标签： Asia

As geopolitical fault lines across the Middle East deepen, Yemen’s Houthi movement is developing a plan to levy new fees on commercial maritime traffic transiting the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, multiple regional sources have confirmed to Reuters. This emerging policy shift comes against a backdrop of already heightened tensions across the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, reshaping global energy transit routes and challenging Western military presence in the region.

Five years after Myanmar’s 2021 military coup plunged the country into brutal civil war, the Thai border town of Mae Sot has emerged as a fragile, overcrowded sanctuary for tens of thousands of people who fled their homeland to oppose junta rule. For many of these exiles, what was once hope of a swift democratic revolution has curdled into exhaustion, disillusionment, and a future shrouded in uncertainty.

One 22-year-old former urban guerrilla, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his family still living under junta surveillance in Yangon, embodies this shifting tide of sentiment. At 17, he joined nationwide mass protests against the coup that ousted democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. When security forces crushed the nonviolent demonstrations, he fled to ethnic insurgent-controlled territory for military training, before returning to Yangon to carry out bombings as part of an underground resistance cell. “I thought then that non-violent protests were not the right way to get back our freedom,” he recalled.

His armed resistance ended abruptly when he was captured and sentenced to seven years in Insein Prison, a facility infamously known for routine abuse and torture of political inmates. Released last year, he fled across the Moei River – the narrow waterway that marks the Myanmar-Thailand border – to Mae Sot, where he now lives in one of dozens of hidden safe houses run by local charities. It was during his imprisonment that his views on the struggle changed forever. He witnessed deep infighting among insurgent groups, saw countless unnecessary civilian and combatant casualties, and as the eldest child in his family, felt a growing obligation to prioritize his family’s safety over armed struggle. Today, he has rejected violence entirely. “I want to help our people as much as I can. But I choose another way. A non-violent way,” he said. Now, he spends his days teaching children in the safe house and supporting friends who remain imprisoned in Myanmar, clinging to a faint hope that freedom will eventually come.

The 22-year-old is far from alone. Since the 2021 coup, Mae Sot – a major trade gateway between Myanmar and Thailand that has long hosted a shifting Burmese population – has seen its community of exiled Myanmar residents swell exponentially. Nearly all cross the border unofficially, leaving them undocumented and without legal status in Thailand. They live in constant fear of arrest by Thai police and deportation back to Myanmar, where reprisals from the junta await them and their families. Many dare not leave their cramped safe house rooms for weeks at a time; one defected former army officer told the BBC she only ventures outside twice a month.

These safe houses, tucked down quiet back streets and offering only six months of maximum stay per resident, are warrens of tiny, basic rooms with shared communal facilities. Behind every door lies a harrowing story of survival. Among them is Yin Yin Aung, a 20-year-old mother who traveled 1,000 miles from her resistance-stronghold village in Sagaing Region to reach Mae Sot with her husband and toddler son. Two years ago, junta troops occupied her village, Htomar, after sweeping through the region to crush dissent. The family fled into the surrounding forest, where they survived for six months on river water and scarce rations, falling ill and seeing several members of their group die before they could begin their journey to the border. When troops finally withdrew, they left the village looted and laced with landmines, making return impossible.

Yin Yin Aung gave birth to her son in the forest, but he was born with an abdominal hernia that requires urgent surgery. In Mae Sot, the couple has no legal status, so they cannot access Thailand’s public healthcare system. A private hospital has demanded a 38,000 baht ($1,140) deposit for the procedure – a sum nearly out of reach for the destitute family. Like many others, they have already hit their six-month limit at one safe house and are now staying in a second, with another move looming when their time runs out. “So long as Min Aung Hlaing is in charge, I cannot go back home,” Yin Yin Aung said. “He is the one who caused all of this.”

The growing despair among Mae Sot’s exiles comes as Myanmar’s junta leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, has consolidated his grip on power over the past 12 months, backed by significant diplomatic and military support from China and Russia. Last month, Min Aung Hlaing received a formal red-carpet welcome from Chinese President Xi Jinping, marking a key milestone in his effort to rebrand himself from a coup-leading pariah to a legitimate head of state accepted by neighboring countries. Earlier this year, the junta held a tightly controlled, opposition-boycotted election that allowed Min Aung Hlaing to formally take the office of civilian president, while over the past year junta forces have recaptured large swathes of territory that resistance groups seized in the early years of the war.

Chinese pressure has also cut off critical weapons and technology supplies to many resistance groups, leaving them fragmented, outgunned, and on the defensive. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently reported that at least 702 civilians – most of them women and children – were killed by junta air strikes between the announcement of the election last August and its conclusion in January, with violence against civilians continuing unabated even as Min Aung Hlaing solidifies his international standing.

Not all exiles in Mae Sot have abandoned hope of a revolutionary victory. In another safe house, a former Yangon bartender who serves with the Cobra Column – one of the opposition’s most effective fighting units, affiliated with the long-running Karen National Union insurgency – traveled to Mae Sot only to welcome his newborn child, and says he is eager to return to the front lines. “The military is fighting a war against the entire country, against the very citizens they are supposed to protect,” he said. “There is no way they can win.” Morale remains high among well-established ethnic armed groups like the Karen National Union, but newer people’s defense forces have struggled to maintain momentum amid supply shortages and junta advances.

For many older exiles like Louis, a 40-something Yangon entrepreneur who joined the Karen insurgency after the coup and was later imprisoned, the dragging war has forced a reevaluation of priorities. After his release, he chose to settle in Mae Sot to provide for his children, who need education and stability that a life on the run cannot offer. “For the first two or three years, we had high morale and were very motivated,” he said. “But since the war is dragging on for so long, a lot of people have other responsibilities that do not stop. We have changed under that pressure.”

One local Mae Sot activist, who runs a program to rescue child soldiers as young as 13 from insurgent groups and help them adjust to civilian life, says the war has torn apart communities that once lived in peace, with neighbors turning on each other for supporting opposing sides. She argues that the resistance must shift its strategy to meet the growing humanitarian crisis. “We have to prepare for a long fight for this revolution, not only with weapons, but also thinking about education and healthcare,” she said. “There are so many displaced people now. What are we going to do for them?”

Today, hundreds of thousands of Myanmar refugees across Thailand’s border regions remain trapped in devastating limbo. Diplomatic outreach from regional governments has failed to secure any meaningful concessions from the junta, while undocumented exiles like Yin Yin Aung face repeated moves, scarce support, and no clear path home – or to a better future elsewhere. In the cramped, dimly lit safe houses of Mae Sot, each resident carries the weight of trauma, and a future that grows more uncertain by the day.

Amid the ongoing military confrontation between the United States and Iran, the Islamic Republic has expanded its retaliatory operations across the Gulf region, targeting U.S. strategic assets while turning its attention to Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq. The cross-border strikes have deepened regional instability and sparked new debate over the nature of the threat Tehran perceives from these exiled Kurdish factions.

Keywan Faramarzi, international relations representative for the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, confirmed to Middle East Eye that recent weeks of attacks on Komala bases and operational hubs in Iraqi Kurdistan have left 10 fighters dead. While no group has formally taken responsibility for the strikes, Faramarzi explicitly pinned the blame on the Iranian government, framing the violence as part of a long-standing state policy to eliminate Iranian Kurdish opposition organizations operating beyond Iran’s official borders.

Komala is not alone in facing this escalation. Multiple other Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have reported similar attacks both in northern Iraq and inside Kurdish-populated regions of Iran itself.

The latest surge in Iranian strikes follows unconfirmed reports from Israeli media claiming Turkey pressured the U.S. to scrap a planned operation that would have deployed Iranian Kurdish fighters across the border to overthrow Tehran’s government. Since the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran launched in February, rumors of a Kurdish incursion into Iran have circulated repeatedly, but this most recent proposal was said to carry greater strategic ambitions – and the Iranian leadership has treated the threat with clear seriousness.

In a public statement released July 19, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the U.S. and Israel of plotting to fragment Iran using Kurdish opposition groups as proxies. “I made clear that if any threat emerges against us from Iraqi Kurdistan, we will respond without question,” he said.

Despite Tehran’s claims, all major Iraqi-based Iranian Kurdish parties have flatly denied any involvement in internal Iranian armed conflict, and reject assertions that former U.S. President Donald Trump ever proposed a cross-border ground operation to them. “We have no knowledge of any such plan, and no verifiable evidence exists to support these allegations,” Faramarzi said. “These reports read as nothing more than media speculation that does not align with on-the-ground realities.”

Hana Yazdanpanah, a representative for the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), echoed that denial. “We hold no such intention,” she told Middle East Eye. Yazdanpanah acknowledged that PAK supported and defended Kurdish communities in Iranian Kurdistan during the January anti-government protests, but dismissed all claims of involvement in a regime-change operation as baseless. “Neither the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, our party PAK, nor any other Iranian Kurdish party have taken part in any such operation, nor have we received any weapons or military supplies from foreign actors,” she added.

Even with these consistent denials, Iran’s unbroken campaign of strikes confirms that Tehran still views the exiled Kurdish factions as a meaningful threat. Middle East Eye reached out to the Iranian Foreign Ministry for additional comment, but received no response prior to publication.

As demographic data cited by Minority Rights Group International shows, Kurds make up roughly 10 percent of Iran’s total population, concentrated primarily in the country’s western provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Ilam. For decades, several Iranian Kurdish opposition movements – which Tehran designates as terrorist organizations – have maintained operational bases in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. These groups include Komala, PAK, the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PKDI), Khabat, and the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the latter of which holds ties to the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

While the groups hold a range of distinct ideological positions, most are united around two core goals: the self-defense of Kurdish communities inside Iran, and the eventual achievement of self-determination for Iranian Kurdistan. In late February of this year, the major factions announced a new formal coalition, with an explicit stated mission of coordinating efforts “to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In April, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed his administration had supplied large quantities of firearms to anti-government protesters in Iran, and that Kurdish groups had taken possession of the weapons – a claim the Kurdish parties have repeatedly denied.

“We have formed this alliance to strengthen and escalate our struggle in East Kurdistan [Iranian Kurdistan] and across Iran against the Islamic Republic,” Yazdanpanah said. “In this struggle, we utilize every available method of resistance.” Even so, she emphasized that the coalition has “openly maintained and declared its neutrality” in the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict.

Estimates of the coalition’s collective military strength put it far below the capacity of Iran’s state security forces. PAK reported roughly 1,000 members in 2019, while PDKI, Komala, and Khabat are believed to have similar troop counts. PJAK officials have claimed as many as 3,000 active fighters. Combined, the entire coalition’s fighting force pales in comparison to Iran’s hundreds of thousands of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel, plus an additional hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the Basij militia network.

This military imbalance has led most independent analysts to conclude the Kurdish coalition lacks the raw power to overthrow Iran’s government on its own. The repeated claims of foreign-backed regime change have also sparked growing frustration among the Kurdish parties themselves.

Winthrop Rodgers, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, noted that the Kurdish parties have approached the ongoing U.S.-Iran war with significant caution, a choice that reflects their own clear assessment of their limited capabilities and the current strategic context. “This caution likely disappointed the expectations of some reckless U.S. and Israeli planners, who failed to grasp the complex dynamics at play on the ground,” Rodgers explained.

Even so, Iran’s continued targeting of Kurdish positions in northern Iraq makes clear that the opposition groups remain a persistent concern for Tehran, even if they do not pose an immediate existential threat. Faramarzi argued that Komala’s core work focuses on building political power, not large-scale conventional military invasion. “Our main role is organizing, supporting, and strengthening civil society and protest movements across Iran – and that is what the government fears,” he said. “Through these attacks, the Islamic Republic is trying to erode our political and organizational capacity, while also sending a warning to all opposition forces across the country.”

On Thursday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will travel to Ankara for a high-stakes one-day meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a diplomatic mission focused on bringing long-overdue clarity to a relationship that has remained formally intact but strategically undefined amid sweeping shifts in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Unlike traditional state visits packed with cabinet delegations and formal treaty signings, Aoun will be accompanied only by a small group of senior presidential advisors, with no binding bilateral agreements scheduled to be finalized during the talks.

Multiple Lebanese and Turkish sources confirmed to Middle East Eye that the discussions will center on mapping out the broader strategic contours of the relationship between Beirut and Ankara. Key topics on the agenda include Turkey’s long-held concerns about Lebanon’s regional alignment, as well as new opportunities to expand bilateral military and diplomatic cooperation. A senior Lebanese insider described the meeting as a critical starting point for a more transparent bilateral dialogue, noting that Lebanon’s fragile domestic politics and exposed geographic position require it to balance relationships across competing regional blocs without alienating any major power.

While diplomatic ties between the two countries have never been severed, both sides have acknowledged a persistent gap in clear communication around their respective core political priorities. The senior Lebanese source emphasized that this lack of regular open dialogue has not risen to the level of public Turkish discontent with Lebanon’s policy direction, but the upcoming meeting is designed to address that gap head-on. “This will be a full, open and honest exchange between the two heads of state,” the source added.

Far from a reconciliation effort to repair broken relations, the visit is an attempt to add explicit political definition to a partnership that has already operated through quiet diplomatic, economic and security channels, but has never been anchored by a shared strategic framework. For Lebanon, the meeting comes as the country walks a careful diplomatic tightrope, managing relationships with Turkey, Gulf Cooperation Council states, the United States, Europe and other regional actors while avoiding any permanent, exclusive alignment with a single bloc.

For Turkey, the summit offers a rare opportunity to lay out its clear expectations for Lebanon’s positioning in a region increasingly defined by cutthroat competition over energy transit routes, maritime boundary claims, defense pacts and relationships with Israel. Ahead of his departure, Aoun told Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency that Lebanon welcomes a meaningful Turkish role in any future international governance arrangement for southern Lebanon, particularly as global powers negotiate the future mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Turkey has a long history of contributing to UNIFIL’s maritime task force and has maintained steady military and security cooperation with the Lebanese state for decades, and Aoun’s remarks were crafted to signal that Beirut views Ankara as a contributor to Lebanese stability, not just an outside power pursuing its own regional interests.

Aoun is also expected to use the meeting to update Turkey on efforts to implement existing agreements governing southern Lebanon, including calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from contested territory and continued international backing for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). However, Turkish officials plan to use the summit to press Aoun for clear answers on the future direction of Lebanese foreign policy, sparked by Beirut’s 2023 unilateral maritime border agreement with Cyprus.

A senior Turkish official told Middle East Eye that Ankara was caught off guard by Lebanon’s decision to move forward with the deal without any prior consultation with Turkey. The concern extends far beyond Ankara’s exclusion from negotiations: Turkish policymakers argue the agreement carries sweeping regional implications because of Cyprus’s close strategic and energy ties to Greece and Israel. The eastern Mediterranean has emerged as one of the most contested regions in the Middle East, with two competing blocs vying for control of energy and trade infrastructure. One bloc, linking Israel, Cyprus and Greece, is developing cross-border gas infrastructure, electricity interconnectors and shipping routes designed to connect the eastern Mediterranean directly to European markets. Turkey, by contrast, has championed alternative energy and trade corridors that position it as the central hub connecting Asia, the Middle East and European markets.

While Lebanon’s agreement with Cyprus does not formally bring Beirut into an alliance with Israel, Ankara fears the deal could gradually draw Lebanon into the regional framework built around Cyprus, Greece and Israel – a shift that would directly undermine Turkey’s own core strategic ambitions in the region. A senior diplomatic source confirmed that Erdogan will raise the maritime agreement directly with Aoun during their talks, making clear that Turkey cannot accept Lebanon aligning with Israel, a path that some figures close to the Lebanese presidency are rumored to favor. “At a minimum, Ankara expects Lebanon to maintain strict neutrality in regional geopolitical conflicts,” the source stated.

Turkey’s concerns do not stem from a belief that Lebanon has already joined an Israeli-led bloc, but rather from deep uncertainty about how Beirut will position itself as new maritime, energy and security arrangements take shape across the eastern Mediterranean. The summit will give Aoun a platform to reassure Erdogan that Lebanon’s expanding engagement with Cyprus and other regional actors is not intended to counter or isolate Turkey. Aoun will also explain that Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel are focused on securing an Israeli withdrawal from contested territory, strengthening Lebanese state sovereignty and ending cross-border hostilities, not forging a strategic alliance with Israel.

In exchange for greater clarity on Lebanon’s regional posture, Ankara is prepared to expand its security and military support to the Lebanese state, with a particular focus on bolstering the Lebanese Armed Forces. The senior diplomatic source revealed that Ankara plans to invite the LAF commander to tour Turkish defense manufacturing and industry facilities, and Ankara is ready to provide significant military hardware to the LAF if Lebanon formally outlines its equipment requirements and expresses interest in a partnership. Turkey’s domestic defense industry produces a wide range of military technology, including combat drones, armored vehicles, communications systems, and naval platforms, and Ankara has increasingly used defense cooperation as a key tool of regional diplomacy in recent years.

The source also pushed back against any interpretation of Turkey’s engagement with Lebanon through the lens of the Ottoman Empire’s historical rule over the territory, noting “Turkey is a NATO member and approaches Lebanon from a modern strategic perspective, rather than through any Ottoman historical framework.” For Lebanon, additional Turkish military assistance would offer a much-needed supplementary source of support for the LAF, which has taken on expanded security responsibilities across the country and along its volatile borders. But Beirut will need to manage any expanded cooperation carefully to avoid creating the perception that it is moving away from its longstanding military partnerships with the United States, France and other Western powers.

The true significance of Aoun’s visit lies not in the prospect of immediate, headline-grabbing agreements, but in the effort to finally map out the clear political boundaries of the Lebanon-Turkey relationship. The two countries already maintain active diplomatic ties, steady commercial trade and ongoing security cooperation, and Turkey holds meaningful political, cultural and humanitarian influence in multiple parts of Lebanon. But the relationship has remained strategically ambiguous for years, as neither side has fully articulated its expectations of the other amid rapid regional change.

Aoun’s one-day trip is not expected to resolve all outstanding questions in a single meeting. But it is likely to establish a new, direct communication channel between the two presidents, reducing the risk that future Lebanese policy decisions will be misinterpreted in Ankara without prior consultation. As the senior Lebanese source put it: the visit will not mark the start of a new relationship between the two countries, but rather the start of a far more candid conversation about where that relationship is headed in an increasingly divided region.