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.
A lockdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic has destroyed most of this year’s honey crop in Pakistan while hitting beekeepers and traders with millions of dollars in losses.
Khanzada Asfandyar Khattak, a dance artist, is using his spin, whirl, and moves to beat stay-at-home isolation during the coronavirus pandemic.
As Afghans enjoy a brief respite from violence during a rare cease-fire during the Muslim holy festival of Eid al-Fitr, government officials, Taliban, and international diplomats reflect on the human and material toll this impoverished country is enduring because of fighting.
The coronavirus pandemic has devastated tourism in an alpine valley of northwestern Pakistan that had barely recovered from years of Taliban control and the military operations that displaced the region’s entire population a decade ago.
In a sign that efforts to roll back the autonomy of Pakistan’s provinces is snowballing into a crisis, politicians in three minority provinces in the country have criticized the recently constituted government commission tasked with dividing federal resources between Islamabad and four provinces.
They braved great risks to flee danger in their Balochistan homeland in southwestern Pakistan, where thousands have been killed and disappeared amid a separatist rebellion that began two decades ago.
In a sign that some rural Afghan farmers are attempting to protect themselves amid the looming uncertainty wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, poppy cultivation has increased in a southern Afghan province.
As the world grapples with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, one country is possibly turning the challenge into a prospect for greater economic gain.
Days after Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said his country is using its intelligence service’s ‘track and trace’ system to combat the coronavirus pandemic, confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, continue to rise.
Based on the current status of women in Taliban-controlled regions, it might mean that women will have token access to employment in essential jobs such health workers or teachers. They will, however, be denied leadership roles and will have to work in strict gender segregation.
Opposition politicians in Pakistan are against the government’s effort to review a decade-old constitutional amendment that enhanced the country’s federal form of government, restored parliamentary democracy, and made it much more difficult to launch a military coup.
On the streets in Kabul, the coup is still blamed for all of Afghanistan’s woes.
Illegal mining of precious stones in an eastern Afghan province is depriving its impoverished residents of resources and their country of much-needed revenue.
Nearly five years ago, Rahman Gul, a poor, middle-aged Afghan villager in the eastern province of Nangarhar, became a symbol of the atrocities the ultra-radical Islamic State militants (IS) had begun inflicting on Afghans.
Associations of doctors and nurses in Pakistan say that more than 150 healthcare workers in the country have contracted the coronavirus so far due to a lack of the equipment necessary to protect against infection.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is facing growing chaos within his ruling political party amid pressure and criticism from the country’s powerful military and judiciary over his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Weeks after the United States and Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban movement signed an agreement to stipulate the withdrawal of foreign forces in return for counterterrorism guarantees, the hard-line movement has yet to begin talks with the Afghan government as outlined by the pact.
Women named as part of an Afghan delegation tasked with conducting peace talks with the Taliban say they will be attempting to preserve women’s rights in complex negotiations with the hard-line Islamist movement aimed at ending four decades of war in Afghanistan.
Authorities in Afghanistan have announced sweeping measures to shut down the capital, Kabul, which is also the country’s largest city.
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