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.
Islamabad has granted some representation and citizenship rights and recognized tiny Sikh, Hindu, and Christian minorities as local residents in its restive western tribal areas.
Residents in northern Afghanistan have accused security forces from neighboring Uzbekistan of frequently raiding border districts and detaining young Afghans.
Residents of a remote district in eastern Afghanistan are fleeing a fresh offensive by the Islamic State that has also triggered intense fighting with Afghan security forces.
Afghanistan’s fledgling air force is playing a vital role in backing the fight against the resurgent Taliban. On one of the most active front lines, more planes are needed to defeat the insurgents.
Rights campaigners and lawmakers in Pakistan have called for dissolving an organization tasked with providing Islamic theological advice to lawmakers after it stirred controversy with recommendations for mistreating women.
Recent incidents in which women accused of violating their family’s honor have been burned to death highlights the endemic violence against women and Pakistan’s failure to deal with it.
An impoverished couple in the western Afghan city of Herat are trying to sell their kidneys to pay off their debts.
A burgeoning sanctuary of radical jihadists has quietly grown along Pakistan’s eastern border with India as Islamabad’s counterterrorism efforts largely concentrate on the country’s western border regions with Afghanistan.
A lawmaker in Afghanistan’s largest province has warned that its capital could fall to the Taliban if the government fails to immediately send reinforcements to stop the insurgent advance.
A former hard-line judge has been appointed as the new Taliban leader in an apparent bid to reunite the now divided movement and to brush up its religious appeal to increasingly skeptical ranks.
The leader of the Afghan Taliban was likely killed while returning from a trip to Iran. If proved, his killing could shed light on a secretive cooperation between one of the world’s leading hard-line Sunni movements and its erstwhile adversary, Iran’s Shi’ite clerical regime.
Authorities in one of Pakistan’s most underdeveloped provinces, where millions of children are still unable to go to school, have even failed to spend their annual budgetary allocation for education.
A new book captures the pain civilians have endured in Pakistan’s Waziristan tribal region, where thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a convoluted conflict that saw the region’s tribal society decimated by radical Islamists and security forces.
After cooperating with the United States and its NATO allies in stabilizing Afghanistan for more than a decade, there are signs now that Moscow is opening a new front against Washington in Afghanistan following its actions in Syria and Ukraine.
The heinous murder of a teenage boy by kidnappers has shaken Afghanistan and seemingly united the government and insurgents in condemning the atrocity and promising justice.
Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. special presidential envoy and ambassador in Afghanistan, dissects some of the early mistakes Washington made in Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban reemerging as a major force threatening Afghan stability.
Zalmay Khalilzad, a key figure in U.S. President George W. Bush’s war against terrorism, says Islamabad’s support of the Afghan Taliban after the demise of their regime in 2001 is the ‘mother of all problems’ confronting Afghanistan today.
In a repeat of the country’s checkered history, the Pakistani military and civilian leadership appear to be at loggerheads over power with the former using corruption to force the latter out of office.
By retraining, reinforcing, and re-equipping troops, Afghanistan is working hard to save its largest province from falling to the Taliban, whose offensive this year appears to aim at adding more territory to half of the province they already control.
Despite a plummeting approval rating, allies of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani say their leader is capable of handling multiple political and security challenges and the debate over the Loya Jirga assembly is a bid by opponents to further destabilize the national unity government.
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