Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) Interior Minister Sarajuddin Haqqani met with border security and Kuchis during a visit to Kost province on Wednesday.
According to the ministry, Haqqani met with the two groups, along with locals, in a remote area in Gurbaz district close to the Durand Line.
US special representative for Afghanistan Thomas West said Wednesday that former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had freedom in Kabul prior to his death and that Washington “is deeply concerned about a number of other terrorist groups active in Afghanistan”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Russian reserves this month will almost certainly exacerbate internal divisions within Russia by highlighting his regime’s poor military-personnel policies. This should prompt Ukraine and its Western allies to prepare for an onslaught of poorly trained, disjointed troops.
Long a controversial figure both at home and abroad over her party’s direct lineage from Italy’s neo-fascist movement, Giorgia Meloni is now expected to become the country’s newest prime minister after her party secured the most votes in Sunday’s election. Her controversial views on migration, erstwhile fascination with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, anti-LGBTQ stance, and open criticism toward the European Union (EU) have all contributed to her image as an unsavory right-wing politician.
An Embattled Regime Faces Mass Protests—and an Ailing Supreme Leader
Early this month, the Iranian rumor mill cranked into overdrive amid reports that Iran’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who survived prostate cancer surgery in 2014, was again gravely ill. On September 16, the New York Times reported that emergency bowel surgery had left Khamenei bedridden and too frail to sit upright, citing four anonymous sources said to be “familiar with his health situation.” In the wilder corners of Persian-language social media, claims that Khamenei was on his deathbed gave way to speculation that he had already died. As has happened for more than a decade, such rumors quickly morphed into feverish conjecture about how Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the body of 88 Islamic jurists who choose the supreme leader, would select Khamenei’s successor and lively debate over the relative merits of the clerics jockeying for the role.
Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of Sudan’s military coup, which toppled the transitional government created in 2019 after the overthrow of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Almost a year after Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s military chief, announced what he described as his “corrective measures,” the country is faced not just with a stalemated transition but also a chaotic, paralyzed political landscape.
The Sunday general elections that saw a right-wing alliance led by far-right candidate Giorgia Meloni win a resounding majority in both upper and lower houses of the Italian legislative will likely see her national conservative European political family becoming the third-largest bloc in European Council by population.
Iraqi parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbusi resigned from his post but is expected to be re-elected.
The Iraqi parliament announced today that it will hold a session on Sept. 28 to vote on parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbusi’s resignation.
Halbusi was elected last January by the triple alliance of Shiite Sadrists, the Sunni Taqaddum bloc and the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Syrian Kurds in the areas of the Syrian opposition welcomed the decision to launch a program to teach the Kurdish language at the opposition-affiliated Free Aleppo University in the city of Azaz.
The Free Aleppo University, affiliated with the Syrian opposition’s Interim Government, in Azaz in the northern countryside of Aleppo has started a training program for teaching the Kurdish language.
Kyrgyzstan’s use of Turkish drones in a border dispute with Tajikistan leaves Turkey in a tight spot on how to balance its ties in Central Asia, a region where it has long sought to expand its influence.
Turkey’s efforts to add strategic depth to its ties with Central Asia appear to have hit a stumbling block, albeit not a big one, amid controversy over Kyrgyzstan’s use of Turkish combat drones in border clashes with Tajikistan.