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The Durand Line Delusion

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  Why Pashtunistan Is a Fantasy the Poor Are Asked to Die For On April 21, 2026, Mohammad Mohaqiq — a senior Afghan politician who has lived in exile for nearly five years — sat down for a television interview and said something that few Afghan political figures had dared to say publicly. The Durand Line, he told Amu TV, is the real border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We are committed to internationally recognized borders,” he said. “That is what we consider Afghanistan.” The reaction was immediate. Analysts condemned him. Former officials rebuked him publicly. Social media erupted across the Afghan diaspora. Former foreign minister Haneef Atmar called the Durand Line an “imposed imaginary line” that ignored national will. A political analyst accused Mohaqiq of serving foreign agendas. Others questioned whether he even had the right to speak on behalf of Afghan land — a man who no longer lives on it. But here is what no one said plainly: Mohaqiq made this statement fr...
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Updated version of Iran War

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  The Pundit’s Free Ride: How Media Cheers War Then Walks Away On the first days of a war, confidence comes cheap. Precision strikes are called decisive. Deterrence is declared restored. Early success is treated not as a moment to question assumptions, but as proof that the assumptions were right all along. Weeks or months later, the tone shifts. Progress becomes uncertain. Objectives blur. Casualties mount. And some of the same voices that welcomed the opening salvos begin to hedge, then to distance themselves. What was framed as strategic clarity is recast as miscalculation. Questions emerge—about purpose, planning, and exit strategy—that might have been asked before the first strike. This pattern is not new. But it is visible again. Consider a model case. Imagine a conflict beginning on February 28, 2026. Early reports emphasize speed and precision. Much of the commentariat responds in kind. Gerard Baker , editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal , captures the mood: “You ...
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The Iran War: How Media Cheers War Then walks Away

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  The Pundit’s Free Ride: How Media Cheers War Then Walks Away On the first days of a war, confidence comes cheap. Precision strikes are called decisive. Deterrence is declared restored. Early success is treated not as a moment to question assumptions, but as proof that the assumptions were right all along. Weeks or months later, the tone shifts. Progress becomes uncertain. Objectives blur. Casualties mount. And some of the same voices that welcomed the opening salvos begin to hedge, then to distance themselves. What was framed as strategic clarity is recast as miscalculation. Questions emerge—about purpose, planning, and exit strategy—that might have been asked before the first strike. This pattern is not new. But it is visible again. Consider a model case. Imagine a conflict beginning on February 28, 2026. Early reports emphasize speed and precision. Much of the commentariat responds in kind. Gerard Baker , editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal , captures the mood: “You ...
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When the Nest World Crowds Out This One

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  When the Next World Crowds Out This One In many conservative Muslim societies, people are taught from an early age to prioritize the afterlife over the present world. While belief in the afterlife is a central part of Islam—and has inspired extraordinary acts of charity, patience, and moral discipline—an excessive focus on it can become harmful. In some contexts, belief in the afterlife has not merely guided moral life; it has been used to shut down inquiry, justify stagnation, and protect existing power structures. It can discourage curiosity, suppress new ideas, and drain the intellectual energy societies need to progress. The question, then, is not whether Muslims should believe in the afterlife, but whether that belief has, in certain contexts, been used to foreclose questions that urgently need answering. Growing up in Afghanistan, I often heard a familiar response when people questioned why Western countries enjoy better living conditions: “This world belongs to non-belie...
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My book Afghanistan in 2028 is now available on Amazon

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  I am proud to announce the release of my latest book, Afghanistan 2028, now available on Amazon Kindle. Below, I share the Author’s Note, detailing the vision and personal journey that led me to write this story. Why I Wrote This Book The Story Behind the Story It began with a simple question. At a neighborhood coffee shop, a man about my age — a college professor named Jak — leaned across the table during our conversation and asked: "Why does Afghanistan keep falling, state after state?" I drove home that evening turning the question over in my mind. So much has already been written about Afghanistan's past — its wars, its wounds, its endless postmortems. So I decided to do something different: instead of looking backward, I would write a proposal for the future. A roadmap to break the cycle. And I would tell it not as a dry academic lecture, but as a Socratic dialogue. Who am I to write it? I was born in Afghanistan and left following the Soviet invasion in 1983. Sinc...
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Why I Don't Want to Live in Afghanistan

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    Why I Don't Want to Live in My Native Afghanistan Because My Mind Is Not My Own — It Belongs to the Tribe   Wahab Raofi My uncle, a retired doctor, once told me about a patient who came to him complaining of a rash on his back. A closer examination revealed the cause: a colony of lice had taken hold in the skin, feeding quietly, invisibly, for who knows how long. The image never left me. Not because it was grotesque — though it was — but because it raised a question I couldn't shake: can something just as parasitic, just as hidden, colonize the human mind? I believe it can. I call them the lice of the mind. These are the thoughts, beliefs, and identities implanted in us before we are old enough to examine them — by our parents, our communities, our religions. Like lice, they are introduced early, burrow deep, and become so entrenched that by the time we notice them, removal is painful and often resisted. Unlike lice, we rarely even recognize them as forei...
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Beyond the Strait of Hormuz

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  Beyond the Strait: A Hybrid Response to Energy Vulnerability Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz—but it cannot close our determination to open new channels. Channels that flow not through chokepoints controlled by hostile states, but through innovation, policy, and personal responsibility. The threat of conflict in the Persian Gulf delivers a warning that goes beyond geopolitics: as long as we depend on oil that must pass through twenty-one miles of navigable water, we remain a civilization held hostage by geography. If the current crisis teaches us anything, it is this: the world’s energy supply is terrifyingly fragile. A cheap, makeshift drone can disrupt global markets. For decades, we have assumed that the United States—and the broader global economy—could safely absorb the risk of a hostile state controlling the flow of oil through its neighborhood. America’s historic response has been to deploy naval power to "sort things out" and then return to business as usual. ...
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