Politics
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March 24, 2016Hard-Line Militant Group Wants 'Power-Sharing' With Kabul In Exchange For Peace
The Afghan government is hoping a negotiated peace settlement with a hard-line militant group can convince other insurgents to join the peace process.
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March 22, 2016
Tensions Mount Over Removal Of Afghan Vice President's Portraits
A dispute over the removal of huge portraits of the first vice president in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif might renew the rivalry between two strongmen who attempted cooperation and competition to shape northern Afghanistan.
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March 08, 2016
EU, Turkey Agree To Draft Migrant 'Swap' Deal, Amid Criticism
Turkey and the European Union have agreed to the outlines of a possible deal on returning thousands of migrants to Turkey, while the tentative plan is being criticized by the UN and rights groups.
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March 02, 2016
'We Will Never Go Back': Greece's New Purgatory
Rubber boats continue to arrive in Lesbos even as Macedonia tightens its border controls. Migrants and locals alike ponder whether the rugged agricultural island may turn into a holding camp for stranded people. The mayor's office says the island's fate is in the hands of smugglers in Turkey.
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February 25, 2016
Kabul Says Pakistan Tasked With Bringing 10 Taliban To Peace Talks
A senior Afghan official says Pakistan has been tasked with bringing a group of 10 influential Taliban representatives to Islamabad during the first week of March to take part in direct talks with the Afghan government.
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February 24, 2016
Pakistan's Invisible Baluch Displacement Crisis
Pakistan's effort to counter a simmering separatist insurgency in southwestern Balochistan Province has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, but their plight remains invisible as they receive little attention from national authorities and international aid groups.
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February 24, 2016
Watchdog Warns 'Human Rights In Global Jeopardy'
Amnesty International has warned that human rights and the laws and institutions meant to protect them are under threat around the world from an "insidious and creeping trend" among governments that are deliberately attacking or neglecting them.
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February 24, 2016
Obama Presents Plan To Close Guantanamo, Says It 'Undermines' U.S. Security
President Barack Obama has unveiled plans to transfer the last remaining detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and shut down the controversial facility for good.
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February 23, 2016
Talks With Taliban Expected By Early March
Members of the Afghan government and Taliban representatives are expected to meet by the first week in March in Islamabad for the first direct talks since peace process broke down last year
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February 23, 2016
Obama To Discuss Gitmo Closure As Pentagon Reports To Congress
The Pentagon is preparing to submit a long-awaited report to Congress about closing the U.S. military's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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February 14, 2016
The Winter Storms Of Northern Afghanistan
Winter had led to a lull in fighting in northern Afghanistan. But in recent weeks a renewal of hostilities has seen power lines coming from Central Asia cut and some amazing allegations from Afghan officials about militants in the north and their ability to sustain their efforts.
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February 11, 2016
Pressure Mounts For More U.S. Air Strikes In Afghanistan
With fewer U.S. troops on Afghan soil, local forces face a worsening Taliban insurgency while Afghan officials call for more air attacks
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February 08, 2016
Nepotism And Dynasty In Central Asian Politics
It seems a pattern of governance has emerged, or rather reappeared, in Central Asia: the dynasty.
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February 08, 2016
Pakistan Deploys Military To Guard Chinese Investment Project
Thousands of soldiers, police deployed to protect new Gwadar trade route as country’s economy will rely heavily on its success
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February 06, 2016
Cash Crunch, Stretched Military Spur Russian Troop Cuts Near Afghan Frontier
Money troubles and a military stretched by war in Syria and Ukraine have prompted Russia to reverse plans to send more troops to Tajikistan -- despite what Kremlin officials say is a growing threat from Islamic militants across the border in Afghanistan.
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February 04, 2016
Dostum Says He Is Not Boycotting Government
Days after his supporters claimed Afghanistan's first vice president is staying away from government business over power sharing, Abdul Rashid Dostum says he is performing his official duties.
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February 01, 2016
Afghan Vice President In Quiet Government Boycott Over Power Sharing
Afghanistan's first vice president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, is boycotting government business over President Ashraf Ghani's reluctance to appoint his loyalists to key posts and go ahead with his plans to create new combat units to fight the Taliban.
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January 28, 2016
Pakistan Could Review Tough Blasphemy Laws
The head of a controversial Pakistani council says he is willing to look again at whether current laws are fair.
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January 27, 2016
Security Fears Increasingly Trumping Human-Rights Protections, Says Rights Monitor
International watchdog Human Rights Watch has warned the world's governments not to sacrifice rights protection in the name of fighting terrorism or coping with refugee problems.
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January 27, 2016
Watchdog Says Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan Among World’s Most Corrupt
An international monitoring group says people around the world demonstrated to governments in 2015 that they must become more transparent and tackle the large-scale corruption that continues to plague so many countries and hinder their development.
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January 20, 2016
Profile: Bacha Khan, Pakistan's 'Frontier Gandhi'
A deadly extremist attack on northwest Pakistan's Bacha Khan University contrasts starkly with the nonviolent methods employed by the Pashtun activist for whom the university is named.
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January 12, 2016
Chinese Port Plans Prompt Ire In Balochistan
Residents of a coastal town in southwestern Pakistan are angry over Chinese plans to transform their impoverished hometown into a 21st-century trade and transport hub.
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January 07, 2016
Shi’ite Muslims In The Middle East
The Sunni-Shi'a divide emerged following the death in 632 of the Prophet Muhammad amid competing views over who should succeed him -- the Prophet's trusted companion, Abu Bakr, or Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali. Over time, these groups came to be known as Sunnis -- from "sunnah," the sayings, actions, and teachings of Muhammad -- and Shi'a, derived from the phrase meaning "partisans of Ali." As many as 90 percent of the world's some 1.6 billion Muslims are Sunni. Most Shi'a live in Iran, Iraq, and pockets of other countries in the Middle East and beyond.
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January 07, 2016
Bangladeshi Diplomat To Leave Islamabad Amid 'Spy' Row
Authorities in Bangladesh say Pakistan expelled the high commission's counsellor from the country with no explanation.
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December 30, 2015
Pakistan's Sharif Inaugurates Road To Woo Critics Over China Trade Corridor
In an effort to win the support of politicians from minority provinces for multibillion-dollar Chinese investments, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has inaugurated a major road in a remote southwestern region.
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December 22, 2015
Dueling Fatwas, More Dissention As Afghan Taliban Leadership Struggle Intensifies
A power struggle among top Taliban leaders casts a dark shadow over the militant movement's political future, though their campaign shows no signs of abetting despite the onset of winter in Afghanistan.
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December 16, 2015
The Peshawar School Massacre, One Year On
How the loss of 147 lives, most of them schoolchildren, changed the course of Pakistan's fight against terrorism.
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December 10, 2015
Ghani's Renewed Cooperation With Pakistan Meets Domestic Backlash
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's efforts to involve Pakistan in improving security and jumpstarting a peace process with the Taliban are facing domestic criticism.
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December 09, 2015
Second Round Of Taliban, Kabul Talks Likely
There are signs that Pakistan and Afghanistan are likely to go ahead with a second round of talks between the Afghan Taliban and Kabul as part of a new push to end the Afghan conflict through a negotiated settlement and cultivating a cooperative bilateral relationship between the two neighbors.
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November 16, 2015
Farmer Demands Climate Change Action By Suing Pakistani Government
Faced with the devastating effects of water scarcity and temperature changes, many of Pakistan's farmers are seeing not only their crops, but also their livelihoods, threatened as climate-change framework is largely ignored
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November 04, 2015
Public Stoning Condemned In Afghanistan
Afghan lawmakers have condemned and ordered an investigation into the stoning death of a young woman accused of adultery.
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November 03, 2015
Washington Assures Central Asian Leaders Over Afghan Drawdown
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has reassured Central Asian leaders that Washington will continue to support security for their countries despite withdrawing its troops from neighboring Afghanistan.
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November 02, 2015
Afghan Politicians Push For Constitutional Changes
Influential Afghan political leaders are urging the government to hold a Loya Jirga or grand council to consider sweeping changes to the country's political system.