Afghan History

The Durand Line: Beyond Nationalist Fables

For decades, the Durand Line has triggered deeply emotional debates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As is usual, what was a historically complex evolutionary process...

Iran’s Claws Sink Deeper Into Afghanistan

The Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif has caused a stir in Afghanistan. In an interview with Afghan journalist Lotfullah Najafizada, Zarif openly expressed Iran’s...

Review of ‘Tales from the life of Bruce Wannell Adventurer, Linguist, Orientalist’

The book on Bruce Wannell could be equally entitled Scholar, Spy and Sufi as I will discuss below. Bruce Wannell is described as the...

The Untold History of Ahmad Shah Massoud

For the last two decades, Ahmad Shah Massoud has been lionised as the national hero of Afghanistan. In this piece, Ahmed-Waleed Kakar sheds light...

Kashmir and the Taliban

The Taliban have been busy. Domestically, a gut wrenching attack took place in a maternity ward in an MSF hospital in western Kabul, primarily...

Decentralisation: the final stand of Afghan warlords

In Afghanistan, political goalposts change frequently. This was seen recently in the New York Times op-ed of Ahmad Massoud. As son of late warlord...

COVID-19 casts menacing shadow over Afghan peace process

To say that Afghanistan's peace process has faced hurdles is an understatement. Yet it seems that since the US began negotiating directly with the...

The Taliban: openness or strategic ambiguity?

Two presidents. Two inaugurations. Two parallel governments. Kabul is in limbo. Crucial for President Ashraf Ghani is the fact that despite the shaky foundations...

“US-Taliban deal is only the beginning”

The signing of the groundbreaking deal between the US and the Taliban on 29th February precipitated many hashtags on Twitter that soon started trending....

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