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Pakistan is Fighting the Enemy It Once Nurtured

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  Pakistan Is Fighting the Militancy It Once Nurtured 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 police compound. Gunmen stormed the complex, followed by another explosion. At least 23 people were killed, including 17 police officers and six civilians, and more than 100 were injured. 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 more complicated than simply blaming the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the group Islamabad usually accuses. The TTP reportedly denied responsibility, while Ittehadul Mujahideen Pakistan, an outfit led by Afghanistan-based militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, claimed responsibility. That distinction matters. Gul Bahadur was once considered one of Pakistan’s “good...
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Pakistan Will Not Come to the Defense Of Saudi Arabia. Pakistan Punches Beyond Its Weight

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  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...
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The Race for Building Madrassas In Afghanistan

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 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...
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What Afghanistan Can Learn From Politic of Common Tongue

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  Language as a Unifying Force: A Case for National Cohesion Language is far more than a medium of communication—it can serve as a powerful catalyst for uniting a nation. In Alphonse Daudet's short story "The Last Lesson," set in a remote French village, a teacher informs his students that this will be their final day of learning in their mother tongue. Beginning tomorrow, they will be required to speak German. As he speaks, his voice catches and his eyes well with tears—a small, human moment that captures the profound emotional weight of losing one's linguistic heritage and the erosion of identity that accompanies such loss. Recently, a Taliban official asserted that Pashto should be the sole official language of Afghanistan, claiming that most Afghans speak it. The remark sparked bitter debate among Afghans at home and abroad, with many condemning it as racist and an imposition upon non-Pashtuns. This controversy emerges at a time when Afghanistan is already dee...
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The Reallity of Aisah Wahab

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  The Burden of the Hero: Representation, Expectation, and the Reality of Aisha Wahab The atmosphere in the theater was electric. The crowd was joyful, eagerly waiting for the curtain to rise on a show of valor and high performance. But as the velvet was slowly pushed aside, the hero who emerged felt like a different actor entirely — not what some in the audience had come for. The actor simply performed a pre-written role, while those in the seats had arrived hoping for a panacea: a true remedy for their deepest ills. This theatrical disconnect mirrors the complex reality surrounding Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan-American woman elected to Congress. For many in the Afghan diaspora, Wahab's historic rise was a beacon of hope. They expected her to use her new platform to champion her ancestral homeland — specifically by calling for strict sanctions against the Taliban, a regime that has stripped women of their rights and shuttered schools for girls. Instead, Wahab has called for con...
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What the Taliban Fear the Most: Afraid of: Everyone Knowing About it.

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  What Dictators Actually Fear The Taliban Isn't Afraid of Dissent. It's Afraid of Everyone Knowing About it. The foundation of any dictatorship is deceptively fragile. Tyrants live in constant anxiety that even the smallest spark of dissent will mutate into a political wildfire—not because they fear one voice, but because they fear what happens when private frustration becomes public knowledge. Whether a regime is built on rigid ideology, ethnic supremacy, or military junta, all totalitarian systems share one defining trait: zero tolerance for opposition, however small. Consider a recent incident in Afghanistan. A university lecturer named Nawidullah Fitrat published a live video on Facebook accusing the Taliban of using religion as a mask for ethnic and political objectives, disrupting social order, and destroying opportunities for the Afghan people. He called on the group to "separate religion from politics" and, addressing them directly, said their stated aims wer...
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Iran: The Weapon We Already had: why sanctions Should Have been the Answer for Iran

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  The Weapon We Already Had: Why Sanctions Should Have Been the Answer for Iran By Wahab Raofi The smoke has cleared over the Persian Gulf, but the real damage to the Iranian regime is unfolding somewhere else entirely: the grocery store. Economic data out of Tehran, as of August 2026, paints a picture of a nation in freefall. Iran's inflation rate has surged past 89%, while food inflation has climbed even higher. Basic staples like meat and dairy have grown scarce on household tables. On the open market, the rial has collapsed to a historic low against the dollar. The country is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, weighed down by a budget deficit in the hundreds of trillions of toman. These figures are moving targets in an active conflict, and any writer citing them owes readers a date stamp — but even accounting for reporting noise, the direction is unmistakable. This financial ruin is the most overlooked element of the current Iran debate. It illustrates a point...
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