Pakistan and Iran had traditionally enjoyed cordial relations. When Pakistan was formed, Iran was the first country to recognize it. Iran (under Reza Shah Pahlavi) and Pakistan both were part of the western capitalist camp during the tight bipolarity of the cold war.
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.
The statement of Mr. Ahsan Iqbal clearly expresses that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is pivotal for both Pakistan and China. It is a $ 46 billion project, which will connect Chinese province of Xinjiang with Pakistani port of Gwadar through the land route.
Lt. General Tariq Khan (Retired) analyses the United States’ strategic failure in Afghanistan and the serious implications this carries for Pakistan’s security environment.
CommandEleven’s briefing paper on the terrorism threat to CPEC — mapping BLA, TTP, and other groups targeting Chinese infrastructure and workers across Pakistan.
The Fourth Generation Warfare is characterized by a return to decentralized forms of warfare, blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians due to nation states‘ loss of their near-monopoly on combat forces, returning to modes of conflict common in pre-modern times.
There has been some speculation how Ehsanullah Ehsan ended up in the custody of Pakistan and whether he surrendered willingly as ISPR said in its statement or was he captured in a Pakistani SpecOp in Afghanistan.
Every argument gravitates to first establishing the credentials of the opponent and after having reduced one to one or the other categories, we go to town on him/her on a personal note, forgetting what the argument was about.
Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the G7 countries has threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it “fails to comply with necessary actions against terrorism” (Corr,2017). It has, rather magnanimously, given Pakistan three months’ time to comply or else face the music.
Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor has been killed in a U.S. airstrike along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, he became leader of the Afghan Taliban only last year in July after the death of Mullah Umar was confirmed.
Faisal Aijaz, CommandEleven’s Deputy Director General – Operations, had an exclusive talk with Mike, a Norwegian Army veteran who served in Norwegian Army’s elite Telemark Battalion during his deployment in Afghanistan and then went to Iraqi Kurdistan to join Peshmerga, fighting the Islamic State/ISIS.
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.
The past couple of years have been marked by dramatic geopolitical changes triggered by the onset of the New Cold War, and while events such as the spree of urban terrorism popularly known as “Euromaidan” and Russia’s anti-terrorist intervention in Syria are well known, there are other major shifts which have yet to generate considerable public attention but have been no less consequential.
This new ‘wave of terror’ has transpired just as the country is poised to make its debut as a global trade destination. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor has been progressing satisfactorily, foreign investment has been rapidly multiplying and Pakistanis have never been this hopeful about the future before.
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.”
It must be realised that when we are generally talking of smaller provinces in the future, here we are advocating enhancing one to even bigger proportions. That what the Federal resources could not do for FATA, is assumed would be done by Provincial resources.
While some of the faces and names may have changed, the result is the same – a tense relationship that is always open to modification by other parties, whether part of the US government or not.
