In Kamdesh, Nuristan, where U.S. forces withdrew more than a decade ago, the American presence is a distant – and negative – memory for many locals. In the dead of night on August 30, 2021, the last U.S. forces stepped off the tarmac of Kabul Airport onto a plane and left Afghanistan. It was almost 20 years after the first […]

Since the return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the calculus for Moscow has been tricky: how to reassert its regional influence after the U.S. military exit while also keeping some distance from internal Afghan struggles. “Afghanistan itself is not of interest to Russia,” said Andrei Serenko, the head of the Moscow-based Center of Contemporary Afghan Studies. “Russia wants to use […]

Inside the 25-foot-high, barbed-wire-topped walls of Pul-e-Charkhi prison, a thin line divides the Taliban of the past and what the militants claim they have become. To Afghanistan’s new rulers, the inmates are evidence of their ability to effectively police the capital in a law-abiding manner. But on a recent day, when scores of prisoners gathered outside their cells to soak […]

The Taliban have promised plots of land to relatives of suicide bombers who attacked U.S. and Afghan soldiers, in a provocative gesture that seems to run counter to their efforts to court international support. The Taliban’s acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, offered the reward to dozens of family members of bombers gathered at a Kabul hotel, Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed […]

The port of Chabahar—located on the Makran coast of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province, near to the Gulf of Oman and at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz—is the only Iranian port with direct access to the Indian Ocean. Thanks to its strategic position and links to north-south transit corridors, it has been termed the “Golden Gate” to landlocked […]

Iran and Pakistan are talking about the strengthening of their military relations, in the face of the Taliban takeover in neighboring Afghanistan and the region’s geopolitical changes. Iran’s army chief, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, headed a high-level military delegation to Islamabad last week at the invitation of his Pakistani counterpart Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. Marking a new phase in […]

Even before the Taliban took over Afghanistan in mid-August, the country was facing a drought, the ravages of the COVID pandemic, and mass displacement driven by the conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan army, with civilian casualties reaching record levels. Under the now-collapsed, Western-backed government led by President Ashraf Ghani, 43% of Afghanistan’s GDP came from foreign aid, according […]

Washington Shouldn’t Overhype the Threat From Moscow The Russian Ministry of Defense pulled out all the stops for its annual arms expo outside Moscow in late August. For three days, defense ministers and dignitaries from 41 countries, including from the Middle East, were treated to exhibits of cutting-edge technology, live-fire demonstrations, ballerinas pirouetting on tank turrets, and the trailer for […]

Although there was no uncertainty about the ongoing failure of the US to dislodge Taliban in Afghanistan after twenty years, President Biden addressed the withdrawal of US forces in his speech to the nation on August 16, 2021. People were in favour of his decision to end the war because of the agreement made between former US President, Mr. Donald […]