Security

What Happened: On October 23, the U.S. Embassy in Colombo issued a travel advisory warning U.S. citizens of “credible information” regarding “an attack targeting popular tourist locations in the Arugam Bay area.” The U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia quickly followed suit. Sri Lanka’s police said it had beefed up security and made a series of arrests linked to the purported attack plot, but details remain scarce, and local media reported the suspects did not possess and firearms or explosives. What we do know is that the alleged attack centered on a Jewish community center in Arugam Bay, possibly with the intention of specifically targeting Israeli tourists.

Our Focus: Sri Lanka suffered through a major terrorist attack in 2019, with 269 people killed, including 45 foreign nationals. Later reports indicated that the government of the time had ignored crucial advance warnings. The latest travel advisories – stemming not from Sri Lanka itself but from foreign embassies – “raked up painful memories of the 2019 Easter bombings,” write Sri Lankan researchers Uditha Devapriya, Omar Rajarathnam, and Mandana Ismail. Yet the specifics of this incident also pointed to the complex intersection of geopolitics and tourism. Sri Lanka has a fraught, on-again, off-again relationship with Israel, which has been exacerbated by the atrocities being committed by Israel’s military in Gaza and Lebanon. In addition, for over a year, locals in Arugam Bay had been complaining about “Israeli tourists intruding on local communities”; these locally-driven grievances, alongside big-picture geopolitics, may have also contributed to the incident.

What Comes Next: Sri Lanka is betting big on tourism to help boost its economy following the 2022 crisis. Yet, as Devapriya, Rajarathnam, and Ismail warn, successive governments have paid little attention to “the tensions tourists have generated in Sri Lankan society.” Beyond confrontations with Israelis, Russian and Ukrainian tourists have also clashed with each other, and tourists from various countries have come into conflict with locals. If Sri Lanka’s government plans to further boost tourist numbers, it must be prepared to address the societal fall-out – including the possibility of local anger breeding violence. “Whatever the causes of and solutions for these issues may be,” the authors conclude, “it is clear that the Arugam Bay incident shows how fragile countries like Sri Lanka are in the face of external shocks to sectors like tourism.”

INTERVIEW

Mahfuj Alam, one of the leading figures behind the student protests that ousted Sheikh Hasina and now an adviser to the interim government, on the impact of Bangladesh’s domestic politics on foreign policy: “There is a lack of transparency and discussion in our foreign policy due to the absence of a unified national character within Bangladesh. Our foreign policy is too submissive and driven by party politics. To change this, we must pursue national reconciliation.”

U.S. Election

Donald Trump will return to the White House on January 20, 2025. Governments in the Asia-Pacific will have mixed reactions. India is probably celebrating; China may be happy as well (or maybe not). U.S. allies like Australia, Japan, and South Korea (and one close partner, Taiwan) will be bracing themselves for another round of demands that they increase their financial contributions – but ultimately U.S. alliance policy in Asia has been remarkably consistent.

Northeast Asia

In the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election, tensions between North and South Korea were riding high. Reports that 10,000 or more North Korean soldiers had arrived in Russia sparked concerns about Pyongyang deploying troops to fight against Ukraine, with Seoul threatening to send weapons to Ukraine in response. Last week, the rival blocs in the inter-Korea standoff tightened their bonds. South Korea and the U.S. held “2+2” talks shortly after a Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral meeting of national security advisers. At the same time, North Korea’s foreign minister visited Moscow and Russian’s deputy foreign minister was in Beijing – even while Pyongyang launched its first ICBM of the year.

South Asia

Canada and India continue to clash over Ottawa’s allegation that Indian government officials were involved in a plot to murder a Sikh activist in Canada. The charges, stemming from a 2023 killing, got new life last month when Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including India’s top representative in the country. India has denied the allegations and responded with tit-for-tat expulsions. New Delhi’s high-profile pushback, however, contrasts with its more muted (and more cooperative) response to U.S. charges that Indian officials also pursued an assassination scheme against an American citizen, another Khalistan supporter. Both cases cast light on India’s purported overseas assassination scheme, and its growing relations with the West.

Southeast Asia

Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, is leaving this week on his first overseas trip since taking office. On November 8, he’ll began a five-country tour that will take him to China, the U.S., Peru (for the APEC summit), Brazil (for the G-20 summit), and the U.K. The lengthy trip – he won’t return to Jakarta until November 24 – suggests Prabowo will take a more hands-on approach to foreign policy than his predecessor, while the carefully selected balance of destinations conveys continuity with Indonesia’s “free and active” foreign policy. We already got a preview of Prabowo’s approach to China when he visited Beijing as the president-elect back in early April; his upcoming diplomatic engagements will further flesh out his administration’s approach to relations with both Beijing and Washington.

Central Asia

A court in the German city of Kleve has ordered the deportation of Dilmurod Ergashev, a Tajik who has been trying to gain asylum in Europe since 2011 to no avail. An activist with Group 24, Ergashev is at risk of detention and torture, human rights activists say. Last month, two other Group 24 members – including the movement's leader – were sentenced to 30 and 20 years in prison after being kidnapped from Turkey in early 2024.

Source: Central Bank of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s tourist revenues dropped in 2019, after the Easter bombings, then cratered during the pandemic. Colombo hopes to bring figures back up to 2018 levels.

Diplomacy

The name of the ancient capital of the Mongol Empire – and, if all goes according to plan, Mongolia’s first new city in over 40 years, to be built on the same site.