The Taliban’s rapid madrassa expansion is transforming Afghanistan’s education system into a tool for extremist indoctrination, fostering a new generation aligned with global jihadist ideology and threatening regional stability.
India’s democracy was born without a revolution. As electoral integrity weakens and institutions hollow out, this absence of a popular rupture may now be returning as a structural crisis—one that could yet provoke mass political upheaval.
APS was the moment Pakistan’s long-standing ambiguity on militancy collapsed. The murder of schoolchildren forced an organic securitization of terrorism, enabling extraordinary measures and a redefinition of the militant as an existential, illegitimate enemy.
December 2025 marked a turning point in Afghanistan’s post-2021 resistance. Coordinated, intelligence-driven attacks across Kunduz and Badakhshan signaled that anti-Taliban forces have moved beyond symbolic defiance into a sustained campaign of urban-centric insurgency. Deprived of territory, external patrons, and conventional warfare options, groups like the NRF and AFF are adapting through mobility, information warfare, and selective strikes, pointing toward a long war defined by endurance rather than frontlines.
A seventy-two-hour surge of intelligence-driven attacks in Kunduz and Fayzabad has shattered the Taliban’s claim of total control, signaling a shift toward coordinated urban insurgency in the north.
Bollywood, once India’s most effective soft-power tool, is undergoing a dramatic ideological overhaul. Films like Dhurandhar and The Taj Story reflect a new cinematic nationalism rooted in historical revisionism, internal othering, and aggressive anti-Pakistan narratives, reshaping both India’s identity and its global cultural reach.
Afghanistan’s 2025 trade boycott of Pakistan exposes a strategic miscalculation. Despite efforts to shift toward Iran and Central Asia, Kabul remains structurally dependent on Pakistan’s mature trade corridors, customs revenue, labour mobility, and logistical efficiency. Alternative routes carry higher costs, sanctions risks, and operational delays, leaving the Taliban with mounting fiscal losses and regional constraints.
The Taliban’s new fatwa banning foreign militants has been hailed by officials in Kabul as a decisive theological shift. But rising attacks in the north, continued TTP operations, and mounting pressure from Washington expose a widening gap between doctrine and reality. As regional powers demand proof of enforcement, the decree risks becoming another symbolic gesture unless it translates into measurable action on the ground.
The Pakistan-Afghanistan trade freeze is widely framed as a punitive economic move, yet its roots lie in a severe security breakdown emanating from Afghan territory. Pakistan’s transit closures are reactive, not aggressive, and Afghanistan’s deep logistical dependence on Pakistani routes exposes the crisis as geopolitical, not commercial.
India is witnessing a steady erosion of democratic freedoms as broad security laws, digital surveillance, and administrative restrictions redefine dissent as a threat rather than a constitutional right. From expanded use of UAPA and IT Rules to routine protest crackdowns and shrinking academic space, the cumulative impact is a quieter and increasingly constrained civic sphere.