The Punjab Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) arrested 12 alleged terrorists, belonging to the banned Al-Qaeda and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), it said in a statement released on Friday. The statement added that they were arrested during a “covert operation” from three cities of the province, including Lahore, from where three “terrorists” were arrested “nearby a sensitive area”. The CTD spokesperson said the […]

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Thursday for a suicide attack that killed the Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Balkh province. An IS fighter waited for the governor outside his office and “rushed towards him, detonating his explosive belt,” the group said in a statement on its Amaq news agency.

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives has begun its investigation into America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike McCaul, best summed up the logic behind the investigation: “What happened in Afghanistan was a systemic breakdown of the federal government at every level — and a stunning failure of leadership by […]

China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, nodded through approval for a third presidential term for ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping on Friday, paving the way for him to wield power in the country’s top jobs indefinitely. Some 3,000 unelected delegates to the congress voted unanimously for Xi, 69, to continue in post as president, a widely expected […]

The CCP’s Quest for a Fresh Source of Legitimacy For the past three decades, the Chinese Communist Party has grounded its political rule in the success of its administration—particularly in managing the economy. In the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, an implicit political bargain was struck between the government and the general population: the people would accept authoritarian […]

The decision to shift the potential meeting between President Tsai and US House of Representative Speaker Kevin McCarthy to California to avoid potential Beijing’s wrath is a geopolitical mistake that will further embolden China and weaken Taiwan and the West’s resolve and principled deterrence. It makes Taiwan and the US look weak and easily kowtowing to Beijing’s threat of force. […]