Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: April 24, 2016 Edition

India’s Supreme Court may soon take one of its most interesting and far-reaching court decisions, one that could go down as pivotal in Indian history.

At stake is the Muslim practice of “triple talaq,” in which a Muslim man can legally divorce his wife almost instantaneously by uttering the Arabic word for divorce, talaq (طلاق), three times in a row, or by indicating his intention to end the marriage in similar ways, for example, by saying “I reject you.” Many traditional Islamic interpretations of Islamic Law, especially in South Asia, allege this is legal, with some scholars deriving arguments in favor of this in part from verse 229 of Surah 2 of the Quran which states: “Divorce is twice; then keep her honorably or release her virtuously.” There are numerous alternative understandings of divorce within Islam that do not support the notion of triple talaq, and it is banned or not practiced (due to creative interpretations of sharia) in many Muslim countries including Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia, Malaysia, Iran, and Pakistan. Interestingly, the Wahhabi movement has also opposed to the practice.

The ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM) has undergone unprecedented high turnover in recent times. How will  the changes affect the camaraderie — the much-prized “we feeling” — in this crucial ASEAN body?

The AMM is now under the chairmanship of the newly-appointed Laos Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith, who was previously a vice minister of foreign affairs, and the Lao PDR’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. His predecessor as foreign minister, 71-year-old Thongloun Sisoulith, has been promoted to head a new cabinet as the prime minister. Saleumxay will host the 49th AMM and the 23rd ARF July 21-26. At 47 years old, he will be the youngest ASEAN foreign minister in recent memory to serve as the AMM Chairman.

Last year, a storm erupted over the assertion by an Indian politician, Shashi Tharoor, that Britain ought to return the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond to India. Afterwards, a private advocacy group, Mountain of Light, began legal proceedings in a British court to have the diamond returned to India, a move opposed by the British government.

While I agreed at the time that it would have been a positive gesture, from a public relations perspective, for Britain give the diamond to India because of the strong emotions it elicits in India, there are several reasons such a return is difficult to contemplate.

The diamond has a long history of exchanging hands, almost always through conquest. This makes it hard to argue that the most recent exchange of the diamond, to Britain, was a special case. Furthermore, it makes it difficult to establish ownership of the diamond, with the present day countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran all having some sort of claim on the diamond. The original owner of the diamond is a local medieval state in south-central India, the Kakatiya Kingdom, that no longer exists.

China showcased a new submarine-launched anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) with an extended range at the 2016 Defense Services Asia (DSA) exhibition that took place from April 18-21 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly reports.

The new missile, dubbed the CM-708 UNB, is purportedly a derivative of a longer-range version of the submarine-borne YJ-82 ASCM, a rocket-propelled missile launched in a buoyant capsule, with an estimated range of 30 to 40 kilometers (18–24 miles).

The CM-708 UNB, produced by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), allegedly has a range of about 290 kilometers (180 miles) — more than twice the range of a similar ASCM revealed in 2014, the so-called CM-708 UNA, which has a range of 128 kilometers (79 miles).

The Cabinet of Australia’s National Security Committee has purportedly ruled out Japan’s bid for a $50 billion ($38.8 billion) contract–Australia’s largest defense deal ever–to build the country’s new submarine fleet in partnership with Australian industry, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation(ABC).

“While it is not clear if the committee has made a final decision, it has all but eliminated the Japanese bid to build a fleet of 12 submarines to replace the Royal Australian Navy’s ageing Collins Class subs,” ABC revealed this Wednesday. Japan is offering a variant of its 4,000-ton Soryu-class diesel-electric attack stealth submarine fitted with a new lithium-ion battery propulsion system.

Australian defense officials have voiced their concerns over a Japanese offer that initially emerged as an “understanding struck between [former Australia Prime Minister Tony] Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” the report continued.

Last Tuesday, China conducted a flight test of its newest road-mobile intercontinental missile (ICBM), the DF-41 (CSS-X-20), according to information obtained by The Washington Free Beacon. The test involved the launch of a missile equipped with two multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), which were tracked in flight by U.S. military satellites and other U.S. tracking devices in the Asia-Pacific region.

The exact location of the launch is unknown; however, previous tests of the DF-41 took place at the Wuzhai missile test center in central China’s Shanxi Province, some 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of Beijing, in July 2012, December 2013, and August 2015. On December 5, China conducted its latest DF-41 test, which involved a new rail-mobile version of the missile. The December 2015 test, however, was not a full test since the missile’s engine was allegedly not ignited. Rather, the ICBM was “cold launched” from a canister with a gas charge.

“Development of the missile reportedly started in 1986 but was abandoned in the early 2000s. According to unconfirmed media reports, the program (Project 41H) was only relaunched in 2009. Nevertheless, most details about the DF-41 program and the missile’s true capabilities remain cloaked in mystery,” I wrote last year.

Ever since the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) opened its doors for business in January, there has been little released publicly about its prospective first loans or projects–until now. The Financial Times, citing sources with knowledge of the AIIB’s pending projects and tenders, reports that the AIIB will be sponsoring inaugural projects in Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Specifically, the bank will finance a highway in Pakistan, an expressway connecting Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, to the Uzbek border, and a peripheral ring road for the city of Almaty in Kazakhstan.

All four countries are member states that generally hew close to China geopolitically. (Pakistan is one of China’s closest Asian partners.) Moreover, all four states are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (Pakistan’s SCO membership is approved and is pending completion this year.) Despite the geopolitical affinities between China, the progenitor of the AIIB project, the bank’s Articles of Agreement state that AIIB loans are doled out based solely on the economic considerations of the project. Specifically, the bank aims to set aside “the political character of the member concerned.”

Tuesday morning, around 9 am local time in Kabul, a vehicle-borne bomb was detonated outside the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) building in the Pul-e-Mahmud neighborhood, killing at least 30 people and injuring 327. The attack, which occurred during morning rush-hour, was in a neighborhood that’s also home to the presidential palace, the defense ministry, several mosques, schools, and a football stadium.

The Taliban were swift to claim the attack, calling it part of their “Omari” spring offensive. The Taliban’s statement claims that three “martyrdom seekers” had succeeded in killing 92 “workers, key operatives, and security guards,” and that no civilians were killed; “Everyone is aware that no civilians are permitted to travel in close proximity to the 10th directorate building of the NDS and neither is this a civilian area.”

The Taliban’s account is more fiction than not, but provides a glimpse into the group’s internal logic. The Taliban has been quick, in the past, to distance itself from attacks incurring civilian casualties, but groups like the UN say that civilian casualties are at record levels. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan which, among other tasks, monitors civilian casualties, said in February that the “number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan during 2015 are the highest recorded” and that 62 percent of all civilian casualties were caused by “anti-government elements.” So-called complex and suicide attacks, like Tuesday’s attack, have been on the rise.

Backstabbing, factionalism, and dramatic abuses of power have led the battle against corruption in Papua New Guinea to take on Shakespearean proportions this week, as the National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate (NFACD) locks horns with high profile government figures, including the attorney general and Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

Headed up by Chief Superintendent Matthew Damaru, the NFACD is the chief anti-corruption agency in Papua New Guinea, operating as a police agency within the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. During the last month, the NFACD has exploded onto the political scene by arresting Attorney General Ano Pala, Supreme Court Justice Bernard Sakora, and the prime minister’s lawyer, Tiffany Twivey Nonggorr, for corruption, fraud, andperverting the course of justice.

The UN Human Rights Committee has finally weighed in on the case of Azimjan Askarov. The findings come nearly six years after Askarov’s conviction and detention in Kyrgyzstan on charges that he instigated a mob which killed a police officer during the violence in 2010 and four years after his submission of a complaint to the body claiming that the state had violated his human rights.

The committee called on Kyrgyzstan to release Askarov immediately, having found that “he had been arbitrarily detained, held in inhumane conditions, tortured and mistreated, and prevented from adequately preparing his trial defense.”

The full findings, adopted on March 31 and published on April 21, chronicle a highly bureaucratic and procedural back and forth between Askarov, represented by counsel from the Open Society Justice Initiative, and the Kyrgyz state. The initial communication of the complaint was in November 2012, after Askarov had pursued appeals through the Kyrgyz justice system to no avail. Efforts by Askarov and human rights advocates to get the Kyrgyz government to investigate his claims of torture were denied on the grounds that while in custody he’d made statements that he had no complaints–statements made, he says, under threat of further torture.