South East Asia

The Chinese Communist Party’s overarching strategy for the next five to fifteen years, apparently, is to accelerate China’s rise by becoming an innovation superpower, technologically independent of the West and dominating global tech.

One of the great causes of tension between China, the US and other Western countries is how the CCP carries out its goal of becoming a dominant technological power — by using deception and theft.

The Biden administration is reportedly looking to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past a May 1 deadline while exploring a deal in which the Taliban would allow a U.S. counter-terrorism force to remain as they confront their Islamic State foes, a top U.S. lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Reuters reported that House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith’s comments provided new details of U.S. President Joe Biden’s possible decision on the exit plan.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday at a press conference in Brussels pledged to “rebuild and revitalize” the NATO military alliance and to share American plans on any possible withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Taliban ruled for five years in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, establishing an Islamic emirate system. What is an Islamic emirate and what transpired during the Taliban’s five-year emirate in Afghanistan?

The Taliban’s Islamic emirate came to power in 1996 while the country was embroiled in a civil war that followed the fall of the Soviet-backed president, Dr. Najibullah, in the early 1990s. The Taliban’s emirate was originally established in Kandahar, under the leadership of Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s founding leader. After their establishment in Kandahar, the group rapidly captured wider territories in Afghanistan and soon established their emirate in Kabul, which held power for five years until being toppled by the US and its Afghan allies.

Now that we are fewer than 50 days away from the start of the Biden administration, it is worth considering how U.S. counterterrorism policy priorities will shift. We should anticipate the Biden foreign policy team — led by Secretary of State-designee Antony Blinken, U.S. Ambassador-designee to the United Nations Linda Thomas Greenfield and incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan — will reinvigorate U.S. multilateral counterterrorism efforts at the United Nations and elsewhere.

From drug revenue to extortion to charitable donations, the Taliban has plenty of avenues to fill their coffers.

The Taliban militants of Afghanistan have grown richer and more powerful since their fundamentalist Islamic regime was toppled by U.S. forces in 2001.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has died of natural causes in Afghanistan, according Afghanistan and Pakistan media on Friday.

Taiwan has two defense procurement deals with the United States in the pipeline for 2021, worth approximately US$8 billion, Vice Defense Minister Chang Che-ping (張哲平) said Monday during a legislative hearing.