A roadside bomb exploded near a police bus parked outside a university in southwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least one officer and wounding 15 other people, mostly civilians, a provincial minister said. The attack happened outside Baluchistan University in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, said Mir Ziaullah Longove, provincial interior minister. He said rescuers transported the dead and […]

The terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, provided one of the last searing images of the United States’ 20-year counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan when two of its suicide bombers killed thirteen U.S. troops at Kabul’s international airport, the deadliest day for U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan since 2011. But with that attack, ISIS also […]

The Biden administration is trying to work around longstanding terrorism-related sanctions to facilitate the delivery of aid to the struggling Afghan population. Despite the issuance of sanctions exceptions, Taliban rule in Afghanistan will cause many global banks to refuse to finance commercial transactions with the Afghan private sector. Whether U.S. sanctions on the Taliban are lifted outright will depend on […]

The Moscow meeting of ten regional states and the Taliban officials on Wednesday has produced an outcome that by far exceeds expectations. The salience of the consensus opinion is four-fold, as reflected in the joint statement issued after the event: Then, there is the ubiquitous geopolitical angle. Simply put, the Biden Administration has lost the plot. The Fox News flashed […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Afghanistan should receive economic support and get its financial assets unfrozen as its stability was in the interest of all its neighbours, Reuters reported. Washington meanwhile said earlier this week it has no plans to release billions in Afghan gold, investments and foreign currency reserves parked in the United States that it froze […]

Russia is moving towards excluding the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) from its list of extremist organisations, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, a day after high-level talks between Moscow and Afghanistan’s new rulers. Russia labelled the IEA a “terrorist organisation” in 2003 but welcomed the IEA for talks in Moscow several times before it seized power in Afghanistan in […]

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi gave Afghanistan’s new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) rulers advice Thursday on how to gain international recognition, during a visit to Kabul. After returning to Islamabad, Qureshi said he advised Islamic Emirate leaders on how to improve their reputation. “As a neighbour and as a well-wisher and friend, I conveyed to them what sort […]

Pakistani counter-terrorism forces say they have killed three Afghan militants who belonged to the ISIS group during a raid on a hideout near the country’s border with Afghanistan. The gun battle was the latest episode of violence in Pakistan involving extremist groups that appear to have been emboldened by the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, The Associated […]

Security forces attacked in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan Islamabad: Six Pakistani security personnel were killed in three attacks in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan in two days. Four personnel including two FC soldiers Lance Naik Mudassir and Sepoy Jamshed and two police constables Abdul Samad and Noor Rehman lost their lives in an improvised […]

The Taliban imposed further restrictions on female city government employees in Afghanistan’s capital on Thursday, barring many from returning to work next week in a sign that the group will continue to restrict women’s rights despite two decades of freedoms under the previous government. Neamatullah Barakzai, the Taliban’s head of public awareness for the Kabul municipality, said many female city […]