On March 7, the western powers huddled together in Paris for a restricted meeting on Taliban and the Afghanistan situation. It was an exclusive meeting of the Special Representatives and Envoys for Afghanistan of Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The random pick was…
The five disadvantageous outcomes of Pakistan’s decision were that: 1) Russia was left wondering why Pakistan conveyed its interest in this event during Kabulov’s trip to Islamabad only for it to not take part; 2) questions are now raised about the sincerity of its rapprochement with Moscow; 3) Islamabad also hinted that bilateral spats with…
The worst-case scenario is that Pakistan launches even just a limited ground operation into Afghanistan together with relying on US drone strikes either across the border or within its own. That could immediately set into motion the fast-moving sequence of events that results in the never-ending war that former Prime Minister Imran Khan is so…
Russia is a responsible regional stakeholder and therefore doesn’t want the worst-case scenario of a never-ending Pakistani-Taliban war to transpire, yet it’s powerless to directly shape the dynamics for de-escalating this crisis in order to avert that outcome. Nevertheless, it’ll never give up trying, hence the real reason why Special Presidential Representative for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov…
Pakistani-Taliban ties are a lot more complicated than most observers assume, especially in light of their latest tensions. They lost control over their security dilemma after their American and TTP partners who they respectively recruited as leverage over the other exploited them in pursuit of their own self-interested ends. It’s still not too late to…
The Pakistani-Taliban security dilemma is untenable and quickly approaching the breaking point, which is why Islamabad might soon seize the initiative to decisively defend itself from Afghan-emanating terrorist threats, but it’s unknown exactly how far it might go in this respect. In any case, the US is expected to support its recently restored regional proxy…
