Why the United States and Its Allies Must Act Now to Prevent a Humanitarian Disaster On December 1, a United Nations official said that Afghanistan may be facing the most rapid economic collapse in modern history. Since the Taliban takeover in late August, government revenues have all but disappeared and …
Read More »On Afghanistan’s Humanitarian Crisis And Pakistan’s Crocodile Tears – OpEd
In the first week of September, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram in an interview given to Associated Press unfolded Islamabad’s plan to expeditiously resolve the crisis in Afghanistan created by Taliban’s forcible takeover of Kabul. He urged the international community to adopt this ‘three-pronged approach’ – one, …
Read More »Afghanistan’s Looming Catastrophe
Why the United States and Its Allies Must Act Now to Prevent a Humanitarian Disaster On December 1, a United Nations official said that Afghanistan may be facing the most rapid economic collapse in modern history. Since the Taliban takeover in late August, government revenues have all but disappeared and …
Read More »The Taliban won. So why, and who, are they still fighting?
Behind the continued attacks on former Afghan officials is a story of Taliban success and failure: creation of a well-indoctrinated generation of fighters that is ill-prepared to move on. After their victory this summer, Taliban leaders had declared a blanket amnesty that was meant to include even Afghan security forces …
Read More »Afghanistan: Destination unknown yet
Unknown is Afghanistan’s trajectory of developments. None of the players, external and internal, knows the highly-contested land’s flight path. All of the players are unsure of possible impact of each of the tactical moves being taken by each of them. So, there’re compromises or postures to compromise, and contest – …
Read More »Taliban sends hundreds of fighters to eastern Afghanistan to wage war against Islamic State
The Taliban has expanded its shadowy war against the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, deploying hundreds more fighters to this eastern province in an increasingly violent fight and critical test of the group’s counterterrorism abilities after the U.S. troop withdrawal. More than 1,300 additional Taliban fighters have been deployed to …
Read More »After Afghanistan, EU Crisis Intervention Should Go Big, Not Go Home
It is difficult to speak of European ambitions for international crisis management against the backdrop of the images from Kabul over the past few weeks, which seem to tell a story of the failure of Western interventionist policies. But that discussion is urgently needed. Yes, it will be necessary to …
Read More »Four Scenarios And The Future Of Afghanistan – OpEd
The well-known American geopolitical thinker Robert D. Kaplan in his famous book “Revenge of Geography” points out that the only way to end Afghanistan conflict is creation of “Greater Pashtonistan and “Greater Tajikistan”. Through this statement we can infer Kaplan’s belief that the root cause of all instability in Afghanistan …
Read More »Corruption Crippled Afghanistan’s Will To Fight – Analysis
The rapid fall of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) on August 15, 2021 was predictable to those who are familiar with the vast levels of corruption that plagued the country during the last twenty years. Widespread corruption, cronyism, extortion, and …
Read More »Pakistan Agrees to Cease-Fire with Pakistani Taliban in Effort to End the Insurgency
The Pakistani government has come to terms on a cease-fire with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, in an effort to end a long-running and highly lethal insurgency. There are reasons to be pessimistic that the current cease-fire will hold, as similar initiatives have fallen apart in the past, …
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