IT has been an electoral sweep for the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi in the general elections held on November 8. It was the first open elections held in the country after a gap of more than twenty five years. In the last free elections held in 1990, the NLD had won a landslide victory. The military junta ruling the country at the time refused to accept the electoral outcome. Harsh political repression followed. Suu Kyi was first arrested in 1989. In all, she spent around 15 years under house arrest.

THE fortnight long capture and occupation of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz by the Taliban has further exposed the frailty of the central government in Kabul. Kunduz is the fifth largest city in Afghanistan with a population of more than 300,000. The Taliban in a surprise attack had caught the Afghan security forces, trained and equipped by the West, apparently by surprise. On September 28, a few hundred Taliban fighters attacked the city from different directions and quickly captured the city. According to reports, they had many supporters who had infiltrated into the city.

WITH the West standing aside and preferring to be a virtual bystander as the carnage in Syria goes on unabated and the refugee crisis intensifying, Moscow has decided to step into the void to find a solution. Russian political support and military aid have been crucial for the government in Damascus as it withstood the military onslaught that was financed by the West and its allies. In the last two years, the situation on the ground has changed with American trained Syrian militias either surrendering or decamping with their weaponry to the Islamic State (IS) or the Jabhat al Nusra.

ON November 1, the Turkish people went to the ballot box. Voting is mandatory in Turkey, so the turnout is always high. It was just above 84 percent this time. What the Turkish people voted for, however, was unclear.The victory, plainly, was of the AKP – the Justice and Development Party – of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It won just short of half of the votes, giving it 315 seats in the parliament of 550. The threshold for governance is 267, which the AKP was not able to attain in this June’s parliamentary election.

THE war in Syria took a significant change with the entry of Russia. Russian president Vladimir Putin in his address to the UN General Assembly on the occasion of its 70th anniversary, questioned US hegemony and its uncalled for interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. Two days after, on the request of Syrian government, Russian air force began its targeted attack on ISIS.