The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 250,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan since August last year. UNHCR Deputy Chief Kelly Clements, traveled to Kabul last week to review the situation of refugees and then to Islamabad. In Islamabad, Clements spoke with the foreign minister and a number of Pakistani officials about the situation of Afghan refugees in […]

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) on Saturday condemned the attack earlier in the day on a Sikh temple in Kabul city that resulted in the death of two people. Zabihullah Mujahid, the IEA’s spokesman, said in a tweet the authorities condemn “in the strongest terms the attack of the enemies of the homeland against the Hindu shrine in Kabul.” […]

“Chinese thinkers have clearly stated that the core operational concept of intelligentized warfare is to directly control the enemy’s will. The idea is to use AI to directly control the will of the highest decision-makers, including the president, members of Congress, and combatant commanders, as well as citizens.” — Colonel Koichiro Takagi, senior fellow of Training Evaluation Research and Development […]

Acknowledging achievements made by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), the political leader of the Hazara community, Jafar Mahdavi, has however called on the new authorities to fulfill commitments made to the people and form an inclusive government. “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate has faced a wide range of problems in the political, social, cultural, and especially economic fields; […]

Afghanistan a landlocked state has great importance in South Asia due to its geostrategic location. It is connected through a land route with six countries including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan in the North, Pakistan in the South, China in the East, and Iran in the West. Geographically, Afghanistan is taken as an essential state for economic activities at the regional […]

The wilderness years of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), after its initial inception during the 2004 Asian tsunami, are over. The latest summit in Tokyo reaffirmed its mission as a ‘force for good’ while promising a broad array of Indo-Pacific cyber security, maritime awareness, pandemic recovery, space, climate change and infrastructure initiatives. At the recent IISS Shangri-La Dialogue held […]

Why Indo-Pacific Power Hinges on Taiwan Of all the intractable issues that could spark a hot war between the United States and China, Taiwan is at the very top of the list. And the potential geopolitical consequences of such a war would be profound. Taiwan—“an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender,” as U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur once described it—has […]

The question of recognizing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) government is not on Moscow’s current agenda, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. “It is not on the current agenda. We have said this many times. It is useless to make any forecasts,” Peskov said. This comes after Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said earlier this […]

Worryingly, the Pakistan government is engaging the militant group in talks from a position of weakness. The Pakistani government has been negotiating with the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for weeks in an effort to permanently halt cross-border attacks from Afghanistan. The latest round of intense and extensive negotiations has seen Pakistan going all in to involve relevant stakeholders to reach […]

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe spoke in Singapore, part of an effort to add “guardrails” to the China-U.S. competition. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held his first meeting with China’s Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe on Friday, on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Both men are also slated to speak later at […]