Abubakar Siddique, a journalist for RFE/RL's Radio Azadi, specializes in the coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is the author of The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key To The Future Of Pakistan And Afghanistan.
Months after the Taliban's advance on Kabul, the lives and homes of residents of a remote province in western Afghanistan remain shattered by war. And while the fighting is over with the Taliban now in power, the prospects of reconstruction amid an economic meltdown and humanitarian crisis are dim.
The Afghan government has lashed out over a new U.S. proposal for the Afghan peace process. Independent experts are also skeptical about the plan, which envisions a power-sharing government with the Taliban, a cease-fire, and a U.N.-sponsored conference of regional and global powers.
In Afghanistan's Pashtun tribal heartland, many turn to tribal councils instead of state courts for swift justice and unlikely routes to reconciliation.
In villages and towns across Afghanistan, grieving families mourning the loss of fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands in the country's fratricidal war are united in demanding peace for their country.
A disputed regional election in Pakistan has added to the opposition's grievances. But its ability to oust the government through agitation and pressuring the military still remains an open question.
Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis and Afghans are among millions of foreign workers likely to benefit from the easing of restrictions in Saudi Arabia's "kafala" visa sponsorship system. But 3.7 million domestic workers will be left in what critics have compared to a modern form of slavery.
An offensive by Afghanistan’s Taliban militants appears to be aimed at reclaiming Afghanistan’s second city, which once served as the capital for the hard-line movement nearly a quarter-century ago.
Two years after Pakistan merged the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the administrative and political mainstream, disputes over land ownership have emerged as a dominant form of conflict in the western region.
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A female warlord who built a distinguished reputation by fighting against the Soviet occupation, the Taliban regime, and its insurgency in recent years has formally joined the Taliban.
Pakistanis are commemorating the 21st anniversary of a bloodless military coup that toppled an elected government and which is blamed for plunging the country into a political and security crisis from which its 220 million people are still reeling.
Hard-line Muslim clerics in a conservative northwestern Pakistani village have announced a boycott of music and dance at weddings.
Though not involved in the current war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kabul supports Baku. For Afghans, the current war has revived memories of their participation in the last major war in that territory nearly 30 years ago.
Nadir Khan, 50, says his son is among the latest victims of increasing crime in a remote Afghan province where locals and officials blame soaring drug addiction for a dramatic rise in robberies and violence.
Pakistan is on the cusp of a political storm after most major opposition parties demanded the country’s powerful generals surrender their stranglehold over politics and withdraw support for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s administration, which the opposition has vowed to oust through street agitation.
The Pakistani government views its large paramilitary force as the first line of defense against insurgents and criminals in the vast southwestern province of Balochistan, which reels from violence and crime that officials often link to neighboring Afghanistan and Iran.
As the last Hindu resident of Ghazni, Raja Ram is making a stand. Despite fears for his safety following the recent departure of the city’s last 21 Hindu and Sikh families to India, he insists on staying in his homeland.
Faryab is the latest of Afghan provinces where residents face increasing restrictions from an assertive Taliban that is embracing the type of moral policing imposed by the hard-line Islamist regime a quarter-century ago.
Frequent reports of targeted assassinations, clashes, and attacks on security forces leave the residents of Waziristan worried over the specter of the region in western Pakistan relapsing into anarchy.
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