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.
Days ahead of the formal start of campaigning for this year’s presidential election in Afghanistan, candidates and their supporters are concerned about the growing security challenges in the country.
In recent months, Afghan government forces have made notable gains in some frontline Afghan provinces by reclaiming lost territories from the Taliban insurgents.
A range of hard-line Islamist groups including the ultra-radical Islamic State (IS) are attempting to recruit on Afghan university campuses to turn the seats of higher learning into sanctuaries and breeding grounds for their violent campaigns and revolutionary ideologies.
Pakistanis are debating whether the country’s current army chief should be given a new term in office beyond November, when he is set to retire.
Maryam Nawaz has mounted a major challenge to the PTI’s government after assuming a senior position within her Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) Party last month.
Afghanistan’s hard-line Islamist Taliban movement sees a historic opportunity for peace in the country following its latest round of talks with U.S. officials and representatives of the Afghan government, civil society and various political factions.
The first-ever election for representing Pakistan’s former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has generated considerable interest and raised hopes.
One of Pakistan’s most prominent journalists says the country’s security establishment cut short his interview with a former president shortly after it began on an independent television channel on July 1.
Tarinkot, a town of some 70,000 residents, narrowly escaped being overrun by hundreds of Taliban fighters in September 2016. Still the town is under a virtual Taliban siege with the rebels controlling territories around the beleaguered town.
Most opposition political parties in Pakistan appear to be uniting in opposing the growing role of the country’s powerful military in shaping the country’s politics, governance, and economy.
Nearly 18 years after the overthrow of the Taliban and tens of billions of dollars in aid, not a single girl has graduated from a high school in most districts of Afghanistan’s largest province.
The merger of Pakistan’s western Pashtun tribal regions into the adjoining province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year raised hopes that its long-suffering residents would gain more rights by joining the country’s political, economic, and administrative mainstream.
As more leaders and activists of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, better known by its initials, PTM, are killed, injured, beaten, arrested or forced into hiding, Pakistan’s political discourse is showing echoes of the creation of Bangladesh.
Rising temperatures have already melted nearly half of the major glaciers in Badakhshan's Pamir and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.
Members of an Afghan peace movement are marching toward a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan to demand the hard-line movement and government forces commit to a lasting cease-fire.
A senior judge in Pakistan’s top court is facing possible legal action over alleged misconduct months after delivering a landmark ruling that criticized the role of the country’s powerful military in an anti-government protest in 2017.
Gurmeet Singh, a grocery store owner in Jamrud, a dusty town at the gateway to the historic Khyber Pass, says he is upholding a family tradition by offering discounts to his Muslim clientele during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Lawmakers and locals in a southern Afghan province say the illegal mining of gold and other precious minerals has dramatically increased in Taliban-controlled regions close to the border with Pakistan.
The disappearance and brutal murder of a young Sikh shopkeeper in the Afghan capital, Kabul, have shocked the country’s tiny Hindu and Sikh minority.
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