Mali and Burkina Faso announce reciprocal travel ban against the U.S.

December 31, 2025

Mali, Burkina Faso announce reciprocal travel ban on US — A number of countries have announced reciprocal travel bans on US citizens

When Travel Bans Become Mirrors: How Mali and Burkina Faso Turned Washington’s Policy Back on the US

On a humid morning in Bamako, the scent of fried millet and sweet tea hung over the streets as vendors shuffled ripe mangoes and shea butter packets beneath fluttering tarpaulins. A radio at the corner stall crackled with news — not of the usual security briefings or weather alerts, but of a diplomatic ripple that people here felt as a personal affront.

“They put us on a list without asking,” said Aïssata Diarra, a teacher who travels to visit siblings in Europe when she can. “So now we tell them: you cannot come.” Her voice was weary, a familiar blend of pride and petulance. “Reciprocity — it’s what chess players do when they’re angry.”

The headline and the echo

In mid-December, the United States administration expanded a travel restriction that, according to a White House statement, was aimed at “countries with demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the Nation from national security and public safety threats.” The move added a handful of nations — including Mali and Burkina Faso — to a list whose initial contours had been drawn months earlier.

Within days, both West African governments issued their own responses, invoking reciprocity: the oldest currency of international relations. Mali and Burkina Faso announced bans on US citizens entering their territories. The language was brief and formal, but the undercurrent was loud — a message that diplomatic gestures, even punitive ones, do not pass without reply.

A pattern across the Sahel

This was not the first time the rhythm played out. On December 25, Niger announced it would suspend visa issuance to US citizens, according to state media. Earlier in the year, Chad halted visa services to Americans after being included on a prior list. The pattern is clear: when capitals feel slighted, they often answer in kind.

Mali and Burkina Faso: announced reciprocal bans in response to US expansion of travel restrictions.
Niger: paused issuing visas to US citizens on December 25.
Chad: suspended US visa issuance in June after previous inclusion on the list.

More than a tit-for-tat

At first glance, these moves look like instinctive tit-for-tat politics. Look closer, though, and you find a tangle of practical anxieties: the status of citizens abroad, the livelihoods of those who rely on travel, and the reputations of fragile governments. In Bamako and Ouagadougou, residents worry less about geopolitics than about everyday disruptions.

“My cousin was supposed to get a medical visa for a surgery in Texas,” said Oumar Traoré, who runs a small internet café near the river Niger. “Now what? Do we tell him to find a new surgeon? To fly where? These things are not just flags and press releases — they are people’s lives.”

Humanitarian organizations, diplomats and business people also felt the tremors. Many aid workers’ travel plans are organized months in advance; visas are more than stamps, they are the hinge of emergency response. With violent insurgencies and displacement increasing across the Sahel, any reduction in mobility can be an impediment to assistance.

A diplomatic conversation about dignity and data

Officials in Bamako and Ouagadougou framed their measures as an assertion of dignity. “Decisions affecting our citizens must be taken on factual and consultative bases,” said a diplomat who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “Unilateral listings without dialogue undermine mutual trust.”

Analysts point to the technical issues the White House cited: gaps in vetting, screening, and information-sharing. These are real challenges. The digital backbone required for modern passports, biometric checks, and interoperable police databases is unevenly distributed globally. Many countries in the Sahel are rebuilding institutions amid political upheaval, with limited resources to upgrade consular systems.

“It’s easy to moralize about security, but the practical reality is that establishing the databases and inter-agency cooperation demanded by wealthier nations is costly and takes years,” said Dr. Marie Konaté, a scholar of migration and security at a West African university. “When countries feel they’re being labeled without support, you see symbolic responses — whether they are wise or not.”

Statistics that matter

Consider the scale: Mali and Burkina Faso each have populations in the tens of millions — roughly 20–22 million people apiece — with diasporas stretching to Europe and North America. Niger, larger still, has seen population growth that outpaces many neighboring states. Across the Sahel, mobility and migration are livelihood strategies; diaspora remittances are a crucial part of local economies.

And then there is the shadow of instability. Several Sahelian countries have experienced coups or civil strife in recent years, straining already thin administrative capacities. Security concerns and political uncertainty are not just abstract inputs to Western policy decisions; they are lived conditions that shape how governments respond to perceived slights.

What does reciprocity achieve?

Is the reciprocal ban a powerful assertion of sovereignty, or a symbolic gesture that risks collateral damage? That depends who you ask.

“Reciprocity can be a legitimate diplomatic tool,” said Amadou Diallo, a former consular official. “But when it is visibly aimed at ordinary citizens — students, patients, business people — the effect is to inflame public resentment and close off channels of dialogue.”

Others see a broader narrative: a pushback against a world where powerful states unilaterally set rules and smaller states must acquiesce. “There’s a sense across West Africa that decision-making is too often done elsewhere,” mused a radio host in Ouagadougou. “When you answer back, it’s not just about visas — it’s about saying ‘no more’ to one-sided rules.”

Where we go from here

These tit-for-tat measures raise questions about the architecture of international cooperation. Can security concerns be addressed without punishing ordinary people? Can technical support and dialogue replace unilateral listings? Will reciprocal bans escalate into longer-term chill in relations?

As readers, we might ask ourselves: When a nation is added to a list, who pays the real price — governments or citizens? When diplomacy becomes transactional, who loses the softer, human connections that sustain long-term relations?

Back in Bamako, life continues. Children run past the café, clutching schoolbooks. Vendors call out prices with the practiced cadence of bargaining that has survived colonial maps and contemporary politics. Above the market, a dozen flags flap: national, regional, and sometimes foreign — reminders that even in a small square the global and the intimate find each other.

“We will find ways to travel, to trade, to connect,” Aïssata said, stirring her tea. “But it would be better if the big countries remembered that we are not chess pieces.” Her words landed like a gentle reprimand: a call for common sense, and a plea for politics to remember people.

Exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Times Square’s New Year’s Eve ball

hanad

December 31, 2025

Watch: Sneak peek at Times Square's New Year's Eve ball

A New Constellation Rises Above Times Square

On a frosty December evening, when neon signs already fight to outshine the stars, the newest spectacle of New York City sat motionless above Broadway — a giant, glimmering sphere that promises to be the brightest star ushering in 2026.

They call it the Constellation Ball, and the city has been testing it all day: dimming its millions of pixels, checking cables, coaxing the old magic into a new form. It is, by every sensible measure, the largest New Year’s Eve ball the world has ever seen. Built to be seen from the sidewalks and the satellites, it carries 5,280 Waterford crystals interlaced with thousands of programmable LED light pucks, each one capable of painting the night with colors that move like liquid.

When Tradition Meets High Tech

For nearly 120 years, a ball in Times Square has been more than a drop; it is ritual and spectacle wrapped into a single breath before midnight. The first ball descended in 1907, replacing the raucous fireworks displays of a different age. Tonight, in a city that pivoted long ago from gas lamps to LED towers, the ball is a marriage of old-world handiwork and modern engineering.

“This is the biggest star of tonight’s show,” said Jeffrey Strauss, president of Countdown Entertainment, as technicians ran final diagnostics on the rigging. “We wanted something that honors the past but says something bold about now — about light and possibility.”

Inside the Sphere: Craft, Light, and Story

The Constellation Ball’s Waterford crystals are not mere decoration. Each one is hand-cut by artisans trained in the centuries-old traditions of Waterford, Ireland. Up close, they refract the city’s light into shards of color — warm ambers, icy blues, and a cascading pearl white that seems to slow time. Around them, the LED pucks are the modern chorus, capable of dynamic patterns and choreographies synchronized to the countdown music.

5,280 Waterford crystals, individually placed
Thousands of LED pucks, programmable for infinite color blends
Engineered for energy efficiency — LEDs use up to 90% less energy than older lighting technologies
Designed to remain dark until the final seconds, amplifying the ceremonial reveal

Engineers note that the ball will remain intentionally dark until the final countdown — a pause so intentional it becomes a shared inhale among the crowd. When the first light blooms, it will be like someone has lit a lantern across the planet.

Voices from the Square

On the sidewalk, people wrestle with the cold and the thrill. A street vendor, who’s worked these blocks for more than two decades, wrapped his hands around a paper cup of coffee and smiled as he looked up.

“You get used to the ball,” he said. “But every year, when it comes down, the city holds its breath. Tonight feels different — more people are watching from screens, but those who squeeze into the square want to feel the drop in their bones.”

A tourist from Lagos, clutching a scarf knitted with tiny flags from different countries, said she’d saved up to be here. “It’s like the world condensed into a moment,” she said. “You turn to the person next to you and you’re strangers, but you are counting together. It’s beautiful.”

And downtown, a cultural historian who watches the New Year’s rituals explained why the ball keeps mattering. “These public rites give shape to time,” she said. “They convert an abstract edge of a calendar into a communal, sensory event. Whether in Dublin, Lagos, Tokyo, or New York, those fleeting seconds are where people practice hope together.”

Behind the Scenes: Logistics, Safety, and Sustainability

Pulling off the Times Square drop is less glitter than choreography. The ball is suspended from a mast constructed with redundant safety lines, monitored by engineers in control rooms bristling with screens. Police and first responders adopt a choreography of their own: street closures, medical tents, and crowd control measures aim to keep the nearly one million people who traditionally cram into the square safe. For those watching from home, global audiences are measured in the hundreds of millions; the event is one of the few internationally recognized rituals in which the world coordinates its attention for a single, communal countdown.

Environmental questions shadow every modern spectacle. The move to LEDs is not just about color; it is about conscious energy use. LEDs consume a fraction of the power older systems required, and the ball’s programmers have designed light sequences that recycle power-saving modes. It’s a small answer to a larger question: how does a city celebrate without devouring resources?

What the Numbers Tell Us

Consider the scale: nearly one million people on the ground, and viewers in the hundreds of millions worldwide. The ball is not merely a prop — it is a signal amplified to reach every time zone where humans are willing to say “here’s to something new.”

Counting Down, Thinking Forward

As midnight approaches, the ball will stay dark, a celestial secret held above the press of bodies and the electric hum. The pause — that pregnant silence — is the real technology. It demands attention. It forces the question we usually ignore when the calendar flips: what are we leaving, and what do we want to carry with us?

What do you want the light to mean to you? For some, it will be a promise to start anew: to call, to forgive, to change jobs, to act. For others, it will be a quiet moment of gratitude, a nod to survival and small victories. The ball, for all its engineering and crystal, is a mirror. It reflects back more than just city lights — it shows the shape of the crowd below, the good, the messy, the hopeful.

“We designed the ball to be a canvas,” Strauss said as technicians counted down the seconds on their own clocks. “It’s bright and ornate, but ultimately it’s yours. We only give you the stage.”

After the Drop: A City and a World Keep Turning

When the light floods the square and the chorus of 10, 9, 8 begins, the moment will be instantaneous and eternal at once: a contracted second that expands into a new year. Confetti will rain like slow, colorful hail. Smartphone flashlights will bloom. Lovers will hug, strangers will laugh, and for a sliver of time, disparate corners of the globe will share the same beat.

There’s a simple magic in that. No matter how grand the ball, the real spectacle is not the hardware but the humanity under it. The Constellation Ball may be the biggest yet, but its purpose is the same as the very first orb lowered in 1907: to mark the end of one chapter and the audacious beginning of another.

So as the ball remains dark until the final seconds, hold that pause with me. What are you counting into? What are you leaving behind? And when the light blooms, will you let it be permission to begin?

Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, passes away at 35

hanad

December 31, 2025

Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of JFK, dies aged 35 — Tatiana Schlossberg was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia

Tatiana Schlossberg: A Life Measured in Questions, Climate Stories — and a Mother’s Lasting Gaze

There are moments when news arrives like weather: a gray band of cold that settles without warning. The notice that Tatiana Schlossberg had died — at just 35, after a battle with acute myeloid leukemia — landed like that. Her family’s brief, luminous statement posted to the JFK Library Foundation’s Instagram account captured the private, stubborn tenderness of the moment: “Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts.”

That sentence alone feels too small for a life that braided public curiosity with intimate devotion. Tatiana was, by heritage and by choice, tethered to many worlds: the Kennedy family’s Washington orbit; the rigorous, sometimes lonely craft of environmental reporting; the messy centripetal force of family life. She worked as a science and climate reporter for The New York Times, wrote for The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, and in 2019 published a prize-winning book, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have. Yet the ledger of her accomplishments tells only part of the story.

From a Postpartum Blood Count to a New Reality

Her illness was not something she carried in secret. In a November essay for The New Yorker, Tatiana laid out the anatomy of the diagnosis with outraged clarity and luminous tenderness. Doctors flagged an unusually high white blood cell count after the birth of her second child in May 2024. That simple clinical flicker — a lab value — led to a cascade no one expected.

“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote. “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me.” The line reads like a flashlight under the door: the small, animal terror of a parent making a bargain with time.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is, in clinical terms, a harsh and fast-moving disease. It is relatively rare — incidence in the United States is on the order of a few cases per 100,000 people each year — but it is also the most common acute leukemia in adults. Survival statistics vary widely by age, treatment, and disease subtype; overall five-year survival in many studies remains under 40 percent, though young patients who can access aggressive therapies sometimes fare better. Those numbers, cold and impersonal, do not capture what Tatiana’s writing did: the day-to-day arithmetic of keeping small humans in mind while your body argues with itself.

Reporting the Planet — and the Personal

Tatiana’s work lived in the liminal spaces of modern journalism, where data meets the human heart. She explored the invisible footprints of ordinary choices — the hidden carbon costs of our routines — and aimed to translate complexity into actionable empathy. Her book, Inconspicuous Consumption, was both a map and a mirror, asking readers to look at how everyday life collides with planetary limits.

“She had that rare reporter’s instinct,” a former colleague told me, asking not to be named. “Tatiana could sit with a spreadsheet and find a story about a person. She never wrote climate doom without a door open — a person you could imagine sitting across from you.”

Those doors sometimes opened onto terrible ironies. From a hospital bed, Tatiana watched a family member’s public ascent into the very apparatus she had spent years defending. In her New Yorker piece she wrote of seeing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed as health secretary: “I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government.” Her words were not merely political; they were the lament of someone who had trusted science in her work and now felt the institutions she respected bending under political pressure.

Family: A Compass in the Storm

Tatiana was the daughter of Edwin Schlossberg, a designer, and Caroline Kennedy, the diplomat and diplomat’s daughter; she moved through rooms where the past could feel like instruction and obligation. But those rooms did not define her. She chose the often-difficult beat of environmental reporting because she believed that curiosity, coupled with rigorous evidence, could change how we live.

She is survived by her husband, Dr. George Moran, and their two children. The image Tatiana offered in her writing — of her children’s faces living “permanently on the inside of my eyelids” — is painfully specific and universally recognizable. It is the small litany parents recite in their heads at night; it is the constellation that makes risk intolerable.

What Her Passing Asks of Us

Deaths like this are private and public at once. They are private for the family that must gather beneath the ache; they become public because Tatiana’s life and work engaged with civic questions — how we feed ourselves, how we power our lives, how we care for one another in times of crisis. Her critique of vaccine access and research funding — voiced from a place of personal urgency — is part of a larger conversation about how societies prioritize health.

If Tatiana’s last months made anything clear, it is that the systems we trust — hospitals, research programs, public-health infrastructure — require vigilance. Around the world, scientific institutions have been strained by political interference, funding swings, and public distrust. The human toll of those forces, sometimes invisible in policy memos, becomes painfully visible in bedside conversations.

Remembrance and Reckoning

For many readers, Tatiana’s passing will be catalogued alongside her reporting: a life spent teaching us that small choices matter and that the language of data can be tender. For others, she will remain a member of the Kennedy family roster — a lineage that has, for a century, occupied an outsized place in American imagination. For those who knew her, she was simply Tatiana: a mother pacing a hospital room; a friend with clear opinions; a colleague who could make complex problems feel human-sized.

“She had a clarity that could be startling,” another writer who collaborated with her remembered. “Tatiana could cut through the noise and say, ‘This is what matters — and here’s why.’”

How do we carry forward the work of someone who thought so hard about stewardship and responsibility? Perhaps by refusing to reduce her legacy to a single label. She was a reporter, a daughter, a wife, a mother, an author, and a citizen furious at threats to science. She leaves behind the kind of work that invites action: essays that instruct, investigations that nudge policy, and conversations that spread like ripples.

Questions for the Reader

When a journalist who has spent her life measuring the planet’s stresses dies young, what do we owe her? Is it enough to post a sympathy and move on, or is there a duty to carry the questions she raised into our daily choices and our civic life?

Tatiana’s life was an argument against smallness of spirit: an insistence that our private acts are not insignificant and that grief, curiosity, and commitment can live together. If we are to honor that, let us read her work, learn from her reporting, and, where possible, step into the messy work of caring for the commons.

Her family’s simple declaration — “She will always be in our hearts” — is both elegy and charge. We will miss her voice on the page. We will, I hope, answer the questions she kept asking the rest of us.

Mamdani to become New York’s mayor amid Trump’s looming influence

hanad

December 31, 2025

Mamdani to take over as New York mayor under Trump shadow — Zohran Mamdami has promised an ambitious agenda which includes universal childcare and rent freezes

Midnight in an Empty Station: A New Mayor, a New Chapter for New York

There was a hush when the clock struck midnight. Not the cinematic silence of a city that never sleeps, but the intimate, breath-held pause of people gathered beneath a trainless tunnel—an abandoned subway platform lit by salvage lamps and the glow of smartphones. Zohran Mamdani, 34, took his oath there, swearing in as New York City’s first Muslim mayor. The choice of venue—raw, unadorned, unmistakably urban—was not spectacle so much as signal.

“This is for the people who clean the platforms, bake the bread, sit two to a kitchen in Queens,” Mamdani said later, his voice still carrying the gravelly edge of someone who came up through canvassing and late-night neighborhood meetings. “If we don’t start at the places the city has forgotten, our promises won’t be worth anything.”

About 8.5 million people call this city home. It is a tapestry of languages, faiths and cuisines; a place where block parties run together down Broadway, where halal cart steam mingles with the sweet smoke of Jamaican patties. That everyday life—that constant choreography of transit, school drop-offs, and rent checks—was the audience Mamdani had in mind as he campaigned on bold, disruptive fixes: rent freezes, universal childcare and the radical idea of free public buses for all New Yorkers.

Why an Abandoned Platform?

The stage was chosen deliberately. “Symbolism only goes so far,” said Ana Rivera, a community organizer from Jackson Heights who was at the midnight ceremony. “But this—this felt honest. We live under the same city. He put it in a place where we live our lives.”

For a mayor who spent much of the campaign talking about the cost of living—about the families who are spending bigger shares of their incomes on rent and childcare—the venue was shorthand. It was a pledge to prioritize the working city over the glamour of the mayor’s mansion.

Still, practical questions hover. Mayor’s aides say security concerns required Mamdani to move into the official residence in Manhattan; he will leave behind his rent-controlled apartment in Queens, a fact that has irked some voters who saw his modest home life as a testament to his platform.

Public Promises, Private Pressure

Mamdani’s agenda reads like a manifesto for a city under financial strain. Rent freezes, an expansion of subsidized childcare, and fare-free buses would be expensive and politically combustible. New York’s transit system—the MTA—moves millions of riders daily. Any shift to free buses or widespread fare reform would have ripple effects on budgets, operations, and regional politics.

“People are hungry for change,” said Dr. Lina Ahmed, an urban policy scholar at CUNY. “But adjusting the levers of a city this big requires an extraordinary mix of municipal creativity, state cooperation and federal partnerships. It’s doable—but it’s not a simple line-item in a speech.”

Consider the numbers. Roughly one in three New Yorkers is housing-cost burdened—spending more than 30% of their income on rent—and the city’s shelter system still houses tens of thousands of people every night. These are not abstract statistics; they are the experiences of neighbors who skip medicine to pay the rent, who juggle three jobs and watch their kids grow up faster than they can breathe.

Between Washington and City Hall

If the crucible for any mayor is a mix of policy and politics, Mamdani faces an unusual set of both. His relationship with the federal government—particularly with former President Donald Trump, who remains a central political figure—already has headlines. Trump derided Mamdani during the campaign and even threatened to yank federal aid. Yet the pair sat down in November for a surprisingly cordial meeting at the White House.

“It was short, but it wasn’t a shouting match,” said Lincoln Harris, a veteran political strategist who watched the exchange. “That could be a doorway to cooperation—or the beginning of a very public feud.”

One likely flashpoint is immigration enforcement. With federal raids increasing in some parts of the country and save-the-date threats about withholding funding, Mamdani has vowed to stand with immigrant communities. That will test his relationships with federal authorities and his ability to protect residents while navigating legal and fiscal realities.

Building a Coalition—From Queens to Wall Street

Mamdani’s rise was meteoric. A year ago he was practically unknown. He came through the New York State Assembly, heaviest on ideas and light on the kind of resume older politicians brandish. To compensate, he has stocked his team with experienced aides—from former mayoral offices and even from the Biden administration—people who know budgets, blizzards and the 3 a.m. calls that keep a city functioning.

“We need bridges,” said Jacob Rosen, a small business owner on Bedford Avenue. “If he can talk to my landlord and then to a bank, he can do a lot.”

Business leaders warned of a capital exodus if Mamdani won; that claim turned into a self-fulfilling narrative in some conservative outlets. Yet many real estate analysts say an immediate mass flight of the wealthy is unlikely—New York’s economy is too complex, its ecosystems too interconnected. Instead, the mayor’s real test will be whether he can halt slow attrition: the steady, quiet departures of middle-income families priced out of neighborhoods.

Balancing Acts

Mamdani’s commitment to Palestinian rights has also stirred debate and concern in the Jewish community, particularly in a city with a large and diverse Jewish population. The resignation of a recent hire after revelations of past anti-Semitic posts underscored the delicate tightrope the mayor must walk: standing firm on human rights while actively and visibly reaffirming inclusivity and safety for all communities.

“Leadership in New York requires empathy and clarity,” said Rabbi Miriam Katz of a Brooklyn synagogue. “We welcome a mayor who protects our neighbors and also condemns hate when it appears.”

What Will Success Look Like?

Voters who elected Mamdani signed up for big thinking. But big thinking needs to be met with metrics, timetables and the gritty work of governance. How quickly can a rent freeze be implemented legally? How will childcare be funded sustainably? Can fare reforms be rolled out without crippling the MTA?

“Symbolism was the campaign,” said Elena Ramos, an NYU lecturer. “Now comes administration. If he can reduce the number of families spending half their paycheck on housing, if he can expand childcare so a parent can go to work without fear, then people will say he delivered.”

Those are high bars. But New York has a history of improbable comebacks: subway lines reopened, neighborhoods reimagined, laws changed after years of protest and policy churning. The midnight oath beneath the tiles is both vow and challenge: the city will judge him not on rhetoric but on daily, tangible changes.

In the End, This Is Our City

So what do you want from your city? Safety? Affordability? A cleaner bus? A place where your faith and food and work are not only tolerated but reflected in policy? Zohran Mamdani’s story is, in many ways, a mirror held up to New Yorkers: demanding, hopeful, and impatient for results.

Walking away from the shuttered station, the crowd dispersed into the early hours—coffee shops already wheeling up shutters, a man humming an old Brill Building tune. The block party planned for the following day promised music from every borough, speeches by allies like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and tens of thousands of people lining Broadway to watch a ceremony on big screens.

“We elected someone who wants to govern for us,” Rivera said, pausing on the corner as a delivery bike zipped by. “Now we see if he can keep his promises.”

What would you ask for if you could ask the mayor one question at midnight beneath an abandoned platform? The answer may determine the shape of this city’s next four years.

Thailand Frees 18 Cambodian Soldiers Held in Custody Since July

hanad

December 31, 2025

Thailand releases 18 Cambodian soldiers held since July — Cambodian soldiers, who had been captured by Thai soldiers in July, gesture to well-wishers from a bus after their release

When a Border Finally Quieted: Soldiers Returned, but a Fragile Peace Lingers

The morning the 18 Cambodian soldiers stepped across the checkpoint back toward Phnom Penh, there was an odd mix of relief and exhaustion writ across faces on both sides of the Thai-Cambodian frontier. After weeks of artillery duels, drone sorties and tank movements that had turned sleepy border hamlets into emptied shells, the small procession felt less like victory than a delicate stitch in a garment that has been coming apart for decades.

<p”Today, we returned 18 of our neighbors to their families,” said a Thai foreign ministry official in a low, almost hesitant voice. “The release is a demonstration of goodwill and a modest confidence-building step.” The phrasing was formal but the scene at the checkpoint was quietly human: uniforms swapped for hugs, hands wiping damp cheeks, old women bringing plates of rice cakes as if to feed away the trauma.

The Numbers Behind the Headlines

Official counts remain messy, but the scale of the human fallout is unmistakable. The renewed clashes earlier this month killed dozens, and aid agencies estimate that more than one million people were displaced from villages along the roughly 800-kilometre (about 500-mile) Thai-Cambodian border. Families fled with nothing but what they could carry—children, a few photos, a pot. Markets closed. Rice paddies grew quiet under a haze of uncertainty.

The truce, which has held for more than three days at the time of writing, includes promises to stop firing, halt troop movements and launch joint demining operations across disputed sections of the frontier. Leaders on both sides have also pledged to allow residents back into their homes as soon as security can be guaranteed.

Why the Fighting Flares Again

This is not a new story. The flashpoint is a colonial-era border demarcation that left lines on maps that communities have disputed for generations. Around the most contentious spots—ancient temple ruins that both sides claim as part of their cultural patrimony—soldiers have squared off for years. The site most often named in past disputes is the 11th-century Hindu temple Perched On Cliff—known internationally as Preah Vihear—and similar ruins dot the frontier, turning archaeology into geopolitics.

“These are not simply lines on a map,” said a Southeast Asia security analyst, Dr. Anan Chai. “They are the bones of identity for people on both sides. When leaders play up nationalism, local tensions can explode into very lethal encounters.”

Captured Soldiers, A Test of Trust

Cambodia says its troops were seized on 29 July—nearly eight hours after a ceasefire intended to halt a prior round of violence had taken effect. The prior truce had been brokered with help from international mediators, including delegations from the United States, China and Malaysia, who have periodically stepped in to cool this simmering conflict.

“We received word that our men were being handed over. There was no fanfare—just men stepping into custody and then walking home,” said a Cambodian provincial official, eyes tired but steady. “For many families, this is closure. But it is a fragile closure.”

International mediators had urged Thailand to release the soldiers as part of earlier agreements. Promises made in diplomatic communiqués are helpful, analysts say, but words must be backed by sustained action on the ground—particularly the removal of mines, which have maimed or killed troops and civilians alike.

Lives Disrupted: Stories from the Border

In a displaced persons camp beneath a strip of rusting corrugated iron, a woman named Sokha pinned a child’s drawing to a tarp wall and laughed briefly through tears. “We left with our baby and our chickens. We could not pick up the rice—there was gunfire,” she said. “The children ask when the quiet will come. How do I tell them?”

Nearby, a Thai rice farmer, Somchai, cradled an old bicycle as if it were a relic. “We’ve shared water and seeds across this river for generations,” he said. “Now a line on paper tells us to hate one another. It’s painful. We want the scholars to finish the border marking so we can return to ploughing.” His voice was flat with two months of fear and two centuries of history.

What Joint Demining Might Mean

One of the more tangible elements of the ceasefire is a pledge to cooperate on demining. Landmines are a slow, indiscriminate menace that linger long after guns fall silent. Clearing them will be costly, technical and time-consuming, but it is also something that directly protects civilians and could allow agriculture and trade to resume.

“Demining is practical confidence-building,” said Mei-Lin Tan, a humanitarian demining specialist who has worked across Southeast Asia. “It shows that both governments are willing to accept risk for the benefit of civilians. But the process must be transparent and involve local communities to have lasting impact.”

What Comes Next?

The truce is a necessary breathing space, not an endgame. Political leaders will have to negotiate the thornier question: how exactly to demarcate the border where maps and memories disagree. That process will test institutions, international goodwill and the patience of people who have already suffered a great deal.

Regional diplomacy will likely continue to involve outside powers—neighbors and global players who have an interest in stability in Southeast Asia. But for people under the tarps, in the ruined marketplaces, in the temple shadows, international delegations feel abstract. What they need most is safe return, livelihood recovery and guarantees that a child will not lose a leg to a forgotten mine.

“We do not want parades of diplomats here,” said a 62-year-old villager who gave his name only as Mr. Vann. “We want our rice fields back and our children to go to school without fear.”

Reflection: Borders, Identity and the Human Cost

Reading headlines from afar, it is easy to see this as another border scuffle—an arc on a map, another temporary truce. But walk these roads, listen to the laughter and worry in the camps, and the contours of the conflict change. It becomes a story of people bound to place, of temples that mean more than tourism brochures, and of maps that can take a lifetime to redraw.

Are we comfortable with conflicts that flare up because of century-old maps? How much global attention do we owe to places that don’t appear on prime-time broadcasts, even when a million people are displaced? The answer matters, not only to Bangkok and Phnom Penh, but to any nation where borders are both identity and instrument.

For now, the checkpoint where the soldiers crossed back home sits quiet. Children chase a battered football. An old radio plays a country song somewhere down the road. The truce holds, cautiously. The hard work—mapping, demining, reparations and real reconciliation—begins now.

Postwar Liberal International Order Is Collapsing — Don’t Blame Trump Alone

hanad

December 31, 2025

Post-war liberal order is dead but don't just blame Trump — US President Donald Trump turns his back on the post-war liberal order

The Year the Rules Fell Silent

There are years that hum along like a familiar song, and then there are years that sound a different tune altogether — dissonant, jagged, impossible to ignore. 2025 will be remembered by many as one of those years. Walking through capital cities from Brussels to Bangkok, you could feel it in the air: the polite assumptions that guided international life after 1945 — mutual defense, predictable alliances, shared trade rules — were fraying in real time.

Imagine a library where the great volumes of post-war diplomacy have begun to collect dust. The signatures on those pages — treaties, institutions, norms — remain, but their authority has grown thin. And, like readers leaving one by one, the Western-led order that anchored global politics for decades has simply been left with fewer defenders.

Where the Old Script Began to Unravel

What pulled at these threads? Partly it was domestic: a politics of grievance that had been simmering in industrial towns and small cities for decades. Factories moved. Paychecks got squeezed. Trust in institutions ebbed. “People started asking a simple question: what did this international order do for me?” said a former diplomat I spoke with in London. “Once that question went unanswered, the rest followed.”

At the international level the signs were unmistakable. The United Nations — born from the wreckage of world war and long the symbol of a cooperative vision — announced steep cuts in 2025, forced to trim almost a fifth of its workforce as member states clawed back funding. A UN official described the moment bluntly: “We’re in a race to bankruptcy.” For many staffers who had spent careers trying to keep humanitarian programmes afloat, the phrase felt like an elegy.

NATO, too, lay under strain. The compact that once bound North America and Europe in mutual defense was being reinterpreted and, to some, quietly cast aside. European leaders, who once took for granted the certainty of American backing, now spoke in the language of contingency. “Prepare to stand alone,” warned a senior German official in a private conversation. The public phrases were sharper: Europe’s foreign ministers made urgent shuttle trips across capitals in search of new guarantees, new partners, even a new grammar of security.

Decisions and Detonations

Then there were the decisions that felt like punctures. Tariffs were slapped on long-standing trading partners. Ambitious rhetoric about expanding borders — from Panama to Greenland — surfaced in bewildering public statements. Naval skirmishes in international waters made headlines, and a White House increasingly comfortable with transactional diplomacy seemed to prefer courting illiberal powers over consoling traditional allies.

A small-business owner in Ohio, who had once voted for openness and trade, told me over coffee: “My town’s been hollowed out. Policies didn’t protect us. Now politicians are telling me they’d put America first — I want to believe it means jobs, not just grandstanding.”

For Europeans, the shock was visceral. At the UN General Assembly the rhetoric turned personal: leaders were chastised openly about migration, climate policy, and “decay.” Public figures in finance piled on — Jamie Dimon, for example, called Europe into question over competitiveness, and media columns followed, wondering whether the old transatlantic compact had outlived its purpose.

Alliances Reframed, Values Recast

What worries many is less the collapse of a set of institutions than the erosion of the values they championed. Human rights, the inviolability of borders, and the idea that the global arena could be governed by rules rather than brute force — these were centuries in the making. Now they are being reframed, challenged, and in some corners, openly rejected.

Beijing and Moscow, long uneasy partners, tightened an axis of convenience in 2025. In a frank exchange, a senior Chinese diplomat told his European counterpart that China “cannot afford” for Russia to falter in its contest with the West — a statement that made many in Brussels wince. Inside international forums, Beijing has pushed a narrative that prioritizes state sovereignty and development over what it calls “Western universals” like individual civil liberties.

At the same time, inside the United States a campaign to strip diversity, equity and inclusion programs from federal institutions and allied organizations created friction with the UN’s human-rights agenda. That clash, seemingly technical to some, struck at the core of what international cooperation had been trying to do for decades: build shared norms around dignity, equality and protection.

Voices from the Ground

“We used to assume the West spoke with one voice,” said an EU diplomat who preferred not to be named. “Now we see different agendas even among allies. It’s not just policy — it’s identity.”

“My family remembers when NATO feel like a promise you could write a cheque on,” said a teacher in Warsaw. “Now the cheque has been returned with a note: ‘Use at your own risk.'”

How Did We Get Here?

Historians remind us that systems crack long before they collapse. The post-1989 moment — when the Iron Curtain fell and many believed “the end of history” had arrived — sowed hubris. Globalization brought incredible growth and lifted millions from poverty, but it also hollowed out communities and concentrated wealth. Policymakers often prioritized capital mobility and corporate interests over working-class stability, and those decisions have political consequences.

“There is a sense of dislocation that didn’t appear overnight,” said an academic specializing in trade and labor. “When domestic policies ignore the social cost of openness, the political backlash is inevitable.”

And when leaders answer that backlash with blunt nationalistic remedies — tariffs, tightened borders, military posturing — the international web that had evolved over decades may not be able to absorb the shock.

So What Comes Next?

There are three broad possibilities, and none are tidy. First, a more fractured world in which regional blocs operate with greater autonomy — Europe hedging, Asia coalescing, the Global South forging new arrangements. Second, a return to renewed, if narrower, cooperation built around pragmatic interests rather than lofty ideals. Or third, a world where might increasingly defines right, and the old rules become relics.

A veteran aid chief I spoke with said: “We shouldn’t mourn an imagined golden age. But we should mourn the decline of institutions that, imperfectly, saved lives and reduced suffering.” His point was simple: institutions are means, not ends, and their erosion has human consequences.

Meanwhile, scholars talk of a “multiplex” system — a patchwork of powers and norms, a world less centered on Washington and Brussels and more shaped by emerging capitals in Asia, Africa and Latin America. “It could be messier, certainly,” said a geopolitical analyst. “But it could also be more representative of a world in which power is not the monopoly of one or two blocs.”

Questions for the Reader

As you scroll through this moment from afar, what do you feel? Alarm? Relief? Something in between? Do you believe the world will reknit itself into new patterns of cooperation — or are we entering an era where the loudest nations write the rules?

There are no easy answers. But there are real lives caught in these shifts: aid budgets that dry up, soldiers on increasingly uncertain alliances, workers in towns where factories closed and never returned. If the post-war liberal order is indeed giving way, then what replaces it will be the work of policymakers and citizens alike. It will be argument, negotiation, and, crucially, the willingness to protect the vulnerable rather than scores of interests alone.

The old volumes are still on the shelf. Whether we open them with care, tear out pages, or write new chapters is up to us. The question is urgent: what kind of world do you want to wake up to tomorrow?

Israel signals move to bar 37 humanitarian groups from Gaza

hanad

December 31, 2025

Israel threatens to bar 37 aid groups from Gaza — MSF has said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is deepening

A Deadline at Dawn: When Aid Workers Become the Story

The sun rises hard and merciless over Gaza, bleaching the tarpaulins that pass for roofs, the patchwork of tents that keep families out of the rubble. At dawn, a convoy of ambulances—if there are any left with fuel—winds past a playground that no longer sees children at play. In a small, crowded clinic, a nurse pins her hair back and whispers to a colleague, “If they shut MSF out, we will be patching wounds with hope.”

Tomorrow, Israeli authorities have warned, could be the day dozens of international aid groups are told their work is no longer permitted in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank. The deadline is framed as a security measure: provide full staff lists or lose registration. For people already counting on every syringe, every convoy, every doctor who still shows up, the stakes feel existential.

What’s at Risk

Among the organisations facing expulsion is Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the aid group that — according to its own figures — treated nearly half a million people over the two-year span of conflict. “If we are prevented from operating, hundreds of thousands will be deprived of essential medical care,” MSF warned publicly this week. That is not abstraction; it is a ledger of life and death: maternity wards where Caesarean sections are scarce, insulin-dependent patients running low, trauma units barely holding.

It is not just MSF. Israeli military coordination body COGAT has said up to 37 aid organisations could be stripped of registration unless they hand over personnel details to the Diaspora Affairs Ministry. Those ministries say the information is needed to prevent the infiltration of militants into humanitarian organisations. The Diaspora Affairs Ministry has said some individuals affiliated with NGOs have alleged ties to militant groups — claims the NGOs dispute and describe as unproven.

On the Ground: Voices and Fears

“We’ve been living in tents for months. The clinic is our lifeline,” says Mariam, a 34-year-old mother of three, waiting outside a makeshift health post in southern Gaza. “They (the aid groups) are the ones who bring the medicines my children need. I don’t understand why lists should matter to us.”

Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said bluntly: “At a time when needs in Gaza far exceed available services, forcing NGOs out or preventing them from importing supplies is tantamount to rolling back the humanitarian response.” The NRC warned that it could be forced to close its East Jerusalem office and lose the ability to bring in foreign staff — a blow to coordination and to any relief beyond what local procurement can supply. The NRC currently employs roughly 200 local staff and 35 international personnel across Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In Gaza’s narrow streets, people talk in small, urgent knots. “We depend on international aid because local shops are empty or overpriced,” a pharmacist in Gaza City told me. “If only local procurement is allowed, we will see shortages and price hikes. That harms ordinary people.”

Security, Sovereignty, or Something Else?

From Jerusalem’s perspective, the demand for names is about control and prevention. “We have an obligation to safeguard our citizens,” an Israeli official said in a statement last week, calling for transparency from organisations working in areas that have been active theaters of conflict. COGAT has also emphasized that some 4,200 aid trucks continue to enter Gaza every week through the UN, donor nations, private sector partners, and more than 20 NGOs that have been re-registered.

But for humanitarians, privacy is protection. “Sharing employee names with authorities who may be party to the conflict creates real risks for staff and their families,” Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said. “It undermines confidentiality and could expose people to reprisals.” Oxfam and others also warn that being forced to rely only on local procurement — no imports, no international staff — effectively dismantles the international humanitarian system that stepped in when local markets and health systems failed.

What the Numbers Tell Us

Consider the arithmetic of emergency medicine. MSF says it cared for nearly 500,000 people across Gaza during two years of hostilities. The NRC has around 235 staff on the ground between Gaza and the West Bank. COGAT’s figure of 4,200 aid trucks weekly is not trivial — it represents hundreds of thousands of kilograms of food, medical supplies, fuel, and construction materials. Strip away some of the organisations that coordinate and deliver those supplies, and the entire chain frays.

International responses are trickling in. The British Foreign Office, joined by France, Canada, and other partners, urged Israel to allow NGOs to operate consistently and predictably, citing concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Humanitarian law and principles — neutrality, impartiality, and independence — are being invoked in corridors far from Gaza’s battered hospitals.

Beyond the Headlines: Cultural Threads and Human Detail

Walk a few blocks from the clinics and you will hear, as you always do in any Palestinian neighborhood, the familiar cadence of life: the call to prayer from a nearby mosque, the hiss of tea being poured into tiny glasses, the elderly man who insists on sharing a piece of flatbread with a stranger. Hospitality persists even here, even when the shelves are empty.

Local aid workers bring a different kind of intimacy to relief. A community organizer named Ahmed described to me the logistics of maintaining trust: “We know every family on our street. They know us. If a foreign NGO leaves, that human bridge will be gone.” He paused and added, “People don’t just need food. They need someone who listens.”

Questions We Should Be Asking

How do you balance legitimate national security concerns with the absolute urgency of saving lives? Can a state ask for information that could, if mishandled, put people at risk? And where does the responsibility lie when international humanitarian systems — built to be impartial — are asked to accommodate political and security priorities?

These are not theoretical queries. They are questions that decide whether a child with a fever will be seen before it becomes meningitis, whether a pregnant woman will get the surgery she needs, whether a small, dedicated clinic will have the oxygen canisters that keep patients alive.

Looking Forward: Fragile Hope

For now, some NGOs have been re-registered and continue their work; some supplies keep coming. COGAT’s 4,200 trucks weekly is a lifeline. But a 60-day window has been mentioned for those who do not comply, and in emergency response, 60 days is an eternity and a death sentence.

There are no easy answers. Security and humanitarian imperatives clash in an environment where mistrust is abundant and options are scarce. But perhaps the smallest gestures matter most: a nurse who keeps her clinic open until midnight, a driver who delivers a crate of antibiotics through checkpoints, an aid coordinator who negotiates a corridor of safe passage.

As you read this from wherever you are, ask yourself: what does accountability look like when lives hang in the balance? And what would you do if your nearest hospital was reliant on a list of names to stay open? The answers will help shape not just policy papers in faraway capitals, but whether a family in Gaza wakes up to another day.

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