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.
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...
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.”
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...
The attackers descended in the early morning from the steep mountains that tower over Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Gunfire echoed in the valleys as Pakistani Taliban fighters stormed Pakistani military posts. By the time the fighting stopped hours later, four soldiers and 12 militants were dead. The Sept. 6 attack, described by officials in Pakistan as a cross-border assault from Afghanistan, stunned a Pakistani leadership that had thought...
Pakistan has issued an ultimatum to the Afghan Taliban: Expel the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group from Afghanistan or face the consequences. Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, repeated the warning on November 11, saying that the Afghan extremist group must “choose Pakistan or the TTP.” The Afghan Taliban denies sheltering the TTP, with which it has close ideological and...
Two Afghan insurgent groups, made up mainly of former government and military officials, claim to have killed at least 50 Taliban officials and soldiers during November. The hit-and-run insurgency has been most active in the north and northeast of the country where the Taliban encountered significant resistance during their previous...
Twenty-three soldiers were killed in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday when heavily armed militants attacked a security post in one of the deadliest assaults on the country’s security forces in recent years, officials said. The pre-dawn raid occurred on the outskirts of Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders Afghanistan and has been plagued by...
Pakistan is set to vote on Feb. 8, 2024. These elections take place in the context of numerous military, intelligence, and law enforcement actions seemingly designed to weaken the ability of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) to compete (see recent New York Times, Guardian, and Al Jazeera reports ...
Pakistan’s elections have already been eventful — with one party leader’s arrest, another’s stunning return from exile, and at least nine deaths on Election Day — but how much of a change they will truly bring about remains to be seen. Pakistan has been in political, economic, and security turmoil for ...
Pakistan’s parliamentary elections ended in a surprise upset, one that could make the transition to the next government a chaotic affair and that could leave the winning politicians without real...