Underlying this positive new sign of cooperation are still a number of fundamental problems, the most central of which is regional security. Most foreign policy experts foresee the long-running border dispute will continue to diminish the partnership, no matter who’s in power.

“The structure of rivals is kind of the major affecter,” said Brookings India Project fellow Tanvi Madan on May 20, at a panel discussion that assessed the Modi government after one year. “On security it’s not negotiable. If there is a border incident, we [India] are going to push you [China] back and we are going to do it in a much stricter way.”

Brookings India Project fellow Tanvi Madan assessed Indian Prime Minister Modi’s foreign policy on May 20, one year after Modi took office. (Andersen Xia/MEDILL NSJI)

The 3,500 km border between the two Asian giants has been in dispute since 1914, when Britain signed an agreement with Tibet placing the de-facto border along the Himalayas from Bhutan in the west to the Brahmaputra River in the east.

Since then, both sides were unable to reach a political accommodation on the disputed territory until an informal cease-fire line, the “Line of Actual Control,” was drawn after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which broke out because of the Himalayan border. However, it is neither marked on the ground nor on mutually acceptable maps, which has led to exacerbated tensions.

The summit talks in China were an attempt by the Modi government to formalize the LAC to ease border tension, but failed to make any headway in resolving the problem because of the size of the disputed territory and the complexity of the issue, the Defense News reported on May 23.

“Beijing wants to keep the boundary dispute alive and India will have to be prepared to fight a war with both Pakistan and China simultaneously at a future date because the boundary dispute can suddenly flare up,” defense analyst Nitin Mehta said to the Defense News.

The dispute, moreover, is not something only about India and China.

“The enemy of our enemy is our friend,” Baoping Liao, a Chinese columnist, said when describing the close tie between China and Pakistan, whose relationship with India has been plagued by hostility and suspicion due to numerous historical and political conflicts.

As one of the most important allies of China, Pakistan provides a bridge for China to connect with the Middle East in terms of economic activities and counter-terrorism efforts. It also prevents China from being fully targeted by India by keeping India’s military power engaged through a series of conflicts.

Seeing the China-Pakistan relationship as one that is built on the foundations of anti-Indian sentiment, New Delhi is so concerned that it started to lean on the U.S. to put a tight rein on China, Liao said.

During a trip to India four months ago, President Barack Obama concluded a series of agreements with Modi, which, for the first time ever, included issues relating to the disputed South China Sea. Both sides pronounced their joint support for the principle of the freedom navigation in the contested waters and for resolving territorial disputes under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which defines the rights and the responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world’s oceans.

“It’s apparent that India is attempting to establish a strategic alliance relationship with the U.S. to make sure it has its own benefits,” Liao said. He concluded in a Chinese article that it would limit the India-China relationship from going further despite the healthy collaboration on economy and trade.

Madan said the best way for Beijing to make sure India does not take part in any containment strategy, a military policy to stop the expansion of an enemy, is to actually engage and cooperate with India.

“Deal with it on equal terms. Sort the border dispute out,” Madan said the same goes for India, with respect to Beijing.

Marking the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War, a new exhibit allows visitors to take a retrospective look at the war’s legacy through the lens of American journalists.

It opened Friday at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

“With the exhibit,” said Curator Carrie Christoffersen, “we really hope that people will gain the better understanding of how and why journalists did what they did, how they brought coverage of the Vietnam War to a divided nation.”

The exhibit, called “Reporting Vietnam,” showcases historic photos, news footage, newspapers and magazines, evocative music and more than 90 artifacts that characterized the war era.

Challenging perceptions of America’s first televised war, it considers the question, “Did the press lose the war?”

The answer was “no” for Neil Lakdawala, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“The media was not always just trying to portrait what the government wants,” he said. “I think they did a good deal of work to bring the truth to the light.”

For both Lakdawala and Christoffersen, the highlight of the exhibit was the collection of Larry Burrows, an English photographer known for his pictures of the war.

On display is a helmet found at the site of the 1971 helicopter crash in Laos that killed Burrows and three counterparts.

There also are iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning pictures that symbolized the brutality of the war, such as “Napalm Girl,” which triggered worldwide controversy over the image of a nude, screaming South Vietnamese girl whose clothes and flesh were burned off by napalm.

“What’s a better way to learn about Vietnam and the war than by people who were actually in the war,” Lakdawala said.

The exhibit, accompanied by the screening of an original documentary chronicling the war’s key moments, continues through mid-September.

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While the international human rights community is passionate about “liberating” LGBTQ people in Uganda, those efforts might be “disempowering,” a Ugandan representative of Sexual Minorities Uganda said in a panel discussion April 30 at the National Endowment for Democracy.

“I know the movement and liberty here makes our partners in the West want to act, but sometimes that is not necessary,” said Pepe Julian Onziema, a Reagan-Fascell Democracy fellow with the NED, a nonprofit foundation that gets funding from the U.S. Congress to strengthen democratic institutions around the world.

Wade McMullen of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and Pepe Julian Onziema of Sexual Minorities Uganda discuss homosexual rights in Uganda on April 30 at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. (Andersen Xia/Medill)

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations by also threatening to fine or imprison national and international activists and organizations that worked for the defense and promotion of LGBT rights in Uganda.

A revised bill was promulgated in February 2014 with a punishment of life in prison instead of the death penalty.

“It was actually curtailing fundamental freedoms, and cutting off access to critical services to LGBT community,” said Wade McMullen of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in the discussion. “It went so much further than any other entire LGBT laws we’ve seen outside of Russia at that time.”

As one of Uganda’s biggest donors of foreign aid, the U.S. announced several sanctions in response, including cutting funding, blocking certain Ugandan officials from entering the country, while also supporting Ugandan LGBT nongovernmental organizations.

The punitive bill was nullified five months later.

Onziema said he appreciated the help from the international partners, but he was worried that outsiders might oversimplify the issue.

Onziema’s concerns are understandable. According to a New York Times story, the anger against same-sex relationship in Uganda that led to the introduction of the “Kill the Gays Bill” was stoked by three American evangelical Christians who delivered a series of homophobic speeches to thousands of Ugandans, including policy makers, in 2009.

They later defended their statements, saying they had never expected the legislation could be so harsh. According to the story, Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals, said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda.” He said when someone speaks about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families, “Africans will fight to death.”

Similarly, the international outcry and involvement, even though it supports the LGBT rights in Uganda, can be somehow counterproductive. While signing the revised bill of 2014, Ugandan President Museveni accused the U.S. of trying to impose its values on Ugandans by defending homosexual rights.

A spokesman said at the time that Museveni wanted to sign the bill “with the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda’s independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation.”

While Onziema said the law was part of the Ugandan government’s process of stifling dissent by “pushing voices down,” he thought foreign countries should play the role of consultants instead of “doing things” for them.

Onziema said a clear set of rules as to how foreign governments and nonprofits can help Uganda without meddling was needed. “Being in the same page, consulting constantly with partners on the ground, on what it’s needed and how that help is given is very, very key,” he said.

Onziema said Uganda was making progress on the issue by citing the example of a resolution that was passed last year by African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to eliminate violence against homosexuals. He said further promotion of LGBT rights in Uganda should depend on education and more profound, formal reforms.

“We are aware of where we come from and what [problems] are existing,” Onziema said.

A national civil right group is requesting an independent medical investigation for a political prisoner Aafia Siddiqui. (Andersen Xia/Medill)

WASHINGTON — The lawyer for a Pakistani woman who was the first female terrorist suspect after the 9/11 attacks is demanding evidence that she is still alive at a federal prison in Texas, despite prison officials’ assertion that she is.

Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained scientist known as “Lady al Qaida,” is serving 86 years in a Fort Worth, Texas, federal prison for shooting at U.S. Army officers and FBI agents who were interrogating her in 2010 in Pakistan for her alleged involvement in terrorist efforts against the U.S. A New York jury in 2010 found her guilty of attempted murder and assault.

“We believe only by having an independent medical evaluation can the world be assured that she is alive and well,” Siddiqui lawyer Stephen Downs said this week at a news conference in Washington.

Downs, executive director of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, said Siddiqui has not been seen or heard from by her family or friends in more than a year. Pakistani consulate staff who tried to visit her at the Federal Medical Center Carswell were only shown the back of a woman, which made it impossible to identify whether it was Siddiqui, the lawyer said.

The organization demanded that Siddiqui be examined by a medical team that would include her sister, a Harvard-trained neurologist living in Pakistan.

Federal Medical Center Carswell spokeswoman Patricia Comstock said Wednesday that Siddiqui is alive, and she has seen her recently. However, Comstock declined to reveal Siddiqui’s medical condition.

The FBI in 2003 declared Siddiqui the world’s most wanted woman until she was captured five years later in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Upon her arrest, she was found to be in possession of numerous documents describing the making of chemical weapons, dirty bombs and instructions to attack landmarks in the U.S.

During her American interrogation in Pakistan, Siddiqui allegedly picked up an unsecured M-4 rifleand fired twice, missing both. She was subdued after the officers returned fire with a pistol and hit her in the torso.

The U.S. government said Siddiqui was a jihadist who married a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, even though Siddiqui’s family denied the marriage. Both the Islamic State, known by various acronyms – including ISIS – and the Taliban had reportedly tried to swap American captives for her.

“ISIS is trying to get in on the popularity of Aafia,” Downs said. “She has nothing to do with ISIS. She was locked up before ISIS even got going.”

A petition was filed in July on whitehouse.gov with more than 100,000 signatures demanding Siddiqui’s repatriation to Pakistan. Supporters held a protest three weeks ago in front of the Federal Bureau of Prisons calling for her release.

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Rep. Federica Wilson, (D) – Florida, is giving a speech Wednesday at the Capitol to remind people of the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram one year ago. (Andersen Xia/MEDILL)

WASHINGTON — Marking the one-year anniversary of the abduction of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, lawmakers spoke at the Capitol Wednesday. Two girls who escaped, along with some 50 others, attended the press conference. The House Foreign Affairs committee is considering funding to resettle some of the displaced people in the U.S., using some of millions of dollars seized by the United States from former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. The new Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said Tuesday in a statement that he cannot promise to find the remaining missing girls.