Had he lived, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would have turned 100 this year and proudly seen his daughter Sheikh Hasina at the helm of his country, navigating it impressively through the complexities of the 21st century. But Mujib survived barely four years from his independence victory in 1971 to his horrific assassination, together with most of […]
Read MoreRecent reports
Recent reports by Humphrey Hawksley for the BBC, YaleGlobal Online, Asian Affairs, and Nikkei Asian Review.
Will China follow Japan’s 20th Century rise and end up destroyed? My interview with Iftikhar Gilani
Dragon Fire, a novel by British author Humphrey Hawksley, written 20 years ago depicted a war erupting between China, India and Pakistan, drawing many other countries and then escalating into a nuclear catastrophe. In the wake of the recent India-China border standoff that resulted in the killing of 20 Indian soldiers, Hawksley, a former BBC […]
Read MoreA Divided World Struggles With Covid-19
Crisis often helps to lift the fog of bureaucratic process and shows institutions in their true light. That has been the case with the World Health Organization, the leading arm of the United Nations to fight a global pandemic. The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the weakness not just of the WHO but other institutions. At […]
Read MoreEurope must abandon muddled thinking about China
With its unusually blunt warning to China, accusing it of exploiting COVID-19 to undermine European democracy, the EU has shown a long overdue change of mindset after years of jumbled, divisive and largely reactive policies in dealing with Beijing. The European Commission said that China, together with Russia, was responsible for an unprecedented wave of […]
Read MoreUS-China rivalry: Cold War 2
David Foster hosted Humphrey on a TRT Roundtable discussion together with Clete Willems (Former US Trade Negotiator), Jean-Pierre Cabestan (Political Science Professor), and Sir Simon Fraser (Former Head of UK Diplomatic Service).
Read MoreIndia’s Red Corridor – Poulomi Basu’s visually gritty Centralia
In Centralia, the writer and photographer Poulomi Basu gives us a panorama of Chhattisgarh, a little-known area of central India, through photographs, poetry, biographical portraits and snatches of dialogue. Chhattisgarh is one of the states that make up what is known as the Red Corridor, a region running up the east of India in which Maoist insurgents […]
Read MoreSet sail for the lost world of Nusantara
Lost kingdoms, stunning scenery, incredible creatures and centuries of intertwined cultures and religions … Humphrey Hawksley discovers them all on Indonesia’s islands. […]
Read MoreExpelled from Sri Lanka, Death Threats in the Philippines and Cold War Espionage Thrillers
Humphrey Hawksley’s work as a BBC foreign correspondent has taken him to crises on every continent. He has been expelled from Sri Lanka, had death threats from several extreme regimes and traced Graham Greene’s footsteps in Sierra Leone. His passion for borders has influenced his writing with the Cold War and espionage prominent themes in […]
Read MoreTen of the World’s Most Enticing Borders
Borders have always fascinated me. With just one step, you can cross culture, language, food, politics and much more. Some are tense. Some are awash with welcome. Sometimes, there’s the swipe of a biometric code. Sometimes, a creaking pole across a dusty road, miles from anywhere. Here is my random list of ten unusual borders, […]
Read MoreNew narrative in the Indo-Pacific
Europe’s navies are returning to Asia in a move that could either inflame or help keep tensions under control. Britain and France have deployed warships to the contested South China Sea and announced that more are on their way. For the West it is a natural culmination of Donald Trump’s trade war, the European Union […]
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