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.
Pakistanis are commemorating the 21st anniversary of a bloodless military coup that toppled an elected government and which is blamed for plunging the country into a political and security crisis from which its 220 million people are still reeling.
Hard-line Muslim clerics in a conservative northwestern Pakistani village have announced a boycott of music and dance at weddings.
Though not involved in the current war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kabul supports Baku. For Afghans, the current war has revived memories of their participation in the last major war in that territory nearly 30 years ago.
Nadir Khan, 50, says his son is among the latest victims of increasing crime in a remote Afghan province where locals and officials blame soaring drug addiction for a dramatic rise in robberies and violence.
Pakistan is on the cusp of a political storm after most major opposition parties demanded the country’s powerful generals surrender their stranglehold over politics and withdraw support for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s administration, which the opposition has vowed to oust through street agitation.
The Pakistani government views its large paramilitary force as the first line of defense against insurgents and criminals in the vast southwestern province of Balochistan, which reels from violence and crime that officials often link to neighboring Afghanistan and Iran.
As the last Hindu resident of Ghazni, Raja Ram is making a stand. Despite fears for his safety following the recent departure of the city’s last 21 Hindu and Sikh families to India, he insists on staying in his homeland.
Faryab is the latest of Afghan provinces where residents face increasing restrictions from an assertive Taliban that is embracing the type of moral policing imposed by the hard-line Islamist regime a quarter-century ago.
Frequent reports of targeted assassinations, clashes, and attacks on security forces leave the residents of Waziristan worried over the specter of the region in western Pakistan relapsing into anarchy.
As delegations of Afghan society and the hard-line Taliban Islamist movement decide the agenda of expected lengthy talks over their country’s future political system, the issue of a cease-fire between their combatants looms large over the peace process.
The United Nations says an estimated 6,000 residents of Chinarto, a remote district in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, cannot access medical services and face food shortages because of the road closure by the Taliban.
An Afghan teenager who survived an alleged shooting by Iranian police that set the car in which he was traveling on fire says he is ready to again try fleeing his war-ravaged homeland.
Pakistan's powerful generals have long cited political corruption as justification for toppling governments, but an exposé about the family business empire of a former army general who is now a senior government adviser has spurred debate about corruption.
Taj Bibi, a mother of five in her 30s, has lost three husbands, all brothers and Afghan army soldiers, to the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s powerful generals have for decades cited political corruption as a leading problem in the country that justified the toppling of governments through repeated coups and the military's manipulation of power.
For nearly four decades, Afghans have been one of the largest refugee groups globally, but in recent years internal displacement has turned into a top humanitarian issue for the country of 35 million people.
Lawmaker Mushahid Hussain heads the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Pakistani Senate. In an interview with RFE/RL Gandhara, the former journalist weighed in on Islamabad’s recent spat with key ally Saudi Arabia and his country’s current standing in the region.
A changing regional landscape threatens longstanding security pact between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia
Residents and officials in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Badakhshan say the Taliban is raking in considerable revenues by taxing illegal gold mining in the remote region bordering China, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.
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