Michael Hughes: There are two very concerning trends recently observed about the new breed of Taliban fighter. The younger generation of Taliban have proven more adept than their predecessors at exploiting technology to wage war both on the physical field of battle and in the propaganda sphere. At the same time these Taliban millennials and post-millennials
Michael Hughes: ISIS appears to be growing stronger and expanding across South Asia in a bid to transform itself into a global terror operation after losing its territorial caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, in Washington the political class is spending time and resources on all the wrong “security” issues while the governments in Pakistan, India
Michael Hughes: Many members of Afghan civil society have said they refuse to let the Taliban reverse progressive advances including in the area of women’s rights while the insurgents, who feel they have handed a great foreign invader a military defeat, have their own conditions including making the country’s constitution more Islamic. The warring parties in
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