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e ceasefire reached between Syria’s government and Opposition, with the mediation of Turkey, Russia and Iran, could be a turning point in the country’s civil war. Unlike the two previous failed ceasefires this year — which were negotiated between Russia and the U.S. — the latest one is sponsored by countries directly involved in the conflict. The positive reaction from both the Syrian regime and rebel commanders to the announcement of the ceasefire by Russian President Vladimir Putin also suggests that the warring parties are willing to give diplomacy a chance. For the Syrian government, this is an opportunity to announce it is ready for a peaceful settlement. Though President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly claimed that he would retake the entire territory from the rebels, a military solution appears to be illusory. A prolonged conflict will exhaust the regime forces further and multiply the humanitarian costs. On the other side, after the victory in Aleppo, the regime could now negot...

The ceasefire reached between Syria’s government and Opposition, with the mediation of Turkey, Russia and Iran, could be a turning point in the country’s civil war. Unlike the two previous failed ceasefires this year — which were negotiated between Russia and the U.S. — the latest one is sponsored by countries directly involved in the conflict. The positive reaction from both the Syrian regime and rebel commanders to the announcement of the ceasefire by Russian President Vladimir Putin also suggests that the warring parties are willing to give diplomacy a chance. For the Syrian government, this is an opportunity to announce it is ready for a peaceful settlement. Though President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly claimed that he would retake the entire territory from the rebels, a military solution appears to be illusory. A prolonged conflict will exhaust the regime forces further and multiply the humanitarian costs. On the other side, after the victory in Aleppo, the regime could now ne...

The Reserve Bank of India’s biannual Financial Stability Report has once again flagged the fact that risks to the banking sector remain worryingly “high”. That the risks have stayed “elevated due to continuous deterioration in asset quality, low profitability and liquidity,” in the central bank’s assessment, is cause for concern. Given the central role commercial lenders have in the financial system — serving to harness public savings and direct the flow of crucial credit to the most productive industrial and infrastructure sectors — any systemic risk to the banking industry has the potential to ripple across the entire economy. There has been no perceptible improvement in the health of domestic banks, even six months after the RBI’s previous report had highlighted the sector’s high vulnerability on account of the increase in capital requirement and worsening asset quality, spotlighting the need for urgent policy interventions. Some measures have been initiated and others are in t...

Colombia’s government now knows only too well that there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. In October, a referendum to ratify a painstakingly negotiated peace deal it had signed with the long-time insurgent organisation, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was narrowly defeated. A more piecemeal, less ambitious and sequenced process since then has helped Bogota notch its first significant victory in effecting the peace deal with the rebels. Now, Colombia’s Congress has unanimously approved an amnesty law granting immunity to FARC fighters from prosecution for committing minor crimes, clearing a major hurdle in effecting the revised peace accord. Those accused of major crimes will be tried by a special tribunal. The main difficulty in passing this measure was the intransigence of the leading opposition, the right-wing Centro Democratico led by former President Alvaro Uribe, who had led a vigorous campaign first against talks between the government and the rebel...

The seizure of an American underwater drone in the international waters of the South China Sea by the Chinese Navy marks the latest flashpoint in bilateral relations that have entered uncharted territory with the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. Though it is not clear if the capture of the drone, which China agreed to return later, was a junior-level act by sailors or a strategic move directed by Beijing, Mr. Trump has seized the moment to step up his anti-China rhetoric. Interestingly, the incident comes days after he broke diplomatic protocol and accepted a congratulatory call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, a move that invited an angry response from China, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province. Despite repeated assurances from the White House that the basic building blocks of U.S.-China ties have not been altered, Mr. Trump escalated matters by questioning the One- China policy. Throughout the election campaign he had maintained that he would renegotiate the t...

Equivocation before the Supreme Court can be costly. Anurag Thakur, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, may have learnt this bitter lesson after the Chief Justice of India found him prima facie guilty of contempt of court and perjury. The board’s predicament is not only due to its reluctance to accept the reforms suggested by the court-appointed Justice Lodha Committee. It is also because of its president’s ham-handed attempt to explain away his move to get the International Cricket Council to issue a letter to the effect that some judicial orders regarding the BCCI amounted to ‘governmental interference’. Mr. Thakur allegedly approached ICC chairman Shashank Manohar in Dubai in August 2016 in connection with the court’s July 18 order mandating that a nominee of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India should be on the BCCI’s apex council. It is not surprising that the court took a dim view of the BCCI initially denying that such an attempt had been made to get...

In nominating Rex Tillerson, Chief Executive of the oil and gas conglomerate ExxonMobil, to the post of Secretary of State, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has provided another glimpse into his world view and decision-making process. Similar to Mr. Trump, Mr. Tillerson has no formal experience in political office, yet brings impressive heft in terms of deal-making across 52 countries over six continents. On his watch, the stock market value of ExxonMobil, the U.S.’s largest oil company, soared to over $360 billion. Yet the vast global reach of Mr. Tillerson’s work and the sheer complexities involved in drilling for oil, especially the sometimes messy geopolitics at play, have meant he has often been at odds with the agenda of the U.S. State Department. In Nigeria, for example, his company faced flak for lack of transparency in dealings with the government. Nowhere is the potential divergence from the hallowed traditions of Foggy Bottom’s diplomatic norms more visible than in Mr. T...

By passing the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, the Rajya Sabha has adopted a radically transformative piece of legislation that addresses the concerns of arguably the most marginalised section of Indian society. The Lok Sabha should lose no time to approve this Bill in the winter session, bringing to fruition a process that started with India’s ratification of the relevant UN Convention in 2007. A measure of the expansive reach of the Bill that the Upper House passed unanimously is that it is covers as many as 19 conditions — nearly three times the number of disabilities accorded legal protection under the 1995 law. Included are a large number of individuals with multiple impairments, who are the most disadvantaged sections among the disabled. Another welcome provision is the power to notify additional disabilities, a clear recognition of the need to factor in conditions that may arise as a result of an ageing population, an inevitable part of the demographic transition. Rel...

  IN Islamic State Turkey is facing a multi-dimensional security crisis. Its forces are deployed on two battlefronts — in the southeast, where most of the country’s 15 million Kurds live, to fight the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); and in Syria to face off threats from the Islamic State (IS) as well as Kurdish rebels. But these operations have hardly helped the country secure its cities from terror attacks, as seen in Saturday’s blasts in Istanbul that killed 44 people, mostly police officers. The attack has been claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a splinter group of the PKK, which said they were taking revenge for the ongoing military operation in the southeast and the continuing imprisonment of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader. The unrelenting terror attacks over the past few years show that something is wrong with law enforcement and security arrangements in Turkey, a country otherwise known for functional institutions and a tough security regime, or a deep state. ...