Humayun Shafi

Islamic State (IS) has firmly held onto the large territories that it has seized in Iraq and Syria for a year. In May, the group seized Tadmur and the ruins of Palmyra in Syria and Ramadi, Iraq, which makes the claims of the weakening of IS seem self-deceptive. Through social media, IS is attracting youth […]

In June last year, Islamic State (IS) captured vast territories in both Iraq and Syria, bringing it into global prominence for the reach and speed of its conquests. It started from Fallujah in Iraq with about 2,000 fighters that defeated two divisions of the Iraqi army and, by mid-June, IS had occupied vast territories. Important […]

The recent past in the Middle East and North Africa has seen an ever-increasing trend of violence, political disputes turning into wars and insurgencies turning into militant sectarianism. Rising violence worsens with the passage of time. Sadly, the situation is entangled and defies solutions to cycles of violence. The Middle East today is the outcome […]

Conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa are showing no signs of leading to any peaceful conclusion. Conflicts have variously been called existential and generational. By any name the present situation has caused immense human misery, mass killings, destruction of cities and a tragic Syrian refugee problem: four million Syrian refugees, left mostly to […]

The US will train a militia of ‘moderate rebels’ from Syria, 5,000 fighters to dislodge President Bashar al-Assad. These moderate rebels will be trained by US experts in Saudi Arabia. No clear definition of a moderate rebel has been provided but one can imagine it will be one of the same groups previously supported since […]

Efforts to contain the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are an inadequate response to a serious challenge. ISIS is known in Arabic as Daulat-i-Islamiyah fil Iraq wal Sham (Daish). It is an ideologically motivated organisation and has committed cadres. The plans of the US-led coalition of 60 countries to defeat ISIS, mainly through […]

It is unfortunate that peace and prosperity have evaded us. The reasons might be many and people may have their own interpretations. Many policies, methods and machinations have been tried but still Pakistan is finding it difficult to attain a desirable level of peace and prosperity. The rise of a nation is a consequence of […]

There is a serious challenge of terrorism before us today, for which apparently no short-term solutions are available. Pakistan’s involvement in the long Soviet-Afghan war created many terrorism-related problems. Basically, it was a Cold War engagement that turned violent beyond all estimation. One often wonders at the justification of entering the war and the formation […]

By May 1988, the first of the Soviet troops started leaving Afghanistan; the Cold War was reaching an end and the iron curtain was slowly melting away. President Reagan visited the USSR in May 1988. While on a tour of Red Square, a reporter asked him if he still considered the Soviet Union an ‘evil […]

A recently released UN report warns of the adverse effects of the opium trade in Afghanistan. It projects that the drug trade will increase while the ‘legal’ economy will shrink in 2014 in view of the reduction in aid. Poppy cultivation in 2013 is 36 percent higher than in the previous year. According to the […]