Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Kurniawan Arif Maspul
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Why Iran and Lebanon matter, and who shapes what comes next
The Middle East stands again at the lip of an abyss, and the tremor is not regional – it is global. The reported killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in joint US–Israeli strikes, followed by Tehran’s missile retaliation and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has…
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When a supreme leader is assassinated, the Global South trembles
The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in joint United States–Israeli strikes has torn a hole not only through Iran’s leadership, but through the fragile architecture of the international order itself. The shockwaves are no longer confined to Tehran. They ripple through the Strait of Hormuz, across Gulf capitals, into energy…
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Strikes push Lebanon’s ceasefire toward collapse
The sky over southern Lebanon no longer carries the promise of rain. It carries the low mechanical hum of drones and the crack of air strikes that arrive without warning. In villages such as al-Ain and Aitou, families wake to rubble where bedrooms once stood. Recent Israeli strikes in eastern…
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How Addis and Ankara are shaping a more stable Red Sea
At the edge of the Red Sea, where history has always been written in salt and blood, a new chapter is quietly unfolding. It is not the clash of empires that once defined relations between the Ottoman fleet and the highland kingdom of Abyssinia. It is something subtler, more ambitious,…
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Who fears the truth? The lawfare campaign to silence Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese has become one of the most polarising figures in contemporary diplomacy, not because she commands armies or signs treaties, but because she insists on describing what she sees. Since assuming her mandate as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories in…
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Munich 2026 faces Gaza’s unanswered call for justice
At the Munich Security Conference 2026, beneath glittering chandeliers and tight security, diplomacy moved to script — until one question broke it. Dutch parliamentarian Kati Piri asked what many had whispered, but few had dared to say aloud: where is the accountability for Israel’s actions in Gaza? The room did…
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Indonesia’s 8,000: Can stabilisation proceed without normalisation?
Gaza has become a scar on the conscience of the international system. With more than 72,000 Palestinians reported killed and over 1.9 million displaced at the height of the latest war, the strip stands as a symbol of immeasurable grief and diplomatic failure. In November 2025, the UN Security Council…
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Khartoum wake-up call, how Riyadh will stabilise Sudan
In Geneva last October, Saudi Arabia did something rare in the long agony of Sudan’s war. It spoke plainly. Before diplomats and humanitarian officials, Riyadh’s envoy condemned the Rapid Support Forces’ assault on El Fasher as ‘grave’, demanding immediate humanitarian access and denouncing attacks on civilians, aid workers and infrastructure.…
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The architecture of deceptions in the West Bank
History does not always collapse with the sound of gunfire. Sometimes it dissolves through paperwork, zoning maps, cabinet votes and regulatory notices that barely make the evening news. The latest Israeli security cabinet decisions on the West Bank belong to that quieter, more consequential category. They do not declare annexation.…
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Addis and Riyadh reaffirm priorities at a critical regional moment
Across the Red Sea, history has always travelled faster than politics. Long before borders, treaties or modern diplomacy, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were bound by faith, trade and survival. Today, as global power fractures and regional orders are rewritten, that ancient corridor is again becoming one…
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Gulf allies urge restraint as Washington weighs escalation
At a moment when the Middle East stands on the edge of escalation, the decisive voices have already been heard — not from Washington, but from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha and other GCC nations. In the last 48 hours, the Gulf has moved from anxious diplomacy to the edge of…
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Indonesia must not let Gaza’s reconstruction bypass Palestinian rights
History has a long memory in Jakarta. In 1955, as newly decolonised nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia placed Palestine at the moral heart of its foreign policy, not as a slogan but as a principle: freedom is indivisible. Seven decades later, that inheritance has returned with force, as Indonesia steps…
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World’s eyes silenced again, but the battle for truth is not over
History rarely announces the moment when a global norm collapses. It simply erodes, quietly at first, then all at once. The killing of journalists in Gaza marks such a moment—not merely as a tragedy for the profession, but as a rupture in the moral architecture that has long underpinned international…
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Davos becomes the stage for Trump’s Gaza push
The World Economic Forum in Davos became the stage for a disruptive proposal when US President Donald Trump announced a ‘Board of Peace’ framed as a permanent, pay-to-participate global conflict-resolution body emerging from Gaza’s ceasefire and reconstruction efforts. While some governments feel compelled to join to avoid alienating Washington, critics—from…
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After UNRWA, what breaks next?
East Jerusalem woke this week to the sound of concrete breaking and a familiar, hollow silence settling in behind it. The demolition of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency facility was not merely another planning dispute in a contested city. It marked a rupture in the fragile architecture that…
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Gaza, the Board of Peace and multilateralism’s moral hour
Gaza has become more than a battlefield. It has become the world’s moral ledger, where promises of international law, civilian protection, and collective responsibility are audited in real time. What is unfolding is not merely a humanitarian disaster, though it is that on a staggering scale. It is also a…
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Tehran falters while Riyadh rewrites regional stability
The Middle East is once again speaking in the language of pressure, grief and unfinished power. Iran’s streets, its nuclear sites and its diplomacy have all fractured at the same time, producing a moment that feels less like a crisis than a reckoning. What is unfolding is not only about…
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When Damascus spoke to the Kurds, the world listened
Syria has become the graveyard of Middle Eastern certainties. What once looked like a frozen conflict—managed by dictators, militias and foreign patrons—has collapsed into something far more unsettling and far more consequential. The fall of the Assad regime in late 2024 did not deliver peace; it detonated a long-suppressed reckoning.…
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Iran exposes the limits of BRICS unity
What is unfolding in Iran today is not merely another chapter in a long story of unrest. It is a stress test for the global order, for the credibility of emerging powers, and for the moral grammar of international diplomacy at a moment when multipolarity is no longer theoretical but…
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As Indonesia leads on human rights, Gaza defines the moment
There are moments in international affairs when statistics stop behaving like abstractions and begin to smell of reality. Gaza has reached that moment. According to the United Nations’ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, more than 500,000 people in Gaza are already trapped in famine conditions, classified as the most extreme…
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Red Sea lines and the return of Arab red lines
The Middle East is entering a quieter but far more consequential rupture. This is not the drama of crowds in public squares or leaders toppled overnight. It is the slow, strategic fracturing of states, coastlines and trust — driven by calculated power plays along the world’s most vital maritime arteries.…
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Adelaide Festival cancels Palestinian voice: Australia’s free speech test
In the fragile silence that followed the Bondi terror attack, Australia was reminded of how quickly fear can rearrange public life. Fifteen people were murdered at a Hanukkah gathering in Sydney, an act of targeted violence that shocked a nation and left Jewish Australians grieving and anxious. The instinct to…
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When America leaves, the Middle East redraws the rules
The quiet earthquake in Washington in January 2026 will not stay confined to American domestic politics. When the United States withdrew from dozens of international organisations tied to the United Nations, climate governance, global health and development, it sent tremors across every region that depends on rules rather than raw…
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Caracas falls, and the Middle East hears a warning
The arrest of Nicolás Maduro in a sudden United States military raid on Caracas has not merely ended a presidency. It has cracked open one of the most consequential fault lines in contemporary international politics, where sovereignty, energy security, humanitarian catastrophe and great-power rivalry collide in full view of the…