by Ioannis Koskinas
// Krishnadev Calamur
Nearly a year since the Trump administration rolled out its South Asia strategy, carnage in Afghanistan continues even as negotiations for peace inches ahead.
Negotiations with the Taliban Won’t Give Afghanistan What it Needs by Ioannis Koskinas Talking to the Taliban While Still Fighting the Taliban
// Krishnadev Calamur Nearly a year since the Trump administration rolled out its South Asia strategy, carnage in Afghanistan continues even as negotiations for peace inches ahead.
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U.S., AFGHANISTAN:
Resolute Support Obscures Status of 7 Ghazni Districts As 3 More Fall to Taliban By Bill Roggio & Alexandra Gutowski, FDD's Long War Journal: “As the fight between the Afghan government and the Taliban for control of Ghazni City continues, three additional districts have been overrun by the Taliban.”
Taliban fighters rout Afghan security forces across country
(Task & Purpose) Afghan troops and police have suffered significant casualties and the Taliban still occupy Ghazni city. Reconciliation has fallen by the wayside.
UN: Iran-based leaders ‘have grown more prominent’ in al Qaeda’s global network
(Long War Journal) A recently released UN report contains intriguing details concerning the dispute between Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and al Qaeda’s senior leaders, including the role played by two veteran operatives living in Iran.
Iran is “categorically” rejecting a report by U.N. experts which says al-Qaida’s leaders in Iran “have grown more prominent” and have been working with the extremist group’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to influence events in Syria. - Associated Press
In an interview with a Saudi-owned media outlet published on Monday, ex-Mossad chief Tamir Pardo expressed doubt that Russia had the ability to remove Iran from Syria — a longstanding Israeli goal. - Algemeiner
Daniel J. Arbess writes: Palestinian Arabs, and self-styled progressives everywhere, need to realize it’s time to stop fighting lost battles and accept reality. Israel is the ancestral and legal homeland of the Jewish people. Its capital is Jerusalem, as the U.S. has belatedly recognized, with other countries following. Israel’s enemies lost the Six Day War more than 50 years ago and relinquished the West Bank and the ancient city of Jerusalem. - Wall Street Journal
Six suspects arrested over foiled church attack in Egypt Six suspected militants were arrested over their involvement in a failed suicide attack on a church near Cairo, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said on Sunday. On Saturday, a militant wearing an explosive belt detonated himself near a Coptic church in Qalyubiyah, north of Cairo, before he could approach the location due to heavy security presence. Authorities identified the man as Omar Mohamed Ahmed Mostafa, 29. He was reportedly a member of a cell plotting attacks across the country. The Egyptian army has been fighting an Islamist insurgency since the ouster of former Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Security forces stormed hideouts on Sunday used by militants in the northern Sinai Peninsula, killing 12 suspected militants. Separately, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and other leaders of the banned group were sentenced on Sunday to life in prison. Mohammed Badie and the other defendants were accused of incitement to violence during the 2013 protests. Read More
Hafiz Saeed’s status may undermine anti-terrorism promises BY KUNWAR KHULDUNE SHAHID Pakistan will submit a list of pledges to a taskforce monitoring money-laundering, but the murky political role of groups linked to Hafiz Saeed may be an issue Video from Ghazni City shows Taliban on streets as buildings ablaze State designates Iran-based Bahraini militant as terrorist Taliban seizes second district in Ghazni as provincial capital remains contested The Taliban’s mini Tet Offensive in Afghanistan
HAROUN MIR The Taliban have skillfully surprised the Afghan government and NATO’s military commanders in Afghanistan by overrunning the city of Ghazni, a strategic population center on the main highway linking Kabul to the west and southwest of the country. This surprise attack, while Kabul and Washington were distracted by the prospect of another ceasefire for the Eid al-Adha holidays next Monday, amounted to a mini Tet Offensive by the Taliban. According to media reports, the Taliban...
The interest group economics wreaking havoc on Iran's currency
Absent tackling such root issues as banking and financial sector reform, Iran’s political economy is likely to continue to shape government policy to the detriment of the economy and the society as a whole. Melissa Dalton writes: The United States must determine its sources of leverage, articulate its goals, connect those goals to a stabilization framework, and operationalize burden sharing under an eastern Syria framework. Failing this, the Assad regime will likely take over the east, which has proven to be the ultimate driver of instability and extremism in the country, with effects that will inevitably draw the United States back into the region. - Center for Strategic and International Studies Haitham Numan writes: Although Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has announced new investments worth three billion dollars for Basra and has pledged additional spending on housing, schools, and services in response to the protests, they have actually continued—spreading up to the capital. The persistence of these demonstrations poses an important question: who benefits from the expansion of these protests? And who benefits from the consequent faltering in Iraq’s oil supplies? - Washington Institute
Yochanan Visser writes: Iran is tightening the noose around Israel - not only in Syria where the Mossad reportedly killed the country’s most important missile scientist last Saturday - but also via its odd proxy Hamas, the Sunni Islamist terror organization that rules Gaza. - Arutz Sheva
HOW THE IRAN AL-QAEDA CONNECTION GROWS & THE DON EMASCULATED JOHN BOLTON "NO REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN"8/8/2018
Ahmad Majidyar, Gerald M. Feierstein, and Charles Lister write: By applying economic and diplomatic pressure, President Donald Trump hopes to force Tehran to negotiate a new deal with his administration. But it remains unclear if that goal is achievable in the absence of broad international support. - Middle East Institute Martin Chulov writes: For years, [his mother] has refused to talk about Osama, as has his wider family – throughout his two-decade reign as al-Qaida leader, a period that saw the strikes on New York and Washington DC, and ended more than nine years later with his death in Pakistan. Now, Saudi Arabia’s new leadership – spearheaded by the ambitious 32-year-old heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has agreed to my request to speak to the family. - The Guardian The Missile Arsenal at the Heart of the Israeli-Iranian Rivalry
From Stratfor Worldview: “Hezbollah and Iran have worked diligently to build up their weapons capabilities in an effort to exploit some of Israel's vulnerabilities, prompting the latter to draft a robust defense strategy against its greatest antagonists. Altogether, the situation ensures that the next war between the two sides could be a lot more damaging than their last battle in 2006.” Michael Doran on Theology, Zionism, and Foreign Policy
When it comes to foreign policy, America's most important division is not between Right and Left, argues Dr. Michael Doran. It is, rather, theological in nature, pitting the intellectual descendants of Protestant modernists against the heirs of the Protestant fundamentalist tradition. In a groundbreaking essay, "The Theology of Foreign Policy," Dr. Doran traces the intellectual history of these religious schools of thought from the Scopes "Monkey Trial" to contemporary debates about America's relationship with Israel. This week, he joins Jonathan Silver on the Tikvah Podcast to discuss his essay and how it can help us illuminate current foreign policy controversies about everything from Russia to the Middle East. An 'Arab NATO' And America's Militarized Mideast Policy quoting Fabrice Balanche via Asia Times The Donald Trump administration’s quiet push for a Saudi-led “Arab NATO,” tentatively known as the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), is emblematic of an increasingly destabilizing and militarized US policy toward the Middle East. In Turkey and Pakistan, discouraging elections Clifford D. May - The Washington Times Not so long ago, freedom and democracy seemed to be on the march in the world, with Turkey and Pakistan, two strategically important Muslim-majority nations, near the front of the parade. That turns out to have been an illusion. Elections recently held in these countries have, paradoxically, made that clear. In Turkey, votes cast in June gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan powers he has long coveted. He is now, effectively, head of state and government, the military and the judiciary. For quite some time now, he also has been censoring the media, instructing private industry and filling his jails with enemies and dissidents... Read more Iran works to offset coming US sanctions Iran is engaged in intense diplomacy ahead of the imminent reimposition of US sanctions. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met Thursday with his counterparts from Russia, Turkey, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, the Philippines and Vietnam on the sidelines of his trip to Singapore, where he is expected to sign an association agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "All stressed [the] expansion of ties, imperative of promoting multilateralism and resilience and innovation to preserve [the 2015 nuclear deal]," Zarif tweeted. Read More Iran announces new foreign exchange policy
The new governor of the Central Bank of Iran late Sunday announced new policies to prop up the sagging rial. Foreign exchange bureaus will be allowed to operate again, while imports of currency and gold will be exempt from taxes. On the same day, the spokesman for the judiciary announced the arrest of Ahmad Araghchi, the recently dismissed deputy governor of the Central Bank responsible for foreign exchange. Araghchi is a nephew of Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, who helped negotiate the nuclear deal. Read More
American efforts to cripple the Taliban drug trade in Afghanistan have fallen short of expectations, U.S. officials say, creating new challenges for the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken the insurgency as the warring parties try to jump start peace talks. - Wall Street Journal
C. J. Chivers writes: In early October, the Afghan war will be 17 years old, a milestone that has loomed with grim inevitability as the fighting has continued without a clear exit strategy across three presidential administrations. With this anniversary, prospective recruits born after the terrorist attacks of 2001 will be old enough to enlist. And Afghanistan is not the sole enduring American campaign. The war in Iraq, which started in 2003, has resumed and continues in a different form over the border in Syria. - New York Times
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