Thai and Cambodian forces clashed again at their volatile frontier on September 17, shattering the fragile truce forged only two months ago. What began as a civilian protest over competing territorial claims quickly escalated when Thai forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets, leaving more than two dozen Cambodians injured. The episode underscores how brittle July’s ceasefire remains, despite the mediation of Malaysia and U.S. pressure. The disputed land, claimed by Thailand as Ban Nong Ya Kaew in Sa Kaeo province and by Cambodia as Prey Chan village in Banteay Meanchey, has become a flashpoint precisely because it blurs the lines between civilian grievance and military confrontation. Cambodian officials insist monks and villagers were peacefully demanding respect for Cambodian sovereignty, while Thai spokesmen describe an unruly “mob” bent on damaging property and provoking armed forces. The conflicting narratives echo the July clashes that displaced more than a quarter million people, revealing how both sides weaponize the language of victimhood even as they edge closer to renewed conflict. At stake is not only local farmland but the broader shadow of colonial cartography. The roots of the dispute stretch back to a 1907 French-drawn map, which Thailand has long contested as inaccurate. Though the International Court of Justice in 1962 confirmed Cambodian sovereignty over the Preah Vihear temple, and reaffirmed it decades later, Bangkok has resisted extending that ruling to adjacent borderlands. The legal ambiguity now provides fertile ground for nationalists in both countries to rally support, making restraint politically costly. The July ceasefire bought time but little else. Thai patrols continue to encounter land mines in the no-man’s land, prompting accusations that Cambodia is violating the truce, charges Phnom Penh denies. The clash this week suggests that the militarized frontier is not cooling down but rather entering a cycle of mutual recrimination, each side convinced of the other’s duplicity. For Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet, the flare-up provides an opportunity to internationalize the dispute, appealing for global pressure on Thailand. Bangkok, in turn, will resist third-party arbitration, wary of another ICJ ruling that narrows its territorial claims. Both governments are gambling that posturing will deter the other, but each confrontation risks spiraling beyond control. The border fight is thus less about who threw the first stone than about whether two nationalist governments can walk back from a century-old grievance. The danger is that local clashes could rapidly reignite a broader war, one that Malaysia’s diplomacy or U.S. trade threats may not be able to contain a second time.

The Taliban’s decision to shut down fiber-optic internet in Balkh province is more than a provincial measure, it is a calculated strike against the last lifeline available to Afghan women and girls. Since 2021, online platforms have offered the only viable space for education, cultural expression, and limited economic independence in a country where women are barred from schools, public spaces, and most forms of work. By severing broadband access “to prevent vices,” the regime signals that its campaign to erase women from public life now extends to their digital existence. The immediate consequences are stark. Students enrolled in international online courses suddenly find themselves unable to attend classes or even submit assignments. TOEFL testing centers in the province lost connectivity, cutting off pathways to scholarships abroad. Volunteer-run programs such as Afghan Female Student Outreach, which had subsidized laptops and WiFi for students, now face collapse in Balkh. As one student put it, “How am I supposed to join my classes?” This move also reflects deeper Taliban internal politics. Kandahar’s hard-line clerical faction has consistently pushed for ideological purity, clashing with Kabul-based administrators who struggle to keep the country functional. The ban reveals Kandahar’s influence in shaping national policy—even if it devastates education, commerce, and foreign NGO operations. The tightening grip over SIM card registration and surveillance suggests a broader plan to monopolize digital space, making dissent or independent organization nearly impossible. The broader implications extend beyond Balkh. If replicated elsewhere, internet restrictions will paralyze NGOs, push more Afghans into isolation, and accelerate the exodus of skilled youth. It also undermines international engagement: Western governments and aid organizations had increasingly relied on remote programs to bypass Taliban bans on women’s education. Those programs now face systemic disruption. For Afghan women, the internet had become both escape and resistance. Online book clubs, language classes, and remote jobs represented fragile yet vital autonomy. By cutting WiFi, the Taliban are not only suppressing education but dismantling the infrastructure of resilience. This is less about stopping “vice” and more about closing the last window through which Afghan women glimpsed the outside world. The Taliban’s latest act illustrates the logic of authoritarian survival: when challenged by scarcity, division, or foreign pressure, double down on control. But the cost is a generation of women further locked out of knowledge, agency, and connection. For them, the blackout is not just technological, it is existential.

For much of the past decade, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey was the poster child of revisionism. From Libya to Syria to the Caucasus, Ankara projected power, exported drones, flashed maps claiming Greek islands, and warned Athens it might “come suddenly one night.” Alongside arms sales and foreign bases, this belligerent cartography convinced many that Erdogan was intent on overturning regional order. Yet in 2025, Turkey’s provocations look tame by comparison. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s expansionist campaigns in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza have normalized levels of aggression that once made Ankara stand out. Where Turkey once seemed uniquely disruptive, it is now just one among many powers rewriting rules and redrawing borders. This shift has left Erdogan in a more complicated position. Turkish adventures produced significant blowback, forging a containment coalition that stretched from France to the Gulf states. More recently, Ankara has sought to defuse that alignment while consolidating its Syrian footholds and avoiding direct confrontation with Israel. Domestic pressures also weigh heavily: Erdogan’s crackdown on opposition parties continues, demanding political capital that constrains external adventurism. Ironically, the same forces that diminished Turkey’s relative menace may also create opportunities. With Russia more dangerous and Israel unchecked, Ankara has recast itself as a useful partner: to Europeans anxious about Moscow, or to Arab neighbors hoping for a counterweight to Tel Aviv. By comparison, Turkey can even appear restrained. Still, the larger picture is grim. The win-win rhetoric of Turkey’s earlier “neo-Ottoman” vision, once cast as a kind of EU for the Middle East, has evaporated. The world has entered an era of “Risk geopolitics,” where every state scrambles for advantage in a crowded field of rule-breakers. What was once seen as bold Turkish revisionism now risks looking like a small player’s gambit in a lose-lose game.

Myanmar’s December 2025 polls, billed by the junta as a step toward stability, are little more than an extension of the scam economy that has flourished since the 2021 coup. The military, hemorrhaging territory and legitimacy, has turned to its militia partners, particularly in Karen State, to secure both the ballot and the revenue streams that underpin its survival. At the center are the Karen National Army (KNA, the rebranded Border Guard Force) and the DKBA, both of which now openly control land, utilities, and protection for sprawling scam compounds along the Thai frontier. Complexes like KK Park and Shwe Kokko are not marginal: they are industrial-scale “company towns” run on forced labor and wired into crypto-finance networks, with estimated global losses exceeding $10 billion last year. When Thai authorities cut electricity earlier in 2025, militias and operators simply switched to generators and satellite terminals, underscoring the resilience of this model. The U.S. and EU have sanctioned the KNA and associated figures, but the militia-business complex has proven far more adaptive than the Western toolkit. Militias tax, guard, and facilitate compounds while providing the military with badly needed manpower for regaining control of key corridors like Asian Highway 1. In return, they secure assurances that their illicit enterprises will be left untouched. With polls approaching, their cooperation is rewarded with political space to expand scam operations further into state-administered townships. The election is not designed to produce legitimacy through votes, but through regional recognition. If China, India, and ASEAN neighbors engage or recognize the outcome, the junta can cloak its militia bargains in a thin veil of external legitimacy. That, in turn, raises the costs for cross-border rescues of trafficked laborers and narrows the scope for legal cooperation against scam syndicates. For local strongmen, this means permanence: the scam state as a pillar of political order. What emerges is a grim inversion of democracy. Instead of elections checking corruption, elections become the mechanism that entrenches it. The “warlord dividend” is formalized, ensuring that illicit business and state security remain inseparable. Scam centers will spread beyond border enclaves into urban Myanmar, financial networks will deepen reliance on crypto rails, and victims, many trafficked from abroad, will become harder to rescue. The real election taking place is not between parties or candidates, but between militia bosses and the military over how to divide rents from fraud and trafficking. For ordinary Myanmar citizens, and for the international victims of scams run from Karen State compounds, the outcome is already known: more predation, less accountability, and a state apparatus increasingly indistinguishable from organized crime.

Kenya’s pension and health insurance systems, mandatory for all workers, were designed to protect citizens from poverty in old age and provide medical security. Instead, decades of systemic fraud and mismanagement have left retirees dying while waiting for payments and patients paying hospital bills out of pocket despite years of contributions. Auditor General Nancy Gathungu’s 2024 report exposed the depth of corruption: between 2013 and 2020, over 67 billion shillings ($515 million) vanished from pension funds through fake beneficiaries and duplicate payments. Roughly 15,000 people illegally benefited, some drawing pensions before retirement, others added retroactively to cover up fraud. Retirees like Violet Akoth Nyatol lost millions of shillings, sums that could have secured land or long-term stability, after collusion between pension officials and banks diverted her payouts. The Social Health Authority (SHA), which replaced the scandal-ridden NHIF in 2024, has quickly replicated the same failures. Health Secretary Aden Duale admitted that 35 hospitals defrauded the fund of over $804 million through inflated billing, phantom patients, and systemic manipulation. Patients like Geoffrey Mwaniki, despite mandatory monthly contributions, were told hospital systems were “down,” forcing them to borrow money to leave care. The dual crises reveal a stark truth: Kenya’s mandatory contributions system functions less as social protection and more as a mechanism for elite predation. Citizens cannot opt out of payments, yet those funds are siphoned into private pockets. Meanwhile, inflation erodes the meager pensions that are eventually disbursed, leaving retirees unable to sustain even a basic standard of living. President William Ruto’s government has promised reform through full digitization of pension payments beginning in July 2025, claiming technology will close loopholes. Yet public anger is mounting, fueled by repeated failures to enforce accountability. Many see digitization as another rhetorical fix, easily subverted by the same officials embedded in Treasury and health ministries. The broader implications are corrosive: mandatory social insurance without trust undermines the legitimacy of the state itself. As pensioners die waiting for money and hospitals exploit “system failures” to block care, Kenya’s social contract collapses into coercion, citizens compelled to pay for systems that deny them dignity in illness and retirement.