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Iran is hosting a meeting of... the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia holding talks in the Iranian capital Tehran on Afghanistan's political future and the formation of a new government...Iran's population is majority Shiite but Sunni minorities live predominantly in the areas near the border with Afghanistan. The Sunnis have long complained about discrimination by Iranian authorities.Due to dilapidated infrastructure and a lack of health and educational facilities, the areas near the Afghan border are the poorest and least developed in Iran...But Fatemeh Aman, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI),...

Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout. A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet...

Afghanistan’s professional class of men and women, part of a generation that came of age under the shield of the U.S. military, are weighing the danger of rapidly advancing Taliban forces. Many are packing their bags... Long before President Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal in April, hundreds of thousands of Afghans had fled to Europe, Australia and the U.S. Now, many of the well-educated people who prospered in the new Afghanistan and hadn’t dreamed of leaving have also concluded that staying put is no longer an option.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan on January 10 claimed that India is backing the Islamic State (IS) and facilitating attacks in the country. Khan’s statement came a week after 11 Shia Hazara coal miners were brutally massacred by IS affiliated militants. In the interim, the Pakistani premier labeled the mourning families as “blackmailers” for refusing to bury their dead until Khan visits them to hear their demands for justice and security. Protesting with unburied coffins has become a means of expressing outrage against the state for the Shia Hazaras, thousands of whom have been targeted and killed since the turn...

When Syria’s civil war erupted, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recruited, trained, and deployed thousands of Shi’ite fighters to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Among them was the Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised mainly of Afghans from the country's Shi'ite Hazara minority. From 2011, the IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi'a inside Afghanistan. The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan are Sunni, but around 15 percent of its population -- mainly Hazara -- are Shi’a with religious links to the Shi'ite majority in Iran. With the...

Where Is Assad Getting His Fighters From? (It's Not Just Lebanon and Iraq) Colin P. ClarkePhillip Smyth January 2, 2018 In early December, senior Trump administration officials suggested that approximately 80 percent of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s defense against insurgents in the country’s ongoing civil war is being provided by forces imported from outside of the country. The lion’s share of these fighters is being trained and equipped by Iran, the Assad regime’s most ardent supporter. Interestingly, however, these foreign fighters, almost of all which are Shia Muslims, are not merely comprised of Lebanese and Iraqis, but include significant numbers...

Iran has 25,000 Shiite fighters in Syria, says ex-Shin Bet chief Likud MK Avi Dichter warns Tehran has not abandoned its nuclear aspirations and seeks to rebuild the Persian empire By Times of Israel staff November 3, 2016, 10:34 pm Iran commands a force of up to 25,000 Shiite Muslim militants fighting in the Syrian civil war, a majority of them from Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter, who now chairs the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign...

Thousands of Iran-backed fighters converge on Aleppo amid deadly Syria airstrikes Published September 26, 2016 As deadly airstrikes pounded Aleppo, Syria over the weekend, a major foreign ground force was also converging on the region. As many as 3,000 Iranian-backed fighters have arrived in Aleppo supporting the Syrian regime in its fight to crush the rebellion, two U.S. officials confirm to Fox News. There are an estimated 250,000 Syrian civilians trapped in Aleppo facing an onslaught of Russian and Syrian bombs, according to reports. The Iranian-backed Shiite militias include fighters from neighboring Iraq as well as Afghanistan, officials say. Many...

Afghans Go to Syria to Fight for Its Government, and Anguish Results By KAREEM FAHIM JULY 28, 2016 HERAT, Afghanistan — One woman here in the western Afghan city of Herat said she had begged her son not to go fight in the Syrian war, but he charged off anyway, leaving a wife and three children behind. A man overhearing her story came over to say that his son had left two months ago, and since then the family has been desperate for news about him. Another woman, Khadija, whose son Hassan had joined Afghan brigades fighting alongside the Syrian...

Many of his foreign fighters come from Afghanistan -- men like Murad, who is now being held in Aleppo as a prisoner-of-war... All he had wanted was an Iranian residence permit, he says... he found himself fighting as a mercenary in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Bashar Assad regime... When a violent explosion caused the house he was in to collapse, he found himself thinking about his daughters, he says. "I screamed and thought I was suffocating. And then, everything around me was quiet." Men arrived and pulled Murad, who was still screaming, out of the...

April 14, 1999, Wednesday COMMITTEE HEARING SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS: SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH U.S. SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS) HOLDS HEARING ON THE CRISIS IN AFGANISTAN  WASHINGTON, D.C. SPEAKERS: U.S. SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS), CHAIRMAN U.S. SENATOR JOHN ASHCROFT (R-MO) U.S. SENATOR GORDON H. SMITH (R-OR) U.S. SENATOR ROD GRAMS (R-MN) U.S. SENATOR CRAIG THOMAS (R-WY) U.S. SENATOR PAUL DAVID WELLSTONE (D-MN), RANKING MEMBER U.S. SENATOR ROBERT G. TORRICELLI (D-NJ) U.S. SENATOR PAUL S. SARBANES (D-MD) U.S. SENATOR CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT) U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DANA ROHRABACHER (R-CA) THE HONORABLE KARL F. INDERFURTH ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SOUTH ...

Soldier fulfilling promise to deliver Afghani rug to president BY BECKY MALKOVICH, THE SOUTHERN U.S. Army Lt. Col. Grayson Gile of Marion holds up a rug that he received while serving in Afghanistan as a member of the Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force. The men that gave it to him asked if he could get the rug to President Bush, who is depicted in the center of the rug.(STEVE JAHNKE/THE SOUTHERN) MARION - Grayson Gile may have completed his broader mission in Afghanistan as a member of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, but he returned stateside with...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...