TTP Ends Ceasefire with Pakistan
Syed Khalid Muhammad, Executive Director – CommandEleven, spoke to Russia Today about the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ending their ceasefire and announcing attacks in Pakistan.
November 30, 2022
Syed Khalid Muhammad, Executive Director – CommandEleven, spoke to Russia Today about the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ending their ceasefire and announcing attacks in Pakistan.
Lt Gen Tariq Khan (Retd) on the New Great Game after the US exit from Afghanistan: Indo-US alignment, a closer Pakistan-China axis and Pakistan’s stakes.
Syed Khalid Muhammad, CommandEleven Executive Director, spoke with Russia Today about the re-emergence of the Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the settled region of Swat.
Syed Khalid Muhammad, Executive Director – CommandEleven, spoke with Russia Today on the on-going peace talks between the Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Government of Pakistan.
Andrew Korybko argues the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan railway lets Pakistan balance China, Russia and the US and lead the ECO.
Andrew Korybko rebuts Michael Kugelman’s claim that Pakistan hasn’t criticised the Taliban, citing Imran Khan’s measured critiques on girls’ education.
After the 2021 US withdrawal, the new order of battle in Afghanistan is non-kinetic: frozen reserves, sanctions and a possible new Northern Alliance.
People are coming to very faulty conclusions as events unfold in Afghanistan. The Taliban are being painted as an invincible force and why not. They own the moment and are living it. At present, they ride the crest and have bragging rights.
Lt Gen Tariq Khan (Retd) rejects claims that Pakistani safe havens explain Taliban gains, pointing to the ANA’s collapse and the US decision to withdraw.
The continued cliche of the famous “Strategic Depth” used to beat Pakistan with was a ridiculous concept, thrown up by a brigadier at the National Defense University (NDU), then known as the NDC, was purely an academic discussion, never a State Policy.
In the last two decades the number of Af-Pak hands has sky rocketed. Most of them seem to have slept on the wheel and now suddenly woken up in a state of dumbfoundedness. They’re shocked that the US was leaving Afghanistan – precipitously; and dismayed that the Taliban were gaining ground – exponentially. That reminds me of Rip Van Winkle who also slept for twenty years.
Lt Gen Tariq Khan (Retd) argues the Afghan civil war after the US exit was predictable and that the real threat to Pakistan is pressure on CPEC.
Our elected leaders on the other hand can fire verbal salvos with impunity.
A profile of Antony Blinken and what Pakistan should seek from the Biden team: trade not aid, the Afghan deal, WoT dues, and no US role on Kashmir.
India’s 2016 boycott of the Islamabad SAARC summit, joined by Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan, read as a reply to Pakistan backing China’s membership.
Syed Khalid Muhammad, Executive Director – CommandEleven, spoke with Arab News on the recent drone strike that neutralized Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
A January 2018 SITREP on Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification, Raheel Sharif’s legacy, threats from India and Afghanistan, and Trump’s ‘do more’.
The political, military and corruption failures behind the US defeat in Afghanistan, why blaming Pakistan fails, and a case for US partnership in CPEC.
Lt Gen Tariq Khan (Retd) assesses US aims in Afghanistan, CPEC and Pakistan’s nukes, and argues Pakistan’s interest now lies in a US defeat in Afghanistan.
India and Pakistan and Mutual Assured Destruction: the conditions for MAD that South Asia still lacks in 2017, and how the arms race could create them.
A 2017 assessment that a US exit from Afghanistan opens the way for Russian intervention, driven by the IS-K threat in the north and Moscow’s geopolitics.
Lt Gen Tariq Khan (Retd) rejects US claims that Pakistan caused its failure in Afghanistan, sets out what the war cost Pakistan, and urges a firm response.
Lt Gen Tariq Khan (Retd) answers Trump’s 2017 Afghanistan strategy with an 11-point agenda for Pakistan, from closing NATO routes to countering India.
Ali Özkök interviewed Syed Khalid Muhammad, CommandEleven Executive Director, for Russia Today on the Taliban in Afghanistan and the failures of the Ashraf Ghani government to contain them.
While there have been constant attempts by New Delhi and Kabul to undermine these successes by continuing to wage terrorism in Pakistan from Afghan soil while employing their assets in media for systematic disinformation, anyone who wants to witness these successes with their own eyes can visit Pakistan and do so.
For decades, Pakistanis have been told that Afghanistan is a “brotherly Islamic country” with cultural and people-to-people ties with Pakistan. For decades, Pakistan has also consistently faced long and short waves of terrorism and crimes, a good proportion of which have been traced to Afghanistan.
Following the 9/11 incident in 2001, US and its allied forces invaded Afghanistan in a bid to eliminate Al-Qaida and Taliban, their safe-heavens and free the country from their “oppression.” Apart from providing billons of aids for reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, the United States have spent $70 billion thus far to build 350,000 strong Afghan National Army and Police to fight against terrorism and provide better security to the people.
In Afghanistan, Pakistan has been scapegoated for a while – tactical failures and strategic reverses are conveniently justified by blaming it on Pakistan. It is fashionable for our own intellectuals to join in the chorus and blame the infamous Establishment. At times, I feel that Pakistan would be a better place to live in and things would be so much more stable and peaceful if this establishment was taken out of the equation.
Amid ruckus and mayhem in Afghanistan, top US officials, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have given a good account of what is the offing for the country. The day president Ghani offered an olive branch to the Taliban, James Mattis rejected the very idea.
Last Wednesday’s massive terrorist attack in Kabul’s diplomatic sector happened, Afghanistan went into a panicked state. The panic was more from having their completely failed security apparatus exposed in such a gruesome fashion than responding to the attack itself.
Following the brazen attack by the Taliban on a corps headquarter in Balkh, the Afghan Defense Minister and the Army Chief resigned from their posts. This is tantamount to a concession by the state apparatus that the upsurge in the activities of the Taliban is hard to fend-off.
After a lapse of almost two decades, former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to Kabul with a fair degree of pomp and show last week, as bystanders were neither jubilant nor fearful. Some recalled his rocket-ridden tactics which obliterated Kabul.
This Haqqani Network, consisting of Husain Haqqani, Christine Fair and Bruce Riedel, operates outside Pakistan to damage and weaken Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence structure.
Moscow will host six-party talks about Afghanistan on 15 February, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Iran, India, and naturally Russia expected to be represented. Moreover, Zamir Kabulov – thought of as being the leader of the “Islamophile” South Asian faction in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – extended an invitation to the US as well, though stipulating that it should first be “ready to work constructively with regional powers” and “determine what they are planning to do in Afghanistan.”
The New York Times has long considered itself an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan, based on the sheer number of articles and books that have been published by staffers.