PAKAFUZ’s Connectivity Potential Is Totally Dependent on Troubled Pakistani-Taliban Ties

PAKAFUZ’s Connectivity Potential Is Totally Dependent on Troubled Pakistani-Taliban Ties

PAKAFUZ isn’t as promising of a project as it initially seemed due to its total dependence on seemingly intractable Pakistani-Taliban tensions and the revival of the North-South Transport Corridor as a viable complementary alternative. That’s not to downplay this project’s geo-economic importance in the best-case scenario that it’s completed and those two’s security dilemma is…

The Afghanistan Lithium Great Game

The Afghanistan Lithium Great Game

While the United States, along with its allies, left Afghanistan in August 2021 in spectacularly humiliating circumstances, the departure was never entirely complete, nor bound to be permanent. Since then, Washington has led the charge in handicapping those who, with a fraction of the resources, defeated a superpower and prevailed in two decades of conflict….

The TTP’s Terrorist Threat to Pakistan Is Metastasizing

The TTP’s Terrorist Threat to Pakistan Is Metastasizing

The challenge ahead is a formidable one that will require the military-intelligence services to fully focus on this newly metastasized terrorist threat in order to emerge victorious, which in turn necessitates their top brass giving them the order to abandon the all-out nationwide crackdown against the opposition. Pakistan’s prior large-scale anti-terrorist operations succeeded precisely because…

They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order”…

Russia’s Afghan Point Man Hinted at the Possibility of Military-Technical Ties with the Taliban

Russia’s Afghan Point Man Hinted at the Possibility of Military-Technical Ties with the Taliban

The carrot that Kabulov just dangled in his latest interview might not be enough on its own to entice the Taliban to finally make good on its prior promises, but it could form part of a larger package deal aimed at eventually achieving that.   Russian Special Presidential Representative on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov told RTVI…

Russia, China Take Holistic View of the Pamirs and Hindu Kush

Russia, China Take Holistic View of the Pamirs and Hindu Kush

The Xi’an Declaration, issued after the First China-Central Asia Summit at Xi’an on May 18-19, takes a direct hit at the West’s interference in the region, scattering the notion in Washington and Brussels that Russia and China’s dominance on the Central Asian steppe is not sustainable as Russia is “overstretched” in the Ukraine conflict.  As…