US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West said on Friday the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) letter to Congress this week “misconstrued the facts” about the country’s economic and humanitarian crises. In a series of tweets, West said: “The Taliban’s (IEA) letter to Congress earlier this week misconstrued the facts re Afghanistan’s economic & humanitarian crisis. Afghanistan was unfortunately already […]

Pakistan freed a hardline Islamist leader on Thursday, a week after removing his name from a terrorism watch list under a deal to end weeks of deadly protests by his followers, the government and his lawyer said. Saad Hussain Rizvi, the chief of a Sunni militant group – Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) – was released from a jail in Lahore city, […]

Abstract: In spite of the evolution in Taliban shadow governance over the past decade and the group’s growing sense of military and political momentum, the first three months of the reinstated Islamic Emirate revealed the group’s struggles with the responsibilities of national sovereignty. The Taliban have busied themselves consolidating control, reacting swiftly and harshly to perceived threats. They have not […]

Jung Chang’s Wild swans: Three daughters of China, 2004 [1991], skewers Mao and Maoism like no other memoir of the surreal hell that China descending into from 1954 until the death of Mao in 1976. Both her parents were model communists, her father one of Mao’s early disciples in Yunan, the golden age for Mao. Both were tormented starting in […]

Satellite images released in early-October revealed recent construction at Ream Naval Base on Cambodia’s Gulf of Thailand coast, part of a China-backed redevelopment plan. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reported that over August and September, three new buildings had been constructed, while several areas had been cleared of foliage and a road was under development. The activity comes amid concern […]

Following the Galwan conflict in June 2020, China-India relations have gone through one of their worst phases. Despite several rounds of military and diplomatic talks, progress in military disengagement has been painstakingly slow, and there is a deployment of 50,000-60,000 troops on each side of the line of the actual control (LAC), the temporary border between India and China. Even […]

Militant attacks inside Pakistan have been rising, highlighting an uncomfortable truth: America’s exit from neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened would-be militant extremists. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has had a knock-on effect in Pakistan. Attacks by a group known as the Pakistani Taliban are on the rise. Last week, the government signed a one-month cease-fire with the group. But as NPR’s […]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov published an article on the Russian-Kazakh relations in Rossiyskaya Gazeta ahead of the 8th summit of the Turkic Council, which is going to be held in Istanbul on November 12. It is not clear if the two events are connected. Right now the only thing we can say definitively is that Moscow can ill afford […]

New research by the universities of Kent, Warwick and Notre Dame (United States) has found that sex-selective abortion is lower in India districts with a Muslim state legislator, consistent with a higher reported aversion to abortion among Muslims compared to Hindus. Sex-selective abortion has dramatically increased in India in recent decades. Abortion was legalised in India in 1971 and while […]

Pakistan hosted China, Russia, and the United States Thursday for talks on Afghanistan, bringing them to Islamabad at the same time as a Taliban delegation led by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, who arrived Wednesday night. “We are confident that Troika Plus’s engagement with the new Afghan government will help consolidate peace and stability, promote sustainable economic development, and constrict […]