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 reeling from a historic economic slump characterized by low growth, high inflation, and rising unemployment. Despite the government’s upbeat recent projects, economists are not convinced and are urging fundamental reforms to truly turn around the economy.
This week’s Gandhara Briefing looks at how Pakistan’s border fence is causing mounting problems for Pashtun tribes straddling the Durand Line, the revival of the Pakistani Taliban, and how a con artist and an Afghan princess clouded Afghan efforts to establish an alliance with Washington.
This week's Gandhara Briefing offers incisive pieces on how escalating violence is rapidly killing off hopes for peace in Afghanistan, the EU is pressuring Pakistan to improve its rights record, and former Afghan combatants long for peace.
This week’s Gandhara Briefing brings you insightful pieces on the economic catastrophe Afghanistan faces in the wake of U.S. withdrawal, why Pakistan has failed to rein in Islamist militants since bin Laden's killing, and how the Taliban divides Afghan elites in a bid to overthrow the government.
A decade after U.S. Special Forces killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town, the country’s failure to rein in militant groups could endanger its relations with the United States.
This week's Gandhara Briefing gives you the inside stories on how China and Iran are hedging their bets in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, a humanitarian crisis along Pakistan's closed border with Iran, and whether Washington will reposition troops in countries neighboring Afghanistan.
This week's Gandhara Briefing offers you the inside stories on Pakistan’s controversial Hindu conversions of teenage girls and how the empowerment of the Taliban and warlords is reviving fears over a renewed civil war in Afghanistan.
This week's Gandhara Briefing brings you the inside stories on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, whether the Taliban has turned over a new leaf, and how Pakistan is fighting the Frankenstein’s monster it once created.
The Afghan government faces a fight for survival as the U.S. heads for an exit in a few months. Continued international assistance and a successful peace agreement could still help the country avoid a civil war.
This week's Gandhara Briefing gives you the inside stories on Afghanistan's vanishing nomads, a proposed Pakistani law that will see military critics imprisoned and fined, and a look at Russia's diplomatic maneuvers to assume a central role in shaping Afghanistan's furure.
Rights advocates, opposition politicians, and lawyers oppose draft changes to Pakistani criminal law that recommend a two-year prison sentence or more than $3,200 in fines for anyone who “intentionally ridicules, brings into disrepute or defames” the country’s military.
Afghan nomads commonly known as Kuchis have traversed their country and the surrounding regions for centuries. But their unique wandering lifestyle is vanishing as members of the group are forced to settle and give up their livestock.
This week's Gandhara Briefing offers you the inside stories on whether Pakistan is destined to reprise its past role in Afghanistan, the recognition of Tatars as an ethnolinguistic group in Afghanistan, and why the last Afghan Jew is leaving his country.
Once again, Pakistan appears to hold the key to a peace settlement in Afghanistan. But its reliance on the Taliban as its main ally in Afghanistan has raised the prospects of Islamabad repeating its history of struggling to deal with the fallout from a messy Afghan civil war.
There is a risk that Afghanistan’s non-Muslim minorities, many of whose members fled during the tumultuous decades following the 1978 communist coup, could vanish completely if peace does not follow the departure of international troops this year.
This week's Gandhara Briefing includes the inside stories on why severing the Taliban's enigmatic ties with Al-Qaeda is so hard, the difficult questions Pakistani political parties face after falling out with each other, and how dowries ruin the prospects for many Pakistani marriages.
Political parties in Pakistan are facing tough questions and some soul searching following the collapse of an opposition alliance that began with tall promises to rid the country's politics of the powerful military's influence.
This week’s Gandhara Briefing gives you the inside stories on U.S. efforts to accelerate the Afghan peace process, how the discovery of a schoolteacher’s remains showcases Pashtun suffering in Pakistan, and why the PMD opposition alliance is falling apart.
The U.S. gained a boost for its new push to reinvigorate the Afghan peace process at a Moscow conference attended by both the Taliban and the Afghan government. But the effort requires robust international cooperation to forge unity among Afghan factions for the peace process to be successful.
For months, an opposition alliance in Pakistan touted a major protest march this month as a watershed moment forcing PM Khan out of power. But internal differences led the Pakistan Democratic Movement to postpone it. What’s next for the PDM?
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