OIC’s Makkah Summit Objectives, Achievements and Challenges By Mairaj ul Hamid Nasri Inaugural meeting of the 14th Summit of Millat-e-Islamia’s sole representative “Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)” was held on May 31st in the holy city of Makkah. The summit ended up with the signing of an MOU among the heads of states/governments of Muslim-majority countries. OIC, the second largest …

‘Searching For the Enemy’ The startling revelation that the Taliban’s founder Amir and its supremo, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had lived and died in Afghanistan’s Zabul province – not in Pakistan as international media has relentlessly propagated – has created many ambiguities, and has also put a big question mark against the performance of many international agencies focusing on Afghanistan during …

Moscow Format, Regional Consensus and the Way Forward The Afghan Peace Process is moving ahead with a number of initiatives and processes started by different countries having their own perspectives on peacemaking. Apart from many sessions held between Taliban and the United States to negotiate for peace in Afghanistan – in Abu Dhabi and Doha – regional states are striving …

Politics, Security, Peace Talks and Prospects Afghanistan has spent another year in the shadow of volatile security situation, crumbling economic conditions, unpredictable political environment and scarcity of resources, as well as some new developments that have created hopes for a comparatively stable Afghanistan in the year 2019. Among those few new developments, the most important one is the holding of …

Zalmay Khalilzad, a veteran US diplomat, has been tasked, by Trump administration of the United States of America, with leading efforts to end the drawn-out war in Afghanistan, and planning a result-oriented peace dialogue directly with the Taliban representatives. Mr Khalilzad is a blunt interlocutor having a history of hawkish views on foreign policy issues. He has decades of experience …

Among many daunting issues and challenges Prime Minister Imran Khan has inherited from the PML-N government on internal and external fronts, the one related to handling Afghanistan crisis is perhaps the most critical. In his very first telephonic conversation with US Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, the issue of terrorism and fighting militancy in Afghanistan became a hot topic and …

The Afghan peace process has entered a new – perhaps the decisive – phase as the United States has offered to hold direct talks with the Taliban, for which the latter were waiting and had been pressing since long. Although the United States has been involved in negotiations since their efforts at making peace with the Taliban began in 2005, …

Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) does not exist anymore with the same name and status. The outgoing PML-N government did a historic job when it merged the region administered by the federation with the adjacent province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the 31st constitutional amendment. However, it is to be noted here that this merger was not a decision taken overnight …

Issues and Challenges Pakistan and Afghanistan are interlinked in multidimensional areas, ranging from cultural relations to political ties and from religious bonds to trade links. The trade relations between the two countries are as old as their bilateral diplomatic relationship. As Afghanistan is a landlocked country, Pakistan has been providing transit route to Afghanistan under Article 5 of the General …

Recent developments in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations in the form of flurry of meetings and the reciprocal visits of Pakistani and Afghan leaders during recent weeks are a good omen for an improved relationship between the two countries. It is an undeniable fact that Pakistan and Afghanistan have common interests, shared future and shared destiny owing to uncountable reasons and factors. One …