The continued leadership of the Taliban’s extremist faction poses unacceptable security risks for Pakistan and Tajikistan that impede their vision of comprehensively expanding their mutually beneficial cooperation via their shared Afghanistan neighbor. The public aspect of their newly declared strategic ties can never truly enter into effect so long as that clique remains in power…
When the Pentagon used NATO to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine, it had to know that one of the great benefits to such an invasion would be that it would enrich U.S. weapons manufacturers, who, of course, are an important, integral, and loyal part of America’s national-security state form of governmental structure. And sure enough, those…
The time has come to pick up threads from my blog of January 27 titled The West co-opts the Taliban. Indeed, the wheel has come full circle since the three-day conclave in Oslo on January 23-25 between a core group of Western diplomats with Taliban officials failed to work out a reasonable modus vivendi. The…
Having an important geostrategic position and being an essential link in the development of cooperation between Central and South Asia as well as in regional security issues, Afghanistan has attracted a lot of attention from its regional neighbors. The Central Asian countries, objectively interested in multifaceted cooperation with all their neighbors, see Afghanistan not only…
Afghan-emanating terrorist threats likely won’t abate anytime soon since their resolution requires: the US unfreezing that country’s funds to facilitate its sustainable reconstruction; meaningful progress being made by the Taliban in tangibly improving people’s socio-economic standards; and that group finally forming a truly ethno-regionally inclusive government. None of that’s in the cards right now so…
The outcome of this Machiavellian policy is that regional security is jeopardized as a result, which in turn endangers Pakistan’s own objective interests even if its US-captured elite don’t yet realize this. Hopefully patriotic elements within The Establishment will succeed in reversing these counterproductive policies before it’s too late. Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan…
