Abubakar Siddique, a journalist for RFE/RL's Radio Azadi, specializes in the coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is the author of The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key To The Future Of Pakistan And Afghanistan.
A close look at statements by senior Pakistani civilian and military leaders gives an idea of what is wrong with Islamabad’s counterterrorism approach and why -- despite so much suffering -- the country is still seen as a bastion of jihadist networks.
An organization in Pakistan’s insurgency-wreaked regions says its preliminary lists have identified thousands of people who have disappeared over the past 15 years.
Pakistani police are investigating six young leaders for sedition and terrorism after they organized protests against maltreatment at military checkpoints in northwestern Swat Valley.
Sangorian, a secret Afghan government militia, claims credit for defeating Taliban attempts to overrun Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah.
A Taliban attack on a luxury hotel in the capital, Kabul, killed several foreign crew members of the country’s largest airline, which forced Kam Air to drastically reduce domestic flights, which has prevented millions of Afghans from flying.
Afghan police are needed to protect people and government institutions in remote districts across Afghanistan’s largest province, Helmand. Instead, they are being deployed to protect senior officials and lawmakers in the regional capital, Lashkar Gah.
The murder of a young shopkeeper in a staged gunbattle with the police in Pakistan last month appears to have stirred up Pashtun grievances that were long suppressed.
Civilians in the restive northeastern province of Kunduz say authorities in the region have failed to disarm thousands of armed men whose livelihoods now mostly depend on extortion, kidnappings, and murders.
The Afghan official in charge of looking after the archeological remains in Bamiyan Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site, says they are threatened with complete annihilation.
An estimated half a million Mehsuds are once again threatening to abandon their towns and villages in South Waziristan if authorities fail to clear landmines and unexploded ordinance from the mountainous regions.
In Pakistan Afghan refugees feel caught between Islamabad and Washington as bilateral relations rapidly deteriorate after U.S. President Donald Trump accused Pakistan on January 1 of “lies and deceit” while providing a safe haven to terrorists that U.S. forces are seeking to counter in Afghanistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan says his administration is now investigating the alleged political engineering by the country’s secret services.
Afghan lawmakers are urging their government to undertake a range of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic steps to stop Iran from recruiting Afghans to fight its war in Syria.
Pakistan’s beleaguered southwestern province of Balochistan is in the midst of a political crisis as its provincial government faces ouster through a no-confidence vote.
Whether the United States and Pakistan are heading toward a complete breakdown in their fraught relations or can yet again pull back from the brink.
Ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged some soul-searching and called on the country’s powerful military establishment to abandon self-deception.
Afghanistan’s Taliban movement is nearly a quarter-century-old, but it is still open to various interpretations that cloud its strategy, tactics, and ultimate future aims.
ears of government crackdowns and political maneuvering have prevented a fragmented Baluch nationalist insurgency from taking hold. But Islamabad's tough handling has added to the grievances in a region reeling from underdevelopment, poverty, and neglect.
For more than two years, a resilient Islamic State (IS) militant cell in northern Afghanistan has grown amid tough fighting against its Taliban enemies and crumbling government authority.
Early this month, military authorities in South Waziristan ordered more than 1,100 Shabikhel families in leaving their homes once again. The displaced families were residents of the Shaktoi, Smaal, and Bobarh villages in Ladha.
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