Emran Feroz via TRTWorld: Foreign invaders and elite urban Afghans have long underestimated or ignored rural Afghanistan, and they have all paid the price of doing so. A few days ago, massive protests took place in the province of Helmand, southern Afghanistan. The night before, Afghan and American forces raided another home in the region. According to locals,
Michael Hughes: The International Criminal Court (ICC) denied a request to probe more than 1 million war crimes reportedly committed by parties to the conflict in Afghanistan because the court’s judges feared the long arm of the United States. After the decision was rendered the White House, adding insult to injury, gloated over its ability to
Michael Hughes: The peace-in-name-only agreement U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been negotiating with Pakistan’s foot soldiers if implemented could accomplish the miraculous by potentially making Afghanistan even more unstable – a notion supported by risks highlighted in a newly-released U.S. inspector general’s report. The risks, however, might be understated given Khalilzad wants to play the
Michael Hughes: In some of the most advanced countries in the world citizens are continuing to fight – with just cause – for rights such as freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination and freedom from all sorts of state oppression. Yet in certain countries there are virtually no de facto rights. In fact, one could argue that many
Michael Hughes: The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) attack on Indian troops in Kashmir could waste some of the goodwill Pakistan had built up with the Trump administration vis-à-vis the Taliban peace talks. Islamabad was on the verge of a major diplomatic coup in Kabul but now may have “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” as they say.
South China Morning Post: Raffaello Pantucci says it is not clear that Beijing fully appreciates the role it is taking on by trying to broker peace in strife-torn Afghanistan. Beijing may assume that by brokering a negotiation, it buys itself immunity from these problems. But as the US withdraws from the region, regional powers will increasingly look
Michael Hughes: The opposing sides of the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland had engaged in talks for more than 15 years before reaching a historic peace settlement in 1998. Contrast this with the prospect that – within six days – an Afghan-turned-neoconservative cowboy and a group of Pakistani-backed radical Islamist insurgents negotiated a “framework agreement”
The Independent (UK): A large number of Pashtun politicians, tribal chiefs and intellectuals are against the Taliban, which is one of its biggest weaknesses… The central, conservative ideology of the Taliban is also responsible for its failure, as it is unacceptable for most Afghans, particularly the literate population…The media has played a key role in highlighting the
Manoj Kumar Mishra via Asia Times: From a geopolitical perspective, Afghanistan provides the US with a venue for quick access to gather intelligence as well as develop military strategies against geographically adjacent state actors such as Iran, China and Russia, and limit the ambitions of non-state actors such as the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network and