After becoming prime minister, Imran Khan received a goodwill message from the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. It read like a routine gesture, but both Kabul and Islamabad have reached a point in their deadlocked relationship where they want “real peace”, that is, for the Taliban to end their aggression. Read Here – The Indian Express
On January 13, 1842, Assistant Surgeon William Brydon, bloodstained and exhausted , reached the British Fort at Jalalabad. When asked where the rest of the army was, he managed to reply “I am the Army.” Thus the British learned their 20,000-man army in Afghanistan had been wiped out. Though it is perhaps the most famous example of […]
The tribal areas of Pakistan have been much in the news in the past decade and a half, following the US military intervention in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks. They were the “headquarters of terror”, with some of the most dreaded terror groups such as the Pakistan and Afghanistan Taliban, the al-Qaeda and the […]
Experts believe Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile is steadily growing. In 1998, the stockpile was estimated at five to twenty-five devices, depending on how much enriched uranium each bomb required. Today Pakistan is estimated to have an arsenal of 110 to 130 nuclear bombs. Read Here – The National Interest
The United States is once again ratcheting up the pressure on Pakistan to fall in line with U.S. policy in Afghanistan by ending the Afghan Taliban’s enjoyment of safe haven. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan is once again pushing back. Amid the mistrust, mutual recrimination, and stale narratives that have increasingly characterised the U.S.-Pakistan relationship in recent years, […]
For Trump, it may feel good to vent his frustrations about Pakistan, especially now that his administration is desperate to salvage something from the United States’ prolonged and losing conflict in Afghanistan. These new sanctions, however, are unlikely to influence Pakistani behaviour, which is rooted in realities on the ground that the United States has […]
Hand in the Haqqanis or hang on to them? That is the dilemma before the Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, so aptly summed by a Pakistani columnist for the Dawn newspaper. In the face of unexpected and significant pressure from the United States to deliver some top militants of the Taliban and the […]
The Costs of War Project identifies no less than 76 countries, 39% of those on the planet, as involved in that global conflict. That means places like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya where U.S. drone or other air strikes are the norm and U.S. ground troops (often Special Operations forces) have been either directly […]
The most ominous threats in 2018 — nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula and a spiralling confrontation pitting the United States and its allies against Iran — could both be aggravated by Trump’s actions, inactions, and idiosyncrasies. U.S. demands (in the North Korean case, denuclearisation; in Iran’s, unilateral renegotiation of the nuclear deal or Tehran’s […]
Iran has launched one of its major post-nuclear deal projects – the port of Chabahar – pushing further for engagement with the global community, days before the US Congress’ expected decision on whether Washington will pull out of the landmark international accord. Read Here – Al Jazeera
looking beyond borders 