For there to be stability in Afghanistan, all major ethnic groups must be guaranteed a share of power. The support of the international community is needed now, to make this a reality post-2014.
India, China, Russia and Iran have a surprising confluence of interests in a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, but so far the regional powers have been cautious not to give away too much. Their role may be path-setting as foreign forces leave.
The pattern of war in Afghanistan is changing amid evolving relationships within the Taliban, between the movement and its base, and its engagement with western and local forces. Antonio Giustozzi examines the current military and political situation.
As we move towards the draw-down of foreign forces in Afghanistan, openSecurity asks Afghan, Pakistani and international experts what needs to happen in the region to establish peace.
The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 launched a grand strategy to reorder the middle east. A decade on, growing tensions over Iran and the conflict in Syria suggest that it created the seeds of even greater instability.
Decades of war have led to generations of Afghan refugees in Iran. Their treatment under the current regime is worsening, but why now?
How does al-Qaida see the tumult in the Arab world, the persistent conflict in other regions - and its own prospects? The movement commissions its longstanding management consultants to write a report, which is exclusively published on openDemocracy.
The Pakistani military and intelligence service will not easily break the ties with Islamist terrorist groups in Afghanistan like the Haqqani network. Islamabad wants to keep a foothold in Afghanistan when western troops leave and use Islamic extremism as a counterforce to ethnic conflict and inco
Pakistan has said NATO's supply convoys can cross the Afghan border so long as America's drones do not. Though the expanded use of cyberwarfare, covert special forces and drones is designed to overcome the frictional problems of waging war from a distance, logistics still matter. The world is not
Syrian diplomats have been expelled and the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has explained that his priority is ‘to provide for the end of all violence’ amidst waves of public revulsion at the growing atrocities in poor Syria. Isn’t this cynical manipulation and hypocrisy?
The tension between Washington and Islamabad over the former's drone assaults on targets in Pakistan is rising. But a prospective geopolitical rivalry involving both countries has even wider ramifications.
Any militant force fighting against NATO forces in Afghanistan has to abide by the Taliban war codes which compel outsiders to fight under only one banner, that of Emarat-i-Islami. Hitherto, this strategy has damaged but also benefited the allied forces by keeping the lethal Al Qaida and other ant
