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ORF Special Report No. 125, December 2020, Observer Research Foundation.
This special report was written before the 2020 United States presidential elections. Under the incoming Biden administration, the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan is likely to be more gradual and “responsible”, despite the President-elect being in favour of American troops exiting the war-weary country soon. In retrospect, Donald Trump’s insistence on pulling out all US troops from Afghanistan by Christmas 2020 was not misguided, since there is little that such military presence can achieve at this stage of the war. The situation is sealed by some neighbouring nations acting as spoilers in the peace process, impeding American efforts to help bring stability to Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia-UAE dynamics
The Saudi-UAE combine is also ostensibly wary of the “Erdogan-effect” on Pakistan
The writer is a retired major general and has an interest in International Relations and Political Sociology. He can be reached at [email protected] and tweets @20 Inam
Alot has happened, at least in the perceptual domain, since August 27, 2020, when I wrote “The imperatives of Pak-Saudi relations”, published in this space. And perceptions are critical to any relationship. Then… the interdependent nature of our historic and deep-rooted ties was emphasised. However, in the past six months, there have been some defining developments that would continue to underpin Pak-Saudi bilateral ties as long as Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) holds the reins of the kingdom.
Islamabad – Pakistan has “categorically reject[ed]” statements by India’s foreign minister regarding “cross-border terrorism”, in which he appeared to be making a thinly veiled dig at India’s western neighbour.
In a statement issued late on Sunday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry termed the remarks by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar as “baseless allegations”.
“Pakistan categorically rejects terrorism-related insinuations by the Indian External Affairs Minister and other political figures today,” read the Pakistani statement. “Regurgitating of baseless allegations does not turn them into truth.”
Jaishankar made the remarks while delivering a lecture in New Delhi on Sunday, which marked the 19th anniversary of the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that killed nine people and led to a tense military standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbours.