Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Kurniawan Arif Maspul
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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…
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Why Somaliland is a red line for African sovereignty
The question of Somaliland is not a footnote in African politics; it is a raw nerve. It cuts through history, law and memory, exposing how easily powerful states can reopen wounds they never had to live with. To write about Somaliland is to write about Somalia itself – a country…