Afghan Commentary Post

  The Misperception America Needs to Correct Wars rooted in political and social dysfunction cannot be solved by military force alone Americans tend to blame wars that go badly on the people running them. In a recent Washington Post column, Theodore R. Johnson asks whether President Trump will fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and argues that the Pentagon's deeper problems would remain even if he does. He is right to look past one secretary. But his argument points to a larger misperception: we rarely ask whether the military was ever capable of solving the problem it was given. The twenty years the United States spent in Afghanistan teach a lesson that should have been learned long ago: political dysfunction cannot be repaired by military power alone. Washington spent two decades and billions of dollars building Afghan security forces, yet those forces collapsed within weeks in 2021. The problem was never just whether soldiers had enough weapons or whether American troops ...

  Islamabad Conference Afghanistan's fragmentation invites foreign interference, and only the Taliban can close the door This week, in a hall in Islamabad, Afghan political figures opposed to the Taliban sat alongside officials from several regional countries under a title that left little room for subtlety: "Afghan Predicament and the Trajectory to Peace: Domestic Collapse and Government Without Legitimacy." To its critics, the two-day conference is one more example of Pakistani meddling in Afghan affairs. To its defenders, it is a rare forum for Afghans shut out of Kabul. Both views contain some truth, and neither addresses the more important question: why do Afghans so often find themselves seeking solutions in foreign capitals? The setting makes the question harder to ask. Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, relations between Kabul and Islamabad have steadily worsened. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of allowing the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to operate ...

  The Old War Is Dead: Why Pakistan and Afghanistan and Pakist shall Follow the Law of Nature This week, Pakistani aircraft struck targets in Khost, Paktia, and Kandahar, what Islamabad called precision strikes against militants who had launched drone attacks into Pakistan. Kabul reported civilian casualties, and the Taliban warned of consequences. Since 2021, when the Taliban returned to power, this script has become tragically familiar. The imbalance looks obvious. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with a large army and modern jets. Afghanistan has no air force, a shattered economy, and a government most of the world refuses to recognize. The temptation in Islamabad is to believe that enough pressure will force Kabul to sever ties with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). But that calculation rests on a twentieth-century idea of military power. The War That Was For most of the Cold War, victory went to the side with the biggest armies, the most bases, and the fastest aircraf...

  Pakistan Is Fighting the Militancy It Once Nurtured Pakistan cannot bomb its way out of this crisis by killing Afghan civilians in the name of fighting the TTP. It needs to abandon its old approach of keeping Afghanistan under its thumb and adopt a citizen-to-citizen approach instead. By Wahab Raofi On Friday, September 18, 2026, worshippers gathered for prayers at a mosque inside the Old Police Lines in Kohat, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the compound gate. Gunmen then stormed the site, and a second blast went off near the Special Branch building during the exchange of fire. At least 23 people were killed — including five police officers, eleven civilians, and seven of the attackers — and more than 50 were wounded. Security forces needed until the next morning to clear the compound. The attack raised the familiar question: who is behind the violence? The answer is murkier than usual. Dawn reported that It...

  Saudi Arabia Has Been Attacked. Is Pakistan Answering the Phone? Pakistan is punching beyond its weight, and with so many problems of its own at home, it is ill-placed to rush to Saudi Arabia's aid. On Friday, September 18, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a police compound in Kohat, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The blast struck a mosque during Friday prayers, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 100. Gunmen then stormed the compound, and a prolonged firefight followed before Pakistani forces killed several of the attackers. The timing matters. Two days earlier, Pakistan's defence minister had said the moment had come to implement the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The same military being asked to help defend the Gulf is still struggling to secure its own northwest, and that gap between commitment and capacity is the real story of this pact. To see why, it helps to start with what Paki...

 The Race For Building Medrassas in Afghani   Education as the Battleground for Political and Ideological Survival On September 7, 2026, forces from the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice surrounded and forcibly cleared the Khatam-al-Nabiyyin Islamic University and Seminary, the largest Shia religious and educational center in Kabul. While the regime cloaked the seizure in the bureaucratic language of reclaiming "public land," the local Hazara and Shia communities recognized the armed raid and subsequent detentions for what they truly were: an overt act of sectarian consolidation. This targeted crackdown stands in stark contrast to the parallel educational reality sweeping the country, as Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid recently declared that their ministry now oversees more than 20,000 Sunni madrassas, housing and indoctrinating over 2.5 million students. This sharp dichotomy illustrates that the race for building and controlling madrassas has become the premier battlegro...