America Can’t Isolate the Taliban - Foreign Affairs
At a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in late January, Chinese President Xi Jinping accepted the credentials of the Taliban’s newly appointed Afghan ambassador to China.
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Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
Southern Afghan City Becomes De Facto Capital As Taliban Chief Tightens Grip On Power - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar is the historical birthplace and the political base of the Taliban. Now, the country’s second-largest city appears to be becoming the de facto capital under the militant group’s rule. Several officials have recently been transferred from the capital, Kabul, to Kandahar. Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah...
Taliban further restrict female education by closing NGO-funded schools in two Afghan provinces - El País
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where half the population, women and girls, are deprived of a basic human right: education. When they finish sixth grade, at the age of 12, Afghans have to leave the benches of regulated schools by order of the Taliban, the fundamentalist militia in power since August 15, 2021...
Taliban Redux - Washington Times’ History as it Happens Podcast
It’s been said that history does not repeat but it does rhyme. A generation after seizing power for the first time in an Afghanistan destroyed by war, the Taliban returned to Kabul last August after enduring another long conflict with foreign invaders. As ever, the Taliban mystify observers who...
Fears, Uncertainty Torment West With Taliban in Charge of Afghan Security - Voice of America
A year after the last U.S. troops left Kabul, there appears to be little consensus on whether the world, and the West in particular, is any safer from the terrorist groups that call Afghanistan home. One of the most polarizing developments in the debate came on July 31 of this year, when a...
From War to Want in Afghanistan - The Chicago Council on Global Affairs' Deep Dish On Global Affairs Podcast
While a 20-year war has ended, the Afghan people continue to suffer, now under a collapsed economy. International Crisis Group’s Laurel Miller and US Institute of Peace’s Andrew Watkins join Deep Dish guest host Elizabeth Shackelford to discuss how the international community's isolation of...
Taliban members say they didn’t know slain al Qaeda leader was in Kabul - CBS News
The Taliban government claimed in a statement it had “no information about Ayman al-Zawahiri’s arrival and stay in Kabul,” after the U.S. airstrike that killed the head of al Qaeda while he was on the balcony of a safehouse in central Kabul early Sunday morning. The multi-factioned group, already struggling to...
Afghanistan mystery: Why was Al Qaeda’s leader in Kabul? - Christian Science Monitor
Announcing the death of Ayman al-Zawahri – killed by a CIA drone strike on the balcony of a villa in downtown Kabul early Sunday – President Joe Biden said it demonstrated a U.S. capability to fight terrorism in Afghanistan today, even without thousands of soldiers on the ground. Yet a year after the jihadist Taliban...
Russia, Afghanistan Seek to Enhance Trade Amid Sanctions - Voice of America
A new agreement signed by commerce officials from Afghanistan and Russia calls for expanding trade relations between the countries at a time when both face severe economic sanctions from the U.S. and Europe. Officials from Afghanistan’s Chambers of Commerce and Industries (ACCI) and Russia’s...
As Iran-Taliban tensions rise, Afghan migrants in tinderbox - The Independent
“You have one of the world’s worst-simmering refugee crises just chugging along on a daily pace and historical enmity,” said Andrew Watkins, senior Afghanistan expert at the United States Institute of Peace. “Earthquakes will happen."