Over a week ago the excruciatingly slow Doha peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban resumed, and then they dragged on for two days observed by envoys from the EU, US and UN. Nothing happened. They could not even agree on a ceasefire during Eid al-Adha. Worse, there’s no road map for how…
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting of Foreign Ministers on Wednesday in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, may have been an under-the-radar affair, but it did reveal the contours of the big picture ahead when it comes to Afghanistan. So let’s see what Russia and China – the SCO’s heavyweights – have been up to. Chinese Foreign…
The untimely remarks by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the situation in Afghanistan during a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at Moscow on Friday does no good for his reputation as a scholar-diplomat with integrity or for India’s standing on the global stage as a responsible regional power. The Indian…
And it’s all over For the unknown soldier It’s all over For the unknown soldier The Doors, “The Unknown Soldier” Let’s start with some stunning facts on the Afghan ground. The Taliban are on a roll. Earlier this week their PR arm was claiming they hold 218 Afghan districts out of 421 – capturing new…
The SCO would do well to coordinate its members’ efforts to contain Afghan-emanating regional terrorist threats such as ISIS-K, encourage a political compromise between Kabul and the Taliban, and devise a plan for developing the war-torn country’s connectivity potential so as to ensure its long-term stability. The future of Afghanistan is more uncertain than ever…
The Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover of Afghanistan in the wake of the US’ full military withdrawal by September 11th presents certain security concerns for India, but the South Asian state only has very limited options for ensuring its relevant interests, none of which credibly involve any conventional military involvement contrary to widespread speculation about this scenario….
