Amu: Following Donald J. Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, Taliban expressed hopes that his administration would adopt “realistic” policies toward Afghanistan. In a statement from the Taliban-run Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi voiced optimism about improving relations, calling for a new chapter of “mutual engagement” between the two countries. Click
8am: At first, Trump will likely adopt a stance of neutrality toward the Taliban, essentially disregarding the current situation in Afghanistan. If forced to engage, his most straightforward and effective option would be to approach the Taliban for negotiation. It seems unlikely that he would engage with the anti-Taliban forces; after all, when the Democrats
Fox News: While the wall-to-wall press coverage of what’s been called President Biden’s “Saigon moment” has largely quieted down, the Afghan diaspora living in the U.S. has not forgotten relatives in the homeland. Click here to read more (external link).
Ariana: Michael Kugelman, a US-based foreign policy expert and the Director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, has said that Donald Trump, as president, would be less likely to focus on the state of women’s education and human rights in Afghanistan. He believes that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) might be
Ariana: The United States and its allies are making pretexts for resuming their military presence in Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. Speaking at the Second Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security in Minsk, Lavrov said that the US and its allies are trying to destablize the situation in Afghanistan. Earlier, Lavrov had said
8am: With a general review, one can conclude that the interview aligns with the effort to whitewash the Taliban and continues the narrative of the “good Taliban and bad Taliban,” portraying the Taliban as different from the 1990s, a narrative that had been discussed during the Doha negotiations. Such interviews by Western media are not
FP: The collapse of the Afghan state amid the United States’ withdrawal in 2021 gifted the new Taliban government with more than $7 billion worth of U.S. military equipment. Afghanistan’s new overlords suddenly found themselves with fleets of Humvees, mountains of machine guns, and forests of radars and satellite dishes. The vast hardware hoard also
By Frud Bezhan and Zhakfar Ahmadi Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty October 10, 2024 The FBI’s arrest of an Afghan man who allegedly planned a U.S. Election Day attack has underscored the growing threat posed by the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) extremist group to the West. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan citizen living in the United States, plotted an
Afghanistan International: The US State Department spokesperson has said that the US position on the Taliban has not changed and that Washington continues to recognise the group as a “global terrorist organisation”. Matthew Miller said that normalisation of relations with the Taliban is contingent on fundamental changes in the Taliban’s behaviour towards human rights. Recently,
Azra Jafari via Newsweek: We mourn our inability to help our fellow women and girls who are suffering under the Taliban, but most of all we feel anger at the United States and the international community for their betrayal of Afghan women. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, when the war on terror was