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.
In this episode, Asia Stream Correspondent Monica Hunter-Hart reports on Khan's political ascent. Then, Asfandyar Mir of the U.S. Institute of Peace, Madiha Afzal of the Brookings Institution and Uzair Younis of the Atlantic Council weigh in on what ails Pakistan's democracy.
Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace, said an emerging discussion in the field is over escalation risk. If an unmanned drone is shot down, there is less likely to be political pressure to escalate a conflict, Mir said. But the improvements in technology could change that equation.
The turbaned Taliban gather in front of the entrance to the deserted barracks. They fish their smartphones out of their vest pockets, switch on their flashlights, and illuminate the ghostly darkness inside. There are no windows in the corridor, nor the small, neat rooms to the left and right. If it weren’t for the nice office chairs and the comfortable bathroom cubicles, one might mistake them for cells. But the rooms are part of a section of a now abandoned military base in Shkin, in southeastern Afghanistan, that was once occupied by U.S. forces, including CIA officers...
As soon as the first gunshots echoed across the courtyard from the street outside, the congregation began to scatter. The worshippers at Kandahar’s Bibi Fatima mosque were all too aware of the fate of their fellow Shia Muslims in Kunduz a week earlier and immediately started running. The warning came too late. Suicide-bombers had shot their way into the building. Seconds later a cloud of dust engulfed the scene as they blew themselves up...
Mawlawi Zubair Mutmaeen used to run Taliban suicide-bombing squads in Kabul. On a recent day, in his new role as police chief for one of the Afghan capital’s districts, he was busy mediating a marital dispute. A woman clad in a burqa complained she could no longer live with her interfering mother-in-law. Clearly used to being in command, Mr. Mutmaeen lectured the husband that under Islamic law he must provide his wife with “shelter and other basic necessities.”
In Pakistan’s rugged tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan, a quiet and persistent warning is circulating: The Taliban are returning. Pakistan’s own Taliban movement, which had in years past waged a violent campaign against the Islamabad government, has been emboldened by the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan...
A complex suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in southern Afghanistan’s main city of Kandahar killed at least 65 worshipers Friday, breaking two months of relative peace in the Taliban’s historic stronghold and highlighting the threat posed by a spreading presence of Islamic State...
A Pakistan minister has defended Prime Minister Imran Khan after he said that his government is holding talks with some groups of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), sparking criticism. In an interview with a Turkish news channel, Imran Khan said that the Pakistan government holding talks with some groups of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to ask them to lay down their weapons and make them agree to adhere to the country's constitution...