New York, US: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Wednesday on Syria’s triumphant HTS rebels to follow through on promises of inclusion, saying it can learn a lesson from the isolation of Afghanistan’s Taliban. The Islamist movement rooted in Al-Qaeda and supported by Turkey has promised to protect minorities since its lightning offensive toppled…
Moscow: The Russian parliament has passed a law that would allow courts to suspend bans on groups designated as terrorist organisations by Moscow. The new law, passed by parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, paved the way for Moscow to normalise ties with the Afghan Taliban and potentially with the new leadership of Syria. It…
On December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor, set himself on fire to protest against local officials having confiscated his stall. His act ignited the flames of a pan-Arab anti-establishment mass uprising that came to be called the ‘Arab Spring’. On the eve of the 14th anniversary of that incident and in the…
The cataclysmic events in Syria have taken the world, at least much of it, by surprise. Their full magnitude and ramifications will be understood only with time. How did proud, progressive Syria come to such a pass? The only parallel is Afghanistan, where a militant group simply strolled into Kabul and took over the country…
Peshawar: The Afghan Taliban’s acting minister for refugees, Khalil Rahman Haqqani, has been killed in a blast in the country’s capital Kabul, his nephew Anas Haqqani said on Wednesday. Khalil Haqqani became a minister in the Taliban’s interim government after foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. He was a senior leader of the Haqqani…
Midwifery and nursing were the last two educational avenues for women in Afghanistan which have now been padlocked by the Taliban government, according to the BBC. This poses serious questions as the United Nations said in 2023 that Afghanistan needs an additional 18,000 midwives to meet the needs of the country. Women training in these…
