Malaysia, its power structure with only itself to blame, starts to confront a Green Wave If Malaysia, long thought of as a moderate, modern, multi ethnic state of 33.5 million people, becomes the first Southeast to fall under the thrall of an Arabist Islamic party that wants to implement Shariah law, it won’t be so much a victory for religious […]

Mongolia is a country that has a unique geographical, demographic, economic and geopolitical position. And it is not favorable at all, at least at first glance. Mongolia has no access to the sea, it is located in the climatically cruelly cold East Asia. It has the lowest population density of any sovereign state in the world: two inhabitants per square […]

Marking 10 years since the inception of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a ‘flagship’ project under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Foreign Ministers of Beijing and Islamabad, along with the acting Foreign Minister of the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, ‘reaffirmed’ their commitment to ‘further the trilateral cooperation under the BRI and to […]

A Challenge to Pakistan’s Military May Only Strengthen the Generals Pakistan is adrift in a sea of troubles. Its economy is in a tailspin. GDP growth in the past year shriveled to only 0.29 percent. Annual inflation has soared to 36 percent, and annual inflation in food prices stands at a whopping 48 percent. The country faces a balance-of-payments crisis, […]

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has said the UN Security Council report by the sanctions monitoring team on the situation in the country is “biased and far from reality”. The UNSC’s sanctions monitoring team said in its latest report that the IEA’s link with terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), remains strong and symbiotic. “A range […]

Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Minister of Interior Affairs, said during a gathering with local authorities, scholars, tribal leaders and residents of Faryab that unity among the people in supporting the Islamic Emirate system was needed. “The sacrifice of the people and Mujahideen of Faryab is big, may Allah accept it. The only reason that no matter how many problems the united […]

In an interview, Abdullah Baabood discusses Beijing’s evolving role in the Gulf region, where its priority is stability. Abdullah Baabood is a nonresident scholar at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center. He holds the chair of the state of Qatar for Islamic area studies and is a visiting professor at the Faculty of International Research and Education at […]

UK government on Friday announced that Robert Chatterton Dickson has been appointed charge d’affaires ad interim of the UK Mission to Afghanistan, currently based in Doha. Chatterton Dickson will take up his appointment next month, the UK Foreign &Commonwealth Office said in a statement. Dickson worked as deputy ambassador and charge d’affaires of the UK embassy in Kabul during 2013-2015. […]

Daesh on Friday claimed responsibility for an explosion inside a mosque in northern Badakhshan province the day before. The blast inside Nabawi mosque in Badakhshan on Thursday killed at least 11 people and wounded more than 30 others during prayer ceremony of provincial deputy governor, Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, who was killed in a car bombing two days earlier. That attack […]

Minister of Interior Affairs Sirajuddin Haqqani visited Dasht-e-Leili in Jawzjan province, where a large number of prisoners of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) were shot or suffocated to death in 2001. Upon reaching there, Haqqani performed the noon prayer, recited the Holy Quran and prayed for the souls of those who were killed, the Interior Ministry said in a […]