruling that his failure to act on repeated advance intelligence warnings enabled the Islamic State-inspired coordinated attacks that shook the country.
Under Sri Lankan law, the death sentence Jayasundara received carries a de facto life imprisonment term, as the country has upheld an informal moratorium on executions for nearly half a century, a policy that current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has publicly committed to maintaining. Legal representatives for the former police chief confirmed he will exercise his right to appeal the ruling, a process that will play out in higher courts over the coming months.
The 2019 attacks unfolded as a series of near-simultaneous blasts targeting three high-profile tourist hotels and three Christian churches—two Catholic and one Protestant—across Sri Lanka. Among the 269 people killed, 42 were foreign tourists, compounding the international fallout from the assault. A post-attack parliamentary investigation confirmed that both national police and intelligence agencies received multiple specific warnings about the planned bombings months in advance, but senior officials took no steps to shore up security or prevent the assault.
On the same day of Jayasundara’s verdict, the court prepared to issue a separate ruling for Hemasiri Fernando, the former Defense Ministry secretary, who faces the same criminal negligence charge connected to the attacks. Authorities have linked two domestic Sri Lankan Islamic militant groups to the planning and execution of the bombings, and all individuals believed to have directly participated in the attacks are dead. Additional trials are currently ongoing for dozens of other suspects accused of providing logistical support, funding, and coordination for the assault.
The verdict comes as persistent questions remain about the full scope of the conspiracy behind the attacks. Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church, which lost hundreds of worshippers in the church bombings, has repeatedly pushed back against official findings, arguing that the identified low-level perpetrators are not the true masterminds and that a far larger, still-uncovered conspiracy led to the 2019 attacks.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar — On Friday, the leader of Myanmar’s military-aligned administration marked the first 100 days of his current term in office, using a national address to defend his government’s early track record and lay out a comprehensive five-year governance agenda — all as the country grapples with widespread internal armed conflict and mounting condemnation from the international community.

Min Aung Hlaing, the former head of Myanmar’s military who first seized state control from the democratically elected civilian government in a 2021 coup, was formally sworn in as president in April of this year. His appointment followed a general election that political analysts and global critics widely dismiss as a prearranged process to cement the military’s long-term hold on national power.

Speaking before an audience of more than 900 legislators, senior government officials, and military delegates gathered at the national parliament in Naypyitaw, Min Aung Hlaing asserted that his administration has already laid “critical groundwork” for the country by advancing its two core priorities: reestablishing nationwide peace and security, and driving inclusive national development.

Under the five-year roadmap he outlined, the first two years will be dedicated to accelerating efforts to build a modern, economically developed nation founded on democratic principles and a federal governing structure. The remaining three years will be devoted to full-speed implementation of infrastructure and social development projects, he said.

Min Aung Hlaing also confirmed that special by-elections will be held in 2027 for 102 townships across Myanmar. These constituencies were unable to participate in the military government’s three-phase general election held late last year, due to ongoing armed conflict that has made normal electoral operations impossible in those areas.

The president added that the administration will continue enforcing the military’s controversial conscription law, while expanding and strengthening the country’s armed forces and national police as they battle pro-democracy opposition groups and ethnic minority insurgent movements across most of Myanmar’s territory. He noted that his government has extended an offer of dialogue to anti-military armed groups, and has already held formal talks with 13 separate ethnic armed organizations.

In a striking rebuke of regional diplomatic efforts, Min Aung Hlaing also criticized the 2021 five-point peace consensus brokered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which was designed to de-escalate Myanmar’s civil conflict. He claimed the agreement was finalized without the consent of all ASEAN member states, and argued that the regional bloc has systematically discriminated against Myanmar since the 2021 coup. The ASEAN framework requires Myanmar’s ruling authorities to immediately end all violence against opposition groups and open inclusive dialogue between all warring parties, mediated by a special ASEAN envoy.

Turning to economic and infrastructure policy, Min Aung Hlaing announced plans to move forward with 10 major new power generation projects, including the long-suspended and highly controversial Myitsone hydropower dam. The project was halted more than a decade ago following large-scale public protests over major environmental and displacement risks. He added that the government will also continue preliminary work to develop the country’s first nuclear power plant.

On law enforcement and transnational crime, Min Aung Hlaing stated that Myanmar authorities have stepped up efforts to crack down on money laundering, drug trafficking, and the transnational online scam centers that have operated with relative impunity in parts of the country in recent years. To date, he said, more than 72,000 foreign nationals linked to illicit scam operations have been deported back to their home countries, covering 58 nations worldwide.

Min Aung Hlaing did acknowledge that the large-scale outflow of young working-age Myanmar citizens has created significant headwinds for the country’s economic development. However, he declined to acknowledge the well-documented link between the military’s conscription policy and this mass youth exodus, which independent analysts and opposition groups widely identify as one of the primary drivers of the trend.

Opposition leaders have pushed back sharply on Min Aung Hlaing’s address, arguing it does little to address the country’s deepening crises. Nan Lin, a spokesperson for the General Strike Coordination Body — one of Myanmar’s leading nonviolent pro-democracy opposition organizations — said the speech makes clear the military’s sole goal is to entrench its authoritarian grip on power. He added that widespread economic hardship will only worsen under what he called the junta’s failed governing agenda.

“No meaningful change can be expected from the junta,” Nan Lin said in a statement following the address. “They will use the conscription law to control young people through fear, and the situation could worsen as they continue to sacrifice young people in order to hold on to power.”

For more than 40 years, a quiet, unspoken assumption has anchored every core pillar of Israeli national security strategy: that the United States would forever remain the unchallenged hegemonic power in the Middle East. Under this order, Washington would not only guarantee Israel’s long-held qualitative military advantage over all regional rivals, but also absorb the diplomatic fallout of Jerusalem’s policy choices and maintain the regional balance of power aligned strictly with American interests. Today, that foundational assumption is steadily eroding – and Israeli policymakers have been far slower than necessary to confront this new strategic reality.

American dominance in the Middle East was never total, but it shaped every corner of regional order for decades. Washington built an interconnected architecture of military bases, massive arms sales, binding security guarantees, and consistent diplomatic cover that allowed it to act as the final arbiter of power from the eastern Mediterranean Levant to the oil-rich Gulf states. That framework, however, has been slowly unraveling for 20 years, a decline accelerated by multiple cascading shifts: the costly failure of the 2003 Iraq War, the widespread exhaustion of the post-9/11 global war on terror, an American public weary of open-ended, endless military commitments in the Middle East, and a long-running strategic reorientation toward the Indo-Pacific that successive presidential administrations from Barack Obama’s forward have pursued in fits and starts.

As Washington’s influence recedes, competing global powers have moved to fill the emerging power vacuum. China is now the top trading partner for all Gulf Cooperation Council states, while Russia has carved out lasting, influential military and political footholds in both Syria and Libya. Regional governments have not missed this shift, and have already begun adjusting their foreign policies to hedge against an increasingly multipolar region.

The 2023 Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, brokered directly by Beijing rather than mediated through Washington, delivered the clearest warning yet that Gulf states no longer view American diplomacy as the only viable path to regional security cooperation. Today, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and even Egypt maintain genuinely multi-aligned foreign policies: they purchase Chinese infrastructure investment, Russian grain exports, and American military hardware simultaneously, and calibrate their public stances on issues ranging from Gaza to Iran to satisfy audiences in Beijing and Moscow as much as they do in Washington.

For Israel, this shifting regional order carries profound strategic implications. For decades, Israel has flourished within the framework of American hegemony. Its qualitative military edge is enshrined in binding U.S. law, it has enjoyed near-automatic diplomatic protection from Washington at the United Nations Security Council, and its economy has benefited from preferential trade agreements and decades of substantial American military aid. All of these advantages were made possible not only by the deep bilateral ties between the two nations, but by the fact that a hegemonic United States could easily absorb the diplomatic, reputational, and strategic costs of unconditional backing for Israel – at a time when no rival power was positioned to exploit the friction this created between Washington and the broader Arab and Muslim world.

That permissive strategic environment is now vanishing. In an increasingly multipolar Middle East, the costs of the U.S.-Israel alliance have become far more visible, and far more easily exploited by competing powers. Every veto the U.S. casts on Israel’s behalf at the UN is now leveraged by Beijing and Moscow to argue to Global South governments that American-led global institutions apply core principles of international law selectively and unfairly. Every round of conflict in Gaza or Lebanon becomes an opening for rival powers to position themselves as far more responsive to Arab and Muslim public opinion than Washington is willing to be, as seen clearly in Chinese and Russian diplomatic outreach to the Gulf and Islamic world during the 2023-2024 Gaza war.

Even Israel’s landmark regional diplomacy, most notably the Abraham Accords, was built on a core premise that has now been severely strained: that normalization with Gulf states could proceed on a separate track from the decades-long Palestinian question, under an American security umbrella that would make this political compromise survivable for Arab leaders. The Gaza war has stretched this premise to breaking point. Arab publics across the region remain far more passionate about securing Palestinian statehood than the architects of normalization agreements anticipated. And in a world where Arab governments now have access to alternative great power patrons and alternative export markets, they have far less incentive to absorb damaging domestic political costs purely to maintain favor with Washington.

This shifting landscape does not call for panic – but it demands urgent rethinking. None of these changes mean that American commitment to Israel is on the verge of collapse, or that Israel’s existing military superiority is in immediate jeopardy. But they do mean that the strategic context in which Israeli policy has operated since 1967 is fundamentally changing, and that proactive foresight will deliver far better outcomes than continued strategic inertia.

A realist assessment of this new order points to three core takeaways for Israeli policymakers. First, Israel’s long-term security will depend far more on stable, negotiated agreements with its regional neighbors – including a credible, lasting resolution to the Palestinian question – than on any permanent assumption of American unrivaled primacy in the region. Second, overreliance on unconditional American backing is a declining asset, as Washington’s regional influence continues to wane and American domestic politics grow increasingly divided over U.S. support for Israel. Third, in a Middle East with multiple competing great power patrons, Israel’s regional legitimacy will become a far more durable foundation for national security than military deterrence alone.

Of course, this reading of regional trend lines is not universally accepted, and it remains contested among strategic analysts. Advocates of the traditional approach argue that American commitment to Israel rests on durable public and congressional support that shows no sign of fundamental erosion. They note that China and Russia have demonstrated little appetite or capacity to replace the comprehensive security guarantees that the U.S. has long provided the region, and that claims of American decline in the Middle East have been overstated many times before.

Other analysts argue that Israel’s own military superiority and independent deterrent capabilities, not its alliance with any external patron, remain the true foundation of its national security. They add that normalization between Israel and Gulf states is rooted in genuine shared concerns over Iranian regional ambitions, rather than a fragile arrangement dependent entirely on American mediation.

Both perspectives deserve fair consideration as the regional balance of power continues to shift. This new multipolar order is still taking shape, and only proactive, adaptive strategy will allow Israel to navigate its new challenges effectively.

A controversial error by the Trump administration at an international AIDS conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has drawn widespread condemnation, after a slideshow presentation included a heavily inaccurate AI-generated map of African nations that the U.S. has public health partnerships with.

The presentation was led by Jeff Graham, the top U.S. envoy for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a landmark global HIV/AIDS initiative first launched during the George W. Bush administration. According to video footage of the event, which took place last week and reviewed by international news agency Reuters, the incorrect map bore watermarks confirming it was created with tools developed by OpenAI, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research firm best known for its ChatGPT large language model.

Multiple major geographic blunders riddled the map, which was intended to visualize the scope of U.S. AIDS-related health work across Africa. Nigeria, a country that holds a long Atlantic coastline in West Africa, was incorrectly depicted as a landlocked nation. Ivory Coast, another West African coastal country, was misplaced to the opposite side of the continent and also shown as landlocked. Mozambique, a southern African nation that sits across the Mozambique Channel from Madagascar, was incorrectly placed deep inland in the Horn of Africa, thousands of kilometers from its actual location.

In a statement to Reuters, the U.S. State Department accepted full responsibility for the error, attributing the mistake to a staffer who put the presentation together on short notice. Notably, the department issued no formal apology to African delegates and partners in attendance at the conference, while reaffirming that the U.S. remains committed to delivering “real results” in the global fight against AIDS on the African continent.

The embarrassing blunder has unfolded against a far broader and more consequential backdrop of sweeping restructuring to U.S. foreign assistance under the second Trump administration. As part of a policy push to streamline federal operations and cut government spending, the administration has moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), America’s leading humanitarian and development aid provider, and slashed at least one-third of the nation’s foreign service personnel. What started as a 90-day freeze on new foreign aid allocations in early 2025 has since evolved into an almost total dismantling of the U.S.’s longstanding global humanitarian infrastructure.

Public health experts and former officials have sounded the alarm that these deep cuts will lead to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths among the world’s most vulnerable populations, many of them children. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly pushed back on these warnings, insisting “No children are dying on my watch” months into the administration’s cost-cutting drive.

But Atul Gawande, who served as USAID’s global health assistant administrator during the Biden administration, has warned the death toll will be staggering even in the first 12 months of the cuts. “You’re talking hundreds of thousands [of deaths] in year one at a minimum,” Gawande said. “Just on the reduction in immunisations, you’re talking about more than a million.” A separate analysis from the Center for Global Development estimates that cuts to U.S. humanitarian funding, the largest in the world, could lead to as many as 700,000 additional preventable deaths globally each year.