Manish Rai

After facing the toughest challenge of his political career to date, Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got re-elected to a third term. Defeating Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of the six-party strong opposition alliance. Erdogan prevailed over Kilicdaroglu in a run-off election held on May 28 after the first round of voting did not produce a […]

Recently in the last few months, there have been a lot of diplomatic initiatives taken up by the Gulf states to improve relations with Damascus. Most important of them was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. This meeting is viewed as the most significant step towards […]

Ambassador Ajit Gupte, a senior diplomat from Indian Foreign Service (IFS), is currently serving as the Indian Ambassador to Egypt. We are presently witnessing a deepening of Indo-Egyptian ties, as was evident from the recent visit of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to New Delhi as the Chief Guest of the 74th Republic Day of […]

Balochistan-Pakistan’s largest province in terms of area-has been rocked by massive protests and sit-in demonstrations for quite a time now. The “Haq Do Tehreek” (Give rights Movement) leader Maulana Hidayat Ur Rehman was arrested and sent to police remand by an anti-terrorism court in Quetta. He had been arrested earlier in January for inciting violence […]

Recently, the Taliban ordered an indefinite ban on university education for the country’s women, the ministry of higher education said in a letter issued to all government and private universities. Before this drastic decision last year, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was dissolved. And the sinister Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention […]

For decades, the Baloch insurgency has been termed as a low-intensity conflict confined mostly to Balochistan, the country’s largest province by territory. But that seems to have changed, as a spate of attacks that have taken place this year demonstrate that insurgency has entered a crucial new phase. Despite an intensive crackdown on rebels, the […]

With the recent killing of Al-Qaeda (AQ) chief Ayman al-Zawahri in the Afghan capital, Kabul, a lot of speculation is happening about the future of this terror outfit. Some analysts are even going to the extent of suggesting that Al-Qaeda is nearing its end. But certainly, that is highly unlikely. The group survived its ideological […]

The ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has taken effect in the Gaza Strip after days of cross-border fighting triggered by surprise Israeli airstrikes. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said its aerial bombardment was a pre-emptive action aimed at preventing rocket attacks planned by PIJ against Israeli targets. In retaliation for airstrikes, […]

Recently India has reinvented its engagement policy with the Taliban. In the first week of June, a high-level Indian diplomatic delegation led by J P Singh, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs held a meeting with the Taliban’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in the Afghan capital. This was the first-ever official […]

The Taliban have firm control over Afghanistan. At this point in time, there are no opponents capable of undermining their positions in terms of military, political, or even economic resources. Also, there have been no meaningful changes in the radical ideology of the Taliban. It is still a militant group ruling over a UN member […]