War / Asia-Pacific
Myanmar Civil War
Malaysia becomes the first maritime ASEAN state to invite Min Aung Hlaing as Russia embeds inside junta administration and resistance.
Durand Line
Pakistan spent decades backing the Afghan Taliban to keep a friendly government on its western border.
It got one in 2021, and the arrangement turned on it: the Taliban now shelters Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the insurgency that kills Pakistani soldiers at home. In October 2025 Pakistan bombed Kabul to hit TTP leaders, and the two countries have traded air strikes and ground assaults across the Durand Line ever since, a border no Afghan government has ever formally accepted. China mediates a ceasefire that keeps failing.
The war Pakistan built its Afghan policy to prevent is the one it now fights.
No direct phase change has occurred in the Pakistan-Afghanistan dyad since the March 2026 ceasefire collapsed in practice, but the strategic context shifted materially at Bishkek.
Pakistan assumed the SCO chairmanship on 1 September, locking in agenda-setting power through the 2027 Islamabad summit and gaining a sustained multilateral platform to press the TTP sanctuary dispute.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
SCOPE: Covers the interstate Pakistan-Afghanistan dyad. Pakistan's internal TTP and Baloch insurgencies are tracked separately under Pakistan Insurgency.
The ceasefire's fragility is structural, not procedural: the Taliban cannot expel TTP without fracturing its own ideological coalition, so no diplomatic framework resolves the core tension.
Pakistan's SCO chairmanship gives Islamabad a sustained multilateral platform through 2027, but the SCO's redefined security mandate now covers digital, financial, and criminal networks rather than armed extremism.
China mediating (Urumqi talks). Gulf states urging de-escalation. The TTP operates from Afghan territory and drives Pakistani cross-border strikes.
War / Asia-Pacific
Malaysia becomes the first maritime ASEAN state to invite Min Aung Hlaing as Russia embeds inside junta administration and resistance.
War / Asia-Pacific
Pakistan's two-front insurgency holds at record violence levels as Munir's military-first consolidation forecloses dialogue and Gwadar's rising strategic value sharpens.