Author: Saifullah

The cross-border aerial escalation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier on June 30, 2026, marked a significant shift in the region’s security landscape. Following Pakistan’s precision counterterrorism operations against militant hideouts inside Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban attempted to portray themselves as responding with equal force. However, their response failed to achieve any meaningful military objective. According to official statements from the Taliban Ministry of Defense, four unmanned aerial systems (UAS) were launched toward Pakistan’s Balochistan and Bajaur regions. Pakistani air defense systems intercepted and destroyed all four drones before they could strike any targets. Rather than demonstrating military capability, the failed operation…

For years, Pakistan has consistently warned the international community that Afghanistan under Taliban rule has become a sanctuary for terrorist organizations, particularly the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Those warnings were often treated as part of a bilateral dispute or overshadowed by broader humanitarian concerns surrounding Afghanistan. That diplomatic hesitation now appears to be fading. Recent public statements by the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Richard Lindsay, and the European Union’s Special Envoy, Gilles Bertrand, represent a significant shift in international thinking. Their remarks were not simply expressions of concern. They reflected a growing willingness among Western governments to publicly acknowledge…

International Widows Day arrives again this year as a grim checkpoint for the women of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), whose numbers have only grown over nearly four decades of conflict. The toll is staggering, and it keeps climbing. A report from Kashmir Media Service puts a hard number on decades of state violence: 22,991 Kashmiri women have been widowed between January 1989 and 31 May 2026, almost all of it traceable to Indian state terrorism in the occupied valley. Alongside them, more than 2,000 women in IIOJK now live as “half-widows” — neither wives nor confirmed widows,…

Some evidence speaks for itself. It needs no spin room, no diplomatic cable, no painstaking cross-reference with UN documentation. A photograph does the job on its own. Senior commanders of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group a terrorist outfit with Pakistani soldiers’ and civilians’ blood on its hands have been pictured lounging at the swimming pool of Kabul’s five-star InterContinental Hotel. Sadr Hayat alias Abu Sufyan, Commander Jalali, Commander Rehbar Waziristani, Commander Ghazi, and other senior figures of this banned network are not hunched in some remote mountain hideout. They are poolside, in plain sight, in the heart of the Afghan…

Pakistan’s quiet but decisive diplomacy has once again proven its weight on the world stage. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday hailed the successful conclusion of the first high-level committee meeting under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, calling it a turning point in defusing one of the most dangerous flashpoints of recent years the standoff between the United States and Iran. The talks, hosted at the Swiss resort of Bürgenstock on the shores of Lake Lucerne, unfolded in a constructive atmosphere and produced concrete results: a 60-day roadmap toward a final settlement, the formal launch of a High-Level Committee for…

Let that sink in. A Taliban fighter, wounded while fighting against Pakistani forces at Spin Boldak the very border Pakistan’s armed forces have spent years securing against terrorism, smuggling, and infiltration is now recovering comfortably in Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi. He was flown in on the direct, personal order of Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, the Taliban’s own Defence Minister. Two attendants are with him. The Indian Embassy in Kabul greased the visa. And both governments are now hiding behind silence, because the truth is too damning to admit out loud. This is not humanitarianism. This is the Taliban exposing, in…

Pakistan’s Information Ministry has flatly rejected claims from the Afghan Taliban that its so-called “air force” carried out strikes against Islamic State (IS) hideouts inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, calling the assertions outright fabrications. In a statement posted on X, the ministry said the Taliban’s claims about conducting operations against IS hideouts on Pakistani soil simply don’t hold up — and pointed out the obvious problem with the story itself. A claim with a glaring hole The Afghan Taliban’s defence ministry had announced earlier on Friday that its “air force” struck militant hideouts in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa overnight Thursday.…

The dust from the Israel-US-Iran conflict hasn’t even fully settled, and already the Middle East’s strategic map is being redrawn. What’s striking isn’t loud declarations of new alliances it’s the quiet recalibration happening across the Gulf, where states that once leaned almost entirely on Washington are now hedging, diversifying, and rethinking who they can really count on. Neutral, but not naive The Gulf states have played this conflict with notable restraint. Despite being targeted repeatedly by Iran, they chose not to retaliate — a calculated move that speaks more to long-term economic diversification goals than to weakness. It’s a delicate…

Iran’s top negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has made it clear that Tehran is walking into the next round of talks with Washington on its own terms. Diplomacy is on the table, he says — but not at the cost of Iran’s principles or national interests. The statement comes as both countries gear up for the next phase of negotiations following the landmark Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, signed earlier this week with Pakistan playing mediator. The deal is designed to de-escalate the standoff between Washington and Tehran and pave the way for a more permanent settlement. Speaking to Iran’s…

There is something fundamentally dissonant about a British Member of Parliament using the floor of Westminster to pass judgment on administrative decisions made in Azad Jammu & Kashmir — a territory he does not govern, has no constitutional authority over, and whose ground realities he is unlikely to have independently verified. MP Imran Hussain’s legislative interventions and digital lobbying campaigns around AJK paint a picture of arbitrary state repression. What they omit is the other half of every law enforcement equation: what provoked the response in the first place. The Framing Problem When local agitation escalates into violence — when…