Balancing is the most commonplace word in the South Caucasus. This is how the three states approach the war Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine reverberates across the world, the South Caucasus region is especially susceptible to the dark geopolitical mood music. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are balancing between potential Russian reprisals and the need, near […]

Earlier this month, the Taliban ordered a halt to poppy production, and the production, use, and transit of other narcotics. Given the dire state of the Afghan economy, the move will likely ruin the small farmers who grow and harvest much of the crop, and see the loss of the income from opiates, between $1.8 billion and $2.7 billion according […]

How did the political crisis escalate? The Pakistani parliament voted no confidence in Prime Minister Imran Khan in the early hours of 10 April, in a culmination of tensions that had been building for some time. Khan’s main opponents, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), had long insisted that […]

Militants ambushed Pakistani troops in a former Taliban stronghold in the northwest, triggering an intense shootout in which two officers and two insurgents were killed, the military said Tuesday. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. The pre-dawn gunbattle happened in South Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a military statement. It said […]

The takeover of Afghanistan by the Islamic Emirate has resulted in the serious erosion of human rights in the country, Washington said on Tuesday. “In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s (IEA) takeover precipitated a humanitarian crisis, and has resulted in serious erosion of human rights, from arbitrary detentions of women, protesters, and journalists, to reprisals against security forces for the former government, […]

An American citizen detained by the Taliban says he was wrongfully accused of espionage but that his release can be a case study for U.S. diplomacy with the still-unrecognized Afghan government. Driving the news: Safi Rauf, 27, whose non-profit helped evacuate thousands of at-risk Afghans during the fall of Kabul — including an interpreter who once helped President Biden — […]

A Pakistani court has jailed Islamist leader Hafiz Saeed, founder of the militant group blamed by the United States and India for a deadly 2008 attack in India, for 31 years in connection with terrorism financing, court documents showed. Saeed was found guilty of multiple breaches in two cases but it was not immediately clear how much jail time the […]

Basheer was a young Taliban fighter barely out of his teens when the Islamic State group took over his village in eastern Afghanistan, nearly eight years ago. The militants rounded up villagers identified as Taliban and killed them, often beheading them, forcing their families to watch. Basheer escaped and lived in hiding during the following years when IS controlled several […]

But internal divisions and the Taliban get a vote, too. Armed resistance against the Taliban is picking up momentum across Afghanistan, with militias run by former political and military leaders of the collapsed republic recruiting and arming fighters, notably from the ranks of the former republic’s U.S.-trained security forces. Some are trying to drum up international support for forcible regime […]

Following 9/11, when jihadi groups in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region attracted global attention, the Pakistani military-backed jihadi organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) came under international scrutiny. However, the Pakistani government, unable to act against the military-aided jihadi organizations, continued to turn a blind eye to LeT. Lashkar-e-Taiba continued to operate under various names. Although LeT went underground in Pakistan, its leaders began functioning […]