Afghanistan: The Graveyard of Empires

  0 comments   |     by Eric S. Margolis

The US will continue strikes by drones, warplanes, and attacks by Special Forces from a small number of fortress bases. Pakistan will be cajoled or bribed by Washington to keep its forces active against Pashtun tribal fighters. Washington and London will keep issuing cheery claims about the success of the Afghan war. But the hard truth cannot be avoided.   A

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Taliban are talking from a position of strength

  0 comments   |     by Salman Rafi Sheikh

While the US-Taliban talks are of paramount importance in terms of bringing the 17 years old war to an end, there remains little to deny that even after fighting this war for such a long period and inflicting unimaginable loss of life and property on the country, the US has been unable to achieve even its initial objectives i.e., dismantling the Taliban. And therefore

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Afghanistan: Peace at hand?

  0 comments   |     by Conn Hallinan

The news that the Americans recently held face-to-face talks with the Taliban suggests that longest war in US history may have reached a turning point, although the road to such a peace is long, rocky and plagued with as many improvised explosive devices as the highway from Kandahar to Kabul. That the 17-year old war has reached a tipping point seems clear. The Taliba

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Shifting geopolitical realities in Afghanistan.

  0 comments   |     by Fraidoon Amel

Shifting geopolitical realities in Afghanistan. Threat to US hegemony? The military intervention by any nation into another sovereign nation is imperialism, whether it is done by Americans, Soviets, or Indians. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was as indefensible as the later American invasion of Iraq. Indian i

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This Is What Can be Accomplished During Imran

  3 comments   |     by Adam Garrie

Later this week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan will take his first official visit to China. As Pakistan’s neighbour and most important all-weather ally, the visit is of incomparable importance as Pakistan stands on the verge of fulfilling the next stages of inspiring new projects throughout the country, many of which have been jointly initiated with China. Furthermore, international pre

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The US is Executing a Global War Plan

  0 comments   |     by Finian Cunningham

Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibal

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Washington Prepares New Escalation as Afghanistan

  1 comments   |     by Bill Van Auken

The Trump administration is preparing to deploy at least 1,000 more US troops to Afghanistan over the coming months amid mounting signs that the 16-year-old US war and occupation is confronting its gravest crisis since the invasion of October 2001. In his first State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, US President Donald Trump boasted of having given “our warriors in Afghanistan … new rules

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Attack in Iran raises spectre of a potentially far larger

  0 comments   |     by Dr James M Dorsey

An attack on a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz is likely to prompt Iranian retaliation against opposition groups at home and abroad. It also deepens Iranian fears that the United States. Saudi Arabia and others may seek to destabilize the country by instigating unrest among its ethnic minorities. With competing claims of responsibility by the Islamic State and the Ahvaz Natio

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Election Results Could be Good for Pakistan, Bad for US

  0 comments   |     by Graham E. Fuller

A bold new political face has come to power in the recent Pakistani elections, possibly offering the US a new opportunity in that country. Sadly the opportunity will likely be squandered—again. There’s something about Pakistani and US interests that seem doomed to collision course—mainly because Pakistan’s national interests are rarely what the US thinks they should be. Pakistanis themselv

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After Key China-Russia-Iran-Pakistan Meeting

  0 comments   |     by Mapping the Taliban

Last week saw a historic meeting in Islamabad between the intelligence chiefs of China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran. While the details of the meeting were not disclosed beyond statements implying that counter-terrorism was a dominating theme, it is a safe assumption that the war in Afghanistan was a major topic of discussion. Today, following on from the intelligence shared between national partners

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