Economic Cost of Conflict: Trade Suffers Amid Pak-Afghan Border Tension

Cross-border tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have escalated into a recurring pattern of confrontations between the two countries in recent years. The latest incident on August 12, 2024, involved an intense bord...

Iran Recruiting from Pakistan and Elsewhere, Maintain Pakistani Officials

The United States Justice Department announced on Tuesday that it had charged Asif Raza Merchant, a 46-year-old Pakistani national, for attempting to hire a hitman and assassinate a politician or government official on US soi...

Pakistan-Iran Trade; Challenges and Opportunities

On July 8 and 9, 2024, a meeting of the 11th Joint Border Trade Committee (JBTC) – a body of officials and the business community from Pakistan and Iran – was held in Zahedan, the capital city of the Iranian Sistan and Baluch...

Fluid Identities: Abdul Rahim – From a Soldier to a Taliban Commander

The fringes of Peshawar City have historically sheltered the most lethal Taliban factions. Hassankhel, situated on the outskirts of Peshawar and previously a part of the semi-autonomous Frontier Region (FR) of ex-FATA, has lo...

Countries Move to Crack Down on Islamic State Khorasan Globally

Within the first weeks of June, several countries conducted a number of operations against Islamic State’s networks with links to the organization’s branch in the Khorasan region – Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) –, namely Afgh...

Pakistan's New Visa Regime with Afghanistan Sparks Protests in Balochistan

In November last year, Pakistan National Apex Committee, a high-level government forum established in 2015 following the Peshawar Army Public School attack to oversee counter-terrorism efforts, decided to implement stricter b...

ISKP Begins Publishing Pashto News Bulletins Using Artificial Intelligence

The Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) began its first propaganda bulletin using artificial intelligence following the attack in Bamyan, Afghanistan on May 17, 2024, in which four people including three Spanish tourists were kille...

Adapting to Survive: The TTP's 17-Year Quest for Relevance

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has undergone substantial transformations since its inception in December 2007. Under the two previous leaderships, Mawlana Fazlullah Khorasani and Hakeemullah Mehsud, the TTP operated mor...

Deciphering the TTP’s Strategy To Revive in Punjab

Pakistan has lately been witnessing a surge in militant attacks across the country, especially since November 2022 when the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) decided to break a fragile ceasefire agreement with the then governm...