Afghanistan

With his recent comments to the Parliament Khan has succeeded in shooting himself and Pakistan in the foot.

Despite strong religious and cultural ties and a long shared border, Iran has a somewhat complicated relationship with Afghanistan. Since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan some four decades ago, Iran’s attempts to preserve its interests in conflict-ridden Afghanistan have not received much attention from the outside world, but it remains one of the most important neighboring countries for Tehran’s foreign policy.

The uncertainty about the withdrawal timetable has sowed confusion among U.S. partners in Afghanistan and prompted the Taliban to accuse the U.S. of not living up to the terms of their agreement.

The framers of the 2020-21 budget were confronted with a long list of conflicting objectives.

Mainly at issue for the country is the difficult choice of whether to prioritize saving lives or saving the economy for a Pakistan that can ill afford to ignore either.

Frantic efforts are being made to clear the way for intra-Afghan talks, the logical next step forward in the implementation of the February U.S.-Taliban deal.

The Taliban’s military and diplomatic strategies are intended to work in tandem, one leveraging the other. Each has as its ultimate goal the Taliban’s recovery of an emirate lost in 2001.

The spread of the virus, unease about a cease-fire, peace talks, and the American withdrawal leave the Afghan people gripped with a heightened sense of uncertainty.

The growing U.S. strategic reliance on India has fomented closer bilateral ties between China and Pakistan, straining the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.

The lifting of lockdown restrictions could lead to a spike in cases for which the country is ill prepared.

There was no other way to end the political logjam in conflict-ridden Afghanistan than to make current President Ashraf Ghani and the outgoing Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah agree to share power. The deal announced on May 17 has been widely welcomed by the international community because the political tensions between the two rivals were viewed as one of the major hurdles to the advancement of an intra-Afghan reconciliation process. The political jockeying in Kabul is far from the only impediment to reconciliation though and there are deeper obstacles to the peace process.

The U.S.’s willingness to grant wide berth to the Taliban has effectively given them license to continue a campaign of violence.

Rather than seeing the spreading virus as a common enemy, the Taliban seem to be viewing the health crisis as opening new military opportunities.