Germany’s Afghan Deportations Raise Hard Questions
On Tuesday, 3 September, a flight left Leipzig airport carrying 30 Afghan refugees back to Kabul. Germany had framed its deportation policy around a specific target: individuals with criminal records. German media covering this flight noted that many of those returned did not fit that description. This is now the 257th such deportation since the […]
Pakistan’s Turn at the Helm: What the SCO Presidency Could Mean
Shehbaz Sharif lands in Bishkek on 31 August. Two days of summit talks follow. Then something quieter but arguably more consequential happens: Pakistan takes over the presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. A bilateral stop in Kyrgyzstan on 2 September rounds out the trip. On paper it reads like routine diplomatic calendar filler. In practice, […]
Badakhshan and the Idea of Afghanistan in Exile
Five years after the Taliban swept back into Kabul, a quiet province in Afghanistan’s northeast has become the unlikely proving ground for an idea that once seemed abstract: that the regime’s grip on territory does not equal its grip on legitimacy. General Farid Ahmadi, a former commander in the Afghan Army’s special forces, recently argued […]
Pakistan’s Emerging Strategic Weight
Nations rarely announce their own rise. It is usually declared by others, watching from outside, connecting the dots that those inside are often too close to see clearly. That is precisely what happened when the renowned Saudi scholar Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem recently remarked that Pakistan will become a superpower soon, with the grace of Allah. […]
Diplomacy at Work: Pakistan’s Peace Mission to Iran
Some of the most consequential diplomacy happens quietly, carried out in airport arrival halls and closed-door meetings rather than in press conferences. On 24 August, Pakistan offered another example of this kind of diplomacy in motion, when Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, departed for Tehran accompanied […]
Taliban Regime’s War on Academia
The Taliban regime’s recent dismissal of several professors from Kabul University highlights the growing political interference and erosion of academic independence in Afghanistan. Among those reportedly removed from their positions are Abdullah Kamawal, associated with the Islamic Party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Asadullah Wahidi, and Faiz Mohammad Zaland. The dismissals are particularly significant because the […]
Resistance Grows as Taliban Regime’s Grip Weakens
Fear can silence a population for a while. It cannot silence one forever. That distinction sits at the heart of what has been unfolding across Afghanistan over the past several days, as resistance activity against the Taliban regime has spread well beyond any single contested district into a pattern that now touches five separate provinces. […]
Resistance Expands Across Afghanistan, Exposing the Taliban Regime’s Weakening Grip
A government’s true strength is rarely measured by the territory it claims on a map. It is measured by how often it must fight to keep that territory. By that standard, the past week in Afghanistan has told a story the Taliban regime would rather not have told at all. Between 20 and 23 August, […]
The Disinformation Insurgency: Decoding TTP’s Systematic Digital Deception
In modern irregular warfare, the battlefield extends far beyond kinetic engagements in rugged terrain, it is fought with equal intensity across digital bandwidths, social platforms, and encrypted messaging channels. For the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), information warfare has become an indispensable pillar of organizational survival. Facing relentless pressure from targeted intelligence-based operations (IBOs) and sustained counterterrorism […]