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.
Authorities in Afghanistan have locked down a western province bordering Iran as the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus infections in the country continues to rise despite fewer people being tested.
Balochistan bordering Iran and Afghanistan is now ill-prepared to face the coronavirus pandemic that has already killed some 1,000 people in Iran as the country suffers the third-highest infection rates following China and Italy.
Two weeks after the United States signed a landmark agreement with Afghanistan’s hard-line Taliban movement, the peace process stipulated by the agreement is already under severe strain because of disagreements over multiple issues mentioned in the agreement and outside its scope.
Marvin Weinbaum counts disagreements between Afghan elites, the Taliban’s unwillingness to follow through on vague counterterrorism and power-sharing promises, and the possibility of Washington walking away from its longest war as several of the major obstacles to lasting peace in Afghanistan.
Days after the United States signed a historic initial peace deal with the Taliban, an old rivalry between neighbors Afghanistan and Pakistan is rearing its head.
The imminent peace deal between the United States and Taliban this week is expected to be followed by negotiations between the hard-line Islamist movement and the Western-backed Afghan government.
Members of Pashtun tribes in northwestern Pakistan’s Khyber district are reluctant to end their protest over the alleged extrajudicial killing of a local young man.
Afghans in frontline provinces now demand a lasting cease-fire. They are hoping their lives, defined by the misery and anguish caused by fighting, will change for the better if all warring sides agree on turning the partial truce into a lasting cease-fire.
A truce promising a significant reduction in violence across Afghanistan has been overshadowed by a dispute over the country’s presidential election.
While some officials in a restive southern Afghan province say Iran has equipped the Taliban with anti-aircraft missiles, there is still no definitive proof that Tehran is behind the numerous recent downing of U.S. and Afghan airplanes.
Pakistan authorities now appear keen on controlling and censoring all online content. The Pakistani cabinet has now okayed a new authority and legal framework to regulate all social media platforms in the country.
The recent escape of a former Taliban spokesman while in detention by the Pakistani intelligence services has raised new questions about Islamabad’s covert ties with the militants.
The arrest of a young leader was intended to suppress a civil rights movement critical of the Pakistani Army’s conduct in the country’s northwestern Pashtun homeland.
Factions within the Afghan government and Washington differ over whether they are willing to accept a reduction in violence or expect a complete cease-fire in the wake of an agreement between the United States and the Taliban.
A widely anticipated agreement between Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban movement and the United States is expected to include safeguards to ensure that it leads to ending over four decades of war in the country.
As the government in Pakistan scrambles to relieve a shortage of wheat, Pakistanis are protesting the scarcity of flour and high bread prices.
Activists in a remote northwestern Pakistani district have urged local authorities to swiftly act to end a tribal ban that prohibits women from visiting the local market.
Few are happy with the pace of reforms in Pakistan's former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which once served as a main theater for the global war on terrorism. The impoverished region is caught in limbo waiting for its former draconian governance regime to be replaced.
A quarter-century ago, Afghanistan’s hard-line Sunni Taliban movement emerged as a mortal enemy of the Shi’ite clerical regime in neighboring Iran. But amid today’s high U.S.-Iran tensions, Tehran’s influence over the Taliban could sabotage its peace negotiations with Washington.
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