Taliban infighting following the death of Mullah Omar is giving Islamic State an opportunity to expand its presence in Afghanistan.

A sudden uptick in Taliban attacks in northern Afghanistan has some worried about the security of the Silk Road initiative.

This backgrounder examines the growing network of official and unofficial Islamic State affiliates around the world.

Amid fears of an expanding ISIS presence and a UN report decrying the country’s deteriorating security outlook, the Obama administration is poised to abandon its plans for a sweeping drawdown of the US military presence in Afghanistan.

Though the ISIS presence in Afghanistan is as yet nowhere near that of Iraq and Syria, the militant group is making inroads into what was formerly the sole domain of the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s vast resource wealth is supposed to take over the reins of economic development when foreign aid dries up. But three of the biggest joint ventures in the country’s mineral and energy sectors suggest that this won’t be the case.

A persistent flaw of Western policy towards Afghanistan is treating the country as a unitary whole, the way democratic optimists imagine it to be, instead of a patchwork of competing ethnic and tribal identities – the way it actually is.

Discussion has often focused on the dynamics of the Afghanistan-Pakistan-India triangle. But there’s another contender in the arena of Afghan politics – Iran.

Arch-rivals India and Pakistan have a lot at stake in the future of Afghan politics.

Despite NATO’s twelve-year effort to establish a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, the country remains fragile, and Taliban militia groups are still capable of launching major attacks against key strategic regions in Kabul and other major Afghan cities.