Christian Hawkes

April 3, 2021, brought shocking news of the arrest of top Jordanian officials for “security reasons,” including former finance minister Bassam Awadallah and Prince Hassan bin Zaid. Prince Hamzeh, son of the late King Hussein’s fourth wife and half-brother of current King Abdullah II, was also placed under house arrest, allegedly for “actions targeting Jordan’s security.” Jordan’s government quickly called it an attempted coup, backed by unspecified “foreign entities” threatening to destabilize the kingdom.

Summary

Late October 2019 saw border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan that led to the deaths of three Afghan civilians. These clashes began after Afghan forces and local militias stopped the Pakistani military from establishing a military installation along the border in eastern Kunar province. Afghan sources claimed that Pakistani forces fired mortars and rockets at villages in the border district of Nari during these clashes.

On September 5, 2019, a suicide car bombing ripped through downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, killing ten people, including a U.S. soldier. The Taliban claimed responsibility for this and another attack three days earlier that killed sixteen people just east of the capital city. In response, President Donald Trump publicly called off a secret meeting with Taliban officials scheduled for that weekend and declared that peace negotiations were “dead.” This breakdown in talks marks the ninth time that talks have been proposed and subsequently fallen apart since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in 2001.

Recent terror attacks have brought renewed scrutiny to a Pakistan-based Taliban branch. The group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for a roadside bomb blast in northwestern Pakistan in August that targeted members of a peace committee aiding the Pakistani government. It also claimed responsibility for an attack that killed one Pakistani soldier in the North Waziristan region, near the border with Afghanistan, in September.