Month: May 2019

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Published on June 15, 2017 in The National Interest

When the Afghan government hosted the first meeting of the Kabul Process for Peace and Security Cooperation on June 6, 2017, terrorists carried out a suicide attack on the ancient Great Mosque of Herat, killing ten fasting worshipers and wounding over twenty others. This followed back-to-back terrorist attacks that killed and injured more than seven hundred innocent civilians in Kabul in less than a week. In flagrant violation of the core tenets of Islam, a religion of peace and tolerance, and the key principles of international humanitarian law, this and many other terrorist attacks on Muslims and non-Muslims around the world have been carried out during the holy month of Ramadan.

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Afghanistan’s Forgotten Humanitarian CrisisPublished on June 09, 2016 in The Diplomat Magazine

Afghanistan is a facing a complex humanitarian crisis, stemming from the many challenges that have confronted Afghanistan over the past four decades.

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Published on September 11, 2015 in The Foreign Policy

Just a few days before the tragedy of 9/11 fourteen years ago, Afghanistan had been a pariah, forgotten state in the international system. Landlocked and surrounded by predatory neighbors at the time, the Afghan people and their beautiful homeland, once the “Garden of Central Asia,” had become the battleground of proxy conflicts since 1979.

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Terrorizing Afghanistan in the Name of IslamPublished on May 29, 2015 in The Diplomat

Last April, the Aligarh Muslim University in India convened a high-profile international conference on the “Intellectual Crisis of the Muslim Ummah: Rethinking Traditional Solutions.” Of the four thematic questions posed in a bid to provoke thoughtful, open-minded discussion, this author found the question of “Is a United Islam Possible?” relevant to the Afghan security context, which has been shaped by regional and extra-regional players, largely involving Muslim countries or countries with a sizeable Muslim population. Building on the discussion of the above question at the conference, this piece explores whether a common religion can actually unite nation-states.

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Published on September 02, 2015 in The Foreign Policy

In the next couple of days, Afghanistan is hosting the sixth Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA VI) in Kabul, where RECCA was first held in 2005. This regional initiative followed the signing by Afghanistan’s neighbors of the Kabul Declaration on Good Neighborly Relations in December 2002, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States to be commemorated soon.

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Published on January 08, 2019 in The Diplomat Magazine
In early May 1992, Mujahideen resistance fighters entered Kabul, laying claim to Afghanistan’s capital after the collapse of the communist regime. At the time, the city had not been severely damaged by warfare and Soviet occupation. The 27 years since then have not been kind to Kabul, though. One reason that no one has been able to put a stop to Afghanistan’s cycle of violence is that regional and international political interests have, for the last 40 years, eclipsed the best interests of the Afghan people. Continue reading