Photo source: Foreign policy By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront The security situation in Nigeria is deteriorating for quite a while. Newer conflicts have been simmering in its region, surpassing the older ones, most recent being the north-western region conflict, which has been regarded six times deadlier than the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast that started in 2009. There is a bandit- extremist nexus in northwest Nigeria, which include local kidnappings and manslaughter. The official stance of this conflict by the government is ‘banditry’. However in actuality, there has been an ever growing evidence that the region is becoming a haven for Islamic groups linked to ISIS. It includes the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Ansaru, Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a splinter of Boko Haram, formed in 2016, popularly referred to as the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), and the Fulani herdsmen of West...

Photo source: Business standard By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront L ike Bush, Barack Obama wanted to win the war in Afghanistan ‘at all costs’. He deployed hundred thousand troops during the surge in 2010, which gradually went down, but the presence remained there. Trump’s policy, however, was of a contradistinction, where he wanted to end the ‘forever war’. The Biden administration took a step further, and announced a decision of withdrawal, as  he intended to extricate some 2,500 American troops, who are on the ground in Afghanistan, leaving a small force to guard the US diplomatic mission in Kabul.  Comparisons of US leaving Afghanistan have been made to the US withdrawal from Vietnam, just like in the Iraq war in 2011.   President Biden in April 2021 had announced that all American troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan   by September 11, 2021.   Unlike Trump, Biden had included NATO in making his decision to withdraw, and dispatched his Secretary...