Russian multilateralism is unraveling. Cracks that were always visible within the Kremlin-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) groupings are now becoming ever more explicit.   The immediate cause is Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has laid bare and further exacerbated the inherent weaknesses and self-interest within its regional initiatives. The geographic scope of these organizations is […]

What Mao’s Failures Reveal About Centralizing Control Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), scored a total victory at the 20th Party Congress in mid-October. He not only secured an unprecedented, though widely expected, third five-year term but also managed to fill the Politburo and its Standing Committee with loyalists. In a display of raw political […]

Pakistan on Monday reopened Chaman border crossing with Afghanistan for trade and pedestrian movement after shutting it down a week earlier following a border shooting. The shooting took place on November 13 at the Spin Boldak – Chaman crossing. One Pakistani border guard was killed in the incident. Pakistan immediately closed the crossing causing heavy losses to traders and stranding […]

Markus Potzel, Head of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is in Tajikistan to discuss options to strengthen cooperation between regional countries and Afghanistan. In a tweet on Sunday, UNAMA said the deputy head had arrived in Dushanbe for meetings with officials from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan where he will “discuss options to help strengthen regional cooperation with Afghanistan and […]

Using the option of pressure will not help, Amir Khan Muttaqi, foreign minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), said at a meeting in Kabul with Norway’s charge d’affaires Paul Coleman Bakr. The foreign minister said that the international community should adopt the policy of engagement and cooperation with Afghanistan. He said that history shows that pressuring Afghanistan doesn’t […]

The latest issue of “Voice of Khurasan,” an English-language monthly magazine published by Al-Azaim Foundation, the media arm of the Islamic State’s Khurasan Province (ISIS-K), eulogizes the slain Indian jihadi fighter Abu Khalid al-Hindi, condemns Egyptian Islamic scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi for digressing from shari’a and for supporting the regimes in Qatar and Turkey, and is sharply critical of Hamas, the […]

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs of the Islamic Emirate, says that China does not have a destructive plan nor a political agenda in Afghanistan and does not interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. Speaking in a video conference on Saturday, at the opening ceremony of the Sixth Exhibition of Economic Cooperation, Trade and Investment between […]

In Pakistan’s current troubled times where Pakistan is in an existential crisis, both politically and economically, and the Pakistan Army is the sole guarantor of Pakistan’s security and existence, it would be a facile argument that the Pakistan Army has become toothless in tamely submitting to political imposition of the next Army Chief. In an unprecedented intense politicisation of selection […]

Concerns are looming over the rising recession in the USA and its ripple effects on India. Surging inflation in the USA, leading to successive hikes in interest rates, crippled by the Russia-Ukraine war with no end in sight, disruption in supply chain owing to USA-China trade conflict, is causing jitters in India over its trade and investment relations with the USA. […]

Six police officers were killed in an ambush in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said, an assault claimed by the nation’s homegrown Taliban. The Pakistan Taliban share common lineage with the Afghan Taliban and have staged an increasing number of strikes in the year since Kabul fell into the hands of the hardline Islamists. Gunmen with automatic rifles launched an attack at around 7 am (0200 GMT) on a police vehicle patrolling the village of […]