Iran’s present strategic economic condition is best understood not as a story of simple destruction, nor as a story of stoic resilience, but as a story of exposure. The war has revealed, with unusual clarity, the underlying structure of the Iranian economy: concentrated, brittle, heavily dependent on a few hydrocarbon chokepoints, and far less insulated from maritime coercion than the language of “resistance economy” ever suggested. Tehran entered this phase of conflict believing it could turn the Strait of Hormuz into a weapon against the world. What the war has increasingly shown, however, is that Hormuz is also the narrow artery through which Iran itself continues to breathe.

That is the defining paradox. Iran has used the Strait as an instrument of pressure, disruption, and strategic blackmail. Yet the same geography that gives Tehran leverage over others also imposes severe limits on its own endurance. The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s essential maritime bottlenecks, carrying roughly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade as well as substantial volumes of liquefied natural gas and fertilizers. UN Trade and Development has warned that disruption there has already pushed shipping activity to a near standstill and amplified global pressures on trade, prices, and financial stability.

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- if it lasts another 4–6 weeks

- or if it lasts until November

Note: We continue to assess that the U.S. will declare ‘mission accomplished’ as and when it is able to reduce Iranian missile forces to a level where they no longer pose an unmanageable risk to Israel and the GCC states. How long that will take, however, is unclear at this point. Moreover, the longer the war continues, the more likely unexpected escalation pressure points will emerge that could extend the course of the war. November will see U.S. mid-term elections, which will create new domestic political realities. While the effects of the elections on the war (should it still be ongoing) are unclear, the mid-terms seem a reasonable stopping point for this analysis.

As of 30 March 2026, the war that began on 28 February has already produced what the International Energy Agency calls the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. The IEA says Brent is up roughly 55% since hostilities began, Dutch TTF gas is about 70% higher, diesel and jet-fuel benchmarks in Asia have more than doubled, and crude and product flows through the Strait of Hormuz have fallen from around 20 million barrels a day before the war to a trickle. Public market coverage on 30 March also placed Brent around $116 a barrel, with Asian equities falling as investors priced in a wider regional war.

Our central judgment is that the world is not dealing with “just” an oil-price spike. It is dealing with a combined oil, LNG, refined-fuels, shipping, fertilizer, metals, inflation, and confidence shock.

- If the war lasts only another 4–6 weeks, the global economy probably suffers a sharp stagflationary slowdown but avoids a full generalized recession.

- If it lasts until November, the odds rise materially that the world shifts from a temporary shock into a more durable period of rationing, tighter financial conditions, and recession in several major importing regions.

These forward-looking ranges are our estimates, but they are grounded in the current scale of disruption, the limited bypass capacity around Hormuz, the already-fragile and threatened Red Sea shipping system, and the OECD’s warning that even its current downgraded outlook assumes the disruption begins to moderate from mid-2026.

The most important fact for the world economy is geographic, not political: too much trade passes through too few maritime arteries. The Strait of Hormuz accounted in 2024 and early 2025 for about one-fifth of global oil and petroleum-product consumption, more than one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade, and about one-fifth of global LNG trade. The EIA also estimates that 84% of the crude and condensate and 83% of the LNG moving through Hormuz went to Asian markets, which means Asia takes the first-round shock hardest.

The second critical artery is the Red Sea-Suez-Bab al-Mandab system. EIA says that in the first half of 2025, about 4.9 million barrels a day of crude and petroleum products moved through the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline, while about 4.2 million barrels a day moved through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Those flows were already roughly half 2023 levels because shipping had been pushed away by earlier Houthi attacks. Bab al-Mandab remains central to trade moving toward Suez, with about 12% of world trade typically passing through that corridor and roughly a quarter of global container trade touching it on the way to and from the canal. In other words, the world entered this war with one chokepoint already degraded.

That matters because the current war has turned what used to be “alternative routes” into the main routes. Saudi Arabia and the UAE do have some capacity to bypass Hormuz, but IEA says only Saudi and UAE crude lines can reroute flows around Hormuz and together may have about 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels a day of available extra capacity in 2026. That is useful, but nowhere near enough to replace normal Hormuz traffic.

Why the global economic shock is broader than oil

The first shock transmission channel is the obvious one: energy supply and price. The IEA says global oil supply is projected to plunge by 8 million barrels a day over March, Gulf oil production has already been cut by more than 11 million barrels a day, and LNG supply has been reduced by around 20%. It also says Qatar and the UAE have lost more than 300 million cubic meters a day of LNG supply via Hormuz disruption, equal to more than 2 billion cubic meters a week. That is why this shock is more dangerous than a normal geopolitical oil rally: it is not only crude, but gas as well.

The second shock transmission channel is refined products, which hit households and industry faster than crude itself. The Gulf exported 3.3 million barrels a day of refined oil products and 1.5 million barrels a day of LPG in 2025, and the IEA says more than 3 million barrels a day of refining capacity in the region has already shut because of attacks and the lack of viable export outlets. It also warns there is little flexibility elsewhere to raise diesel and jet-fuel output enough to fully compensate. That is the mechanism through which trucking, aviation, farming, construction, mining, and emergency power generation start to feel pain even before the full macroeconomic slowdown shows up in GDP data.

The third shock transmission channel is shipping and logistics. UNCTAD’s 2025 review says Red Sea rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope extended voyage times, reduced effective capacity, and raised operating costs, with freight rates in 2024 approaching COVID-era peaks and volatility continuing into 2025. Renewed danger in Bab al-Mandab again threatens the route that ties the Red Sea to the Suez Canal, meaning more ships would be forced around southern Africa just as energy shippers are already scrambling for safer passages. This is how an energy shock turns into an everything shock: more fuel burned, longer transit times, lower vessel availability, less schedule reliability, and higher costs for manufacturers and retailers far from the Middle East.

The fourth shock transmission channel is inflation and monetary policy. The OECD’s March 2026 interim outlook says global GDP growth is now expected to slow to 2.9% in 2026, explicitly because the Middle East energy shock is raising costs and lowering demand. It also says G20 inflation is projected to be 1.2 percentage points higher than previously expected in 2026, reaching 4.0%, and warns central banks may need to adjust policy if price pressures broaden or growth weakens substantially. So governments are now trapped between two bad options: let households absorb more of the shock through higher prices, or cushion them and accept wider deficits and slower progress on debt reduction.

The fifth shock transmission channel is supply chains for key non-energy inputs. The IEA says more than 30% of global trade in urea moves through Hormuz, along with about 20% of ammonia and phosphate trade. Around half of global seaborne sulfur trade also moves through the strait, and the Gulf produces roughly 8% of global aluminum supply. This means the war affects agriculture, food prices, chemicals, smelting, packaging, construction, and manufacturing at the same time. The commodity map here is broader than oil and gas, which is why the global economic risk rises sharply as the conflict persists.

The sixth channel for shock transmission is confidence and financial repricing. The OECD says financial conditions have tightened and volatility has increased, particularly in parts of Asia. Oil is hovering around $110-115, Asian equities are down sharply, and market attention was shifting from pure inflation fears toward growth and labor-market damage from a longer energy shock. That matters because once firms lose visibility on shipping, fuel, and input costs simultaneously, they start delaying investment, preserving cash, and shortening procurement horizons.

The regions most exposed

Asia is the main zone of immediate exposure. EIA estimates that 84% of Hormuz crude and 83% of Hormuz LNG normally flow to Asia, and the IEA says almost 90% of LNG exported via Hormuz in 2025 was destined for Asia, accounting for more than a quarter of the region’s total LNG imports. That makes China, India, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines the places where energy affordability, industrial margins, and current-account pressure collide first. There is clear immediate market anxiety in Asia, but the deeper issue is structural: Asia is where the physical dependency sits.

For China, the risk is not simply higher import costs. It is that higher oil, gas, petrochemical, and freight costs arrive just as China is still relying on industrial momentum and external demand to support growth. The OECD still expects China to grow 4.4% in 2026 under its moderated-disruption baseline, but that forecast assumes conditions begin easing from mid-year. If the war lasts to November, China would still likely avoid outright recession because of state capacity and policy tools, but it would probably grow materially below its current path and face renewed industrial margin compression.

For Japan and South Korea, the problem is more acute because they are major energy importers with less tolerance for prolonged price spikes. Neither can easily swap out imported Gulf energy on short notice. Japan also faces direct shipping exposure through Suez-linked trade, while South Korea’s refining, petrochemical, and manufacturing base is highly sensitive to both crude and product costs. Even if these economies avoid deep recession, they are among the first likely to move into the classic war-shock pattern of weaker real income, tighter margins, and slower corporate spending. That is an inference from their import profile and from the EIA’s destination data, not an official forecast.

Europe is somewhat less directly dependent on Gulf crude than Asia, but it is deeply exposed to the second-round effects: LNG competition, diesel and jet-fuel tightness, chemical feedstocks, and Red Sea-Suez shipping costs. The IEA says Dutch TTF gas is about 70% higher since the war began, while the OECD now expects euro area growth to slow to 0.8% in 2026. Europe’s weakness is that it is once again paying a geopolitical premium for energy at a time when industrial competitiveness is already fragile.

The United States is more insulated physically, but not exempt. The EIA says U.S. imports from Persian Gulf countries through Hormuz were only about 0.5 million barrels a day in 2024, equal to roughly 2% of U.S. petroleum-liquids consumption, the lowest level in nearly forty years. But crude is globally priced, so American consumers still face higher fuel costs, airlines still face higher jet-fuel prices, and financial markets still absorb the same geopolitical shock. The U.S. is less vulnerable than Europe or Asia to physical shortage, but not to global price formation.

The Gulf states themselves are in the most paradoxical position. In theory, a producer benefits from higher prices. In practice, a producer under missile and drone threat benefits only if it can still move volume and keep critical systems operating. The IEA says traffic through Hormuz is essentially halted, storage is filling up, and output cuts are already severe. So the GCC is experiencing some of the worst features of wartime economics at once: lost exports, infrastructure vulnerability, higher insurance and security costs, and the risk that basic systems such as power and desalinated water become part of the target set.

The biggest losers beyond the immediate region are fuel- and food-importing emerging economies. They are hit through three channels at once: higher import bills, weaker currencies, and more expensive fertilizer and shipping. The OECD explicitly warns that persistent Middle East export disruption could aggravate shortages of key commodities, add to inflation, reduce growth, and trigger wider financial repricing. In lower-income importers, that often translates into fiscal stress, emergency subsidies, import compression, and eventually social pressure.

Scenario 1: if the war lasts another 4–6 weeks

For this scenario, our base assumption is that the war continues through late April or mid-May, Hormuz remains only partially functional, the current IEA stock release continues, there is no full Bab al-Mandab closure, and damage to GCC export and utility infrastructure remains serious but not catastrophic. Under those assumptions, the most likely outcome is a hard stagflationary quarter, not yet a full world recession. That is broadly consistent with the OECD’s current forecast profile, which already assumes disruption eases gradually from mid-2026 onward.

Our estimate in that case is that global growth in 2026 lands around 2.7% to 3.0%, versus the IMF’s 3.3% pre-war baseline and close to the OECD’s current 2.9% projection. Global inflation would likely remain roughly around the OECD’s current 4.0% G20 call, perhaps somewhat above it if product shortages persist longer than crude shortages. I am not presenting those as official numbers; they are scenario judgments built on the IMF pre-war baseline, the OECD’s current moderated-disruption forecast, and the IEA’s measured size of the current supply loss.

In practical terms, a 4–6 week extension would mean the world spends the second quarter paying a heavy real-income tax. Households spend more on fuel, transport, utilities, and food. Airlines raise surcharges and trim routes. Trucking and shipping companies pass costs forward. Manufacturers protect margins by delaying hiring and capital spending. But if the conflict visibly moves toward de-escalation after that window, firms and governments can still treat 2026 as a bad year rather than a broken one. The existence of more than 8.2 billion barrels in global crude and product inventories, including 1.25 billion barrels of government emergency stocks, is a major reason containment remains possible in this shorter scenario.

Even in that shorter scenario, though, some sectors would still face acute stress. Aviation is one. The IEA says Asian jet-fuel benchmarks have more than doubled, and Gulf refining outages limit the world’s ability to replace missing product. Chemicals and fertilizers are another. If more than 30% of global urea trade and around 20% of ammonia and phosphate trade remain under prolonged chokepoint stress for another month or more, agricultural input prices will rise well beyond the war zone. A short war still creates a long tail in contracts, freight, and inventories.

Europe under this shorter scenario probably avoids a generalized recession, but I would still expect near-stagnation, especially in energy-intensive industry. Asia remains the main loser in volume terms. The U.S. slows but likely stays relatively stronger because of lower direct Gulf dependence and the relative insulation of its gas market. Fuel-importing emerging markets would still need emergency support measures and some would likely tap multilateral financing or resort to ad hoc import controls. Those are analytical judgments, but they follow the exposure pattern in the EIA destination data and the OECD regional growth assumptions.

So the bottom line on the 4–6 week extension is this: the world economy would likely remain bruised, inflationary, and politically uncomfortable, but still broadly manageable. The key difference between this scenario and the worse one is not whether prices are high; it is whether businesses and governments can still believe that the shock is temporary. The OECD’s present forecast still rests on that belief.

Scenario 2: if the war lasts until November

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Date: March 20, 2026

Assessment horizon: current situation, and likely developments over the next several weeks and months if disruption persists

Executive Summary

The Strait of Hormuz crisis is no longer best understood as a narrow oil shock. It is now a multi-commodity logistics and industrial shock affecting crude, condensate, diesel, jet fuel, LNG, LPG, naphtha, fertilizer, sulphur, helium, petrochemicals, plastics, aluminum, shipping insurance, and freight.

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Assessment: The Iran War’s Likely End State, U.S. and Israeli Strategic Objectives, and the Remaining Campaign Timeline

The current war against Iran is best understood not as a regime-change campaign in the classic sense, but as a coercive military effort to destroy the main instruments of Iranian power projection and then terminate on terms defined unilaterally by Washington and Jerusalem.

The central question is not whether the United States and Israel would welcome regime collapse if it occurred. They clearly would.

The more important analytical point is that neither the structure of the campaign nor the public framing of its operational objectives suggests that regime change is the main executable military objective.

Rather, the campaign appears designed to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten Israel, U.S. regional forces, Gulf shipping, and the broader regional balance through three principal means: ballistic and cruise missiles (drones are a much smaller threat to Israel), naval and maritime coercive capabilities, and the infrastructure underlying Iran’s nuclear program.

Once those capabilities have been reduced to a level judged acceptable by Washington and Jerusalem, the most likely outcome is not a negotiated settlement with Tehran, but a unilateral declaration that the strategic objectives of the campaign have been met.

That distinction is important because the war’s most plausible end state is often mischaracterized.

There is a tendency to assume that wars must end through formal diplomacy or some mutually acknowledged ceasefire. In this case, that assumption is probably wrong.

The Iranian regime is unlikely to negotiate from a position of visible strategic defeat, particularly if doing so would amount to an explicit admission that its core deterrent assets have been stripped away. Tehran’s political culture, ideological posture, and long-standing habit of framing endurance itself as victory all argue against an overt negotiated termination under current conditions.

At the same time, there is little evidence that the United States or Israel require Iranian consent in order to end the campaign. Their likely termination model is simpler: continue striking until Iran’s remaining capacity for force projection has been pushed below a critical threshold, then declare that the principal objectives have been achieved and scale operations down accordingly.

Iran, in turn, would continue to denounce the campaign, claim survival as success, and preserve whatever residual capabilities it can. The war would end not with a signed understanding, but with one side deciding it has accomplished enough to stop.

This is a more coherent model of war termination than negotiated ceasefire scenarios for several reasons.

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Any U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran (as we argued in our last post) that were limited in some manner, and did not appear to seek regime change, would have allowed the possibility for an agreed offramp at some point. But the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war, meant that this conflict is now seen by Iran’s leadership as a war for survival, and it’s hard to see any possibility for compromise or a negotiated outcome at this point.

The Next Phase of the War and Its Global Consequences

The war that began with the joint U.S.–Israeli strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has already moved far beyond the bounds of a conventional regional confrontation.

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Talks between the U.S. and Iran, mediated by the Omanis, are underway in Geneva. As with much relating to this brewing geopolitical crisis, the actual issues that will be discussed remain unclear, an…

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America First comes to the arms industry

On 6 February 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “Establishing An America First Arms Transfer Strategy”, that seeks to do two things at once: speed up U.S. arms exports and wield them more deliberately as an industrial-policy tool. Rather than treating foreign military sales as a largely “partner-driven” queue, the order sets out an “America First Arms Transfer Strategy” that links who gets what, and when, to what the U.S. wants to build at home.

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What Just Happened

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Israel’s formal recognition of Somaliland on December 26, 2025 marked a sharp inflection point in the politics of the Horn of Africa and the wider Red Sea basin. For more than three decades, Somaliland has operated as a de facto state that governs, taxes, polices, negotiates commercial concessions, holds elections, and maintains security institutions that are widely viewed as more coherent than those in much of southern Somalia. Yet it remained locked outside the legal and diplomatic architecture of international recognition. Israel’s decision did not suddenly settle Somaliland’s sovereignty in international law, nor did it compel other states to follow. It did, however, puncture a long-standing taboo and forced regional actors, and external powers with interests in shipping lanes and port infrastructure, to treat Somaliland’s status as a live geopolitical question rather than an unresolved administrative oddity.

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Pax Silica: Silicon, Power, and the Reordering of the Indo-Pacific

On 12 December 2025, officials from the United States and a select group of Indo-Pacific partners gathered in Washington, D.C., for what was formally presented as a coordination meeting on artificial intelligence and critical supply chains.

In practice, the inaugural Pax Silica meeting marked something far more consequential: the articulation of a U.S.-led vision for reorganizing global power around control of advanced semiconductor production and computational capacity. The event, capped by the signing of the Pax Silica Declaration, signaled that Washington now views technological infrastructure, not merely military force or market size, as the decisive terrain of geopolitical competition.

The presence of representatives from Australia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, alongside the conspicuous but unofficial (“guest”) participation of Taiwan, demonstrated a growing conviction within U.S. policy circles that the foundations of international influence have shifted.

Where oil once anchored industrial power, economic growth, and military reach, silicon has assumed that role in the twenty-first century. Advanced semiconductors underpin artificial intelligence, cloud computing, advanced weapons systems, and the emerging field of quantum technologies. What were once treated primarily as commercial inputs have become strategic assets, tightly bound to national security and long-term power projection.

Pax Silica is not yet a treaty system, nor does it resemble a formal alliance in the traditional sense. Rather, it functions as a strategic organizing principle: an effort to bind a trusted set of partners into a tightly coupled technological ecosystem while excluding, constraining, or reshaping adversarial access to the most advanced layers of the global economy. In this respect, Pax Silica recalls earlier U.S.-led orders such as Pax Americana, but it adapts that logic to a world in which dominance is exercised less through forward-deployed troops and more through control of chokepoints in fabrication plants, lithography equipment, data centers, and complex supply chains.

At its core, Pax Silica reflects three interlocking beliefs that have come to dominate thinking in Washington.

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The Thailand–Cambodia War of 2025: Background, Causes, and Trajectory

The current Thailand–Cambodia war is not the product of a single triggering incident, but rather the convergence of three long-standing structural tensions: an unresolved and symbolically charged border dispute, the personalization of interstate relations through elite family networks, and the entrenchment of powerful cross-border criminal economies. These dynamics have periodically generated crises for decades, but in 2025 they aligned in a way that transformed a familiar pattern of skirmishes into sustained interstate warfare.

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The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), released on December 5, 2025, marks a profound shift in U.S. strategic thinking.

Grounded firmly in the “America First” doctrine, the strategy prioritizes national sovereignty, border enforcement, and hemispheric dominance over multilateralism, democracy promotion, or global institutional leadership.

• It reflects a departure from the liberal internationalist frameworks of past decades and sets the tone for the remainder of President Trump’s second term.

Central to the document is a broad interpretation of national security. It defines threats not only in terms of conventional military dangers but also includes espionage, economic coercion, propaganda, and cultural subversion. The strategy outlines ambitious objectives: restoring control over borders and immigration, revitalizing the domestic industrial base, achieving energy dominance, and maintaining technological superiority in areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing.

A modernized military and credible nuclear deterrent form the backbone of the administration’s commitment to “Peace Through Strength.”

The NSS identifies the Western Hemisphere as its primary area of focus, explicitly echoing an updated Monroe Doctrine (with a “Trump Corollary”). The United States seeks to reassert dominance across the Americas, prioritize border security, and disrupt transnational criminal networks.

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The Genesis Initiative: The United States Enters a New Scientific Era

On November 24, 2025, the United States quietly but decisively entered a new phase of its scientific and industrial evolution. Under an executive order, the Department of Energy (DOE) unveiled the Genesis Initiative. This is a sweeping national program that may come to define a generation of strategic development, much as the Manhattan Project once did. Far from a single research project, Genesis represents the construction of a national discovery platform, designed to unify the United States’ most advanced scientific, computational, and industrial capabilities into a single, integrated system for accelerated innovation.

At its core, Genesis is a response to the converging demands of the 21st century: energy transformation, artificial intelligence, computational supremacy, and strategic competition. It connects all 17 U.S. national laboratories and over 40,000 scientists with the country’s leading supercomputers, quantum systems, fusion and fission research centers, advanced materials facilities, and scientific instruments. The result is a scientific grid that spans disciplines (physics, biosciences, chemistry, plasma science, weapons R&D, and climate modeling) fused by high-performance compute and artificial intelligence.

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Summary

Over the past several months, Europe has seen a marked uptick in drone incursions and unauthorized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) activity.

These events are concentrated but not limited to the e…

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Last week on 21 October, India upgraded its ‘technical mission’ in Kabul to a full embassy. This follows the week-long heavy border clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan after the Pakistanis struck Kabul on 15 October with drones, attempting to kill senior leaders of the Pakistani Taliban who have been using Kabul as a base to launch operations into Pakistan.

Because of the sudden deterioration in relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, India now has a chance to outflank Pakistan, diplomatically, and build a stronger relationship with the new regime in Kabul.

The relationship between nuclear armed India and nuclear armed Pakistan is one of the greatest geopolitical fault-lines of our time, it should not be ignored. Adding Afghanistan to the mix only increases the tension and raises the stakes.

Thus, how did we get here? And what is this geopolitical triangle, India-Afghanistan-Pakistan, all about?

Historical context: British India, independence and Afghanistan’s positioning

At the end of the British Raj in 1947 the newly independent state of Pakistan inherited the western frontier that the British Indian Empire had drawn with Afghanistan; the Durand Line frontier established in 1893 between British India and the then Emirate of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan historically had uneasy relations with the newly‑born Pakistan. Indeed Afghanistan was initially the only country to oppose Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations. Afghanistan’s government, whether monarchy or republic, harbored irredentist claims on Pashtun‑dominated borderlands of Pakistan and viewed the Durand Line as an artificial colonial imposition rather than a legitimate border.

At the same time, India cultivated friendly ties with Afghanistan early on. The Kingdom of Afghanistan and the Union of India formally established bilateral relations in January 1950. India, while focused elsewhere, was viewed by Pakistan from the outset as a competitor for influence in Kabul. As one academic write‑up puts it, “Afghanistan is the extended frontline state between the two arch‑rivals India and Pakistan in South Asia.”

Thus from the start of independence, we have the essential triangle:

Pakistan seeks to ensure Afghan alignment to its interests (in part to deny Indian influence), Afghanistan pushes back against Pakistani claims and Indian outreach occurs. This dynamic is mediated by the Durand Line dispute, Pashtun identity politics, and the overlay of India‑Pakistan competition.

BLUF: The post‑1947 architecture set the stage for enduring mistrust between Kabul and Islamabad, and for India’s opportunity to build presence in Afghanistan, thus embedding the triangle in the strategic competition between India and Pakistan.

The Durand Line in depth

The Durand Line, drawn in 1893 by British India and the then Emir of Afghanistan (Abdur Rahman Khan), extends approximately 2,640 km between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. From Pakistan’s perspective it is the international border: Islamabad argues that, by the principle of uti possidetis juris, the boundary inherited from British India stays in effect. From Afghanistan’s perspective, the line lacks legitimacy because it was imposed under colonial pressure and divides Pashtun tribes and khans across the border; Afghanistan has at various times refused to recognise it.

In practice, the disputed status of the line has had four major consequences:

1. Cross‑border tribal flows: The Pashtun tribes straddle both sides of the frontier, meaning that control is always contested and border management weak.

2. Proxy sanctuary terrain: The porous frontier has served for decades as a back‑channel for militants crossing either way, complicating Islamabad’s and Kabul’s claims.

3. Diplomatic leverage: Afghanistan uses the non‑recognition of the Durand Line as a bargaining chip with Pakistan; Pakistan uses border fencing and transit controls to coerce. Recent clashes along the frontier illustrate the latent military risk in the dispute.

4. India’s angle: India has an interest in the frontier dispute insofar as it shapes Pakistan’s western posture and the possibility of Kabul aligning with Delhi rather than Islamabad. Indeed the presence of India in Afghanistan puts Islamabad on guard.

The Durand Line remains a structural fault‑line in Pakistan‑Afghanistan relations; it is unlikely to be resolved in the short term.

Pakistan’s support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan: the Cold War era

In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the Soviet‑backed Afghan regime faced a broad insurgency of Muslim guerrillas (the “mujahideen”). Pakistan – particularly through its intelligence agency, the ISI – became a major conduit for U.S. and Saudi support to the Afghan insurgents.

Pakistan’s calculus: by supporting anti‑Soviet Afghan forces, Islamabad could (a) align with the U.S., (b) gain influence inside Afghanistan, and (c) lay a claim to “strategic depth” in case India‑Pakistan tensions escalated.

From India’s viewpoint, Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan was problematic insofar as Islamabad sought to shape Kabul in a way unfriendly to Indian interests (for example, by denying New Delhi transit rights, or limiting Indian projects).

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On 15 October 2025, Kabul was rocked by twin drone strikes that targeted a residential home and a bustling market, killing at least five civilians and injuring dozens more.

The Afghan Taliban government immediately blamed Pakistan for the attack, denouncing it as a blatant violation of Afghan airspace and sovereignty, especially as it occurred mere hours before a scheduled 48-hour ceasefire.

The bombing represented a major escalation in bilateral tensions, symbolizing the collapse of previously tacit restraints that had long prevented such direct targeting of urban centers.

This strike marked a critical shift in Pakistan’s military strategy. Whereas previous kinetic operations were largely confined to remote tribal areas or contested border regions along the Durand Line, the decision to strike within Kabul itself sent a message of unambiguous intent.

Pakistan, facing rising domestic pressure over escalating attacks by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), appeared to have concluded that symbolic restraint no longer served its strategic interests.

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Following China’s imposition of export controls on rare earth minerals and battery components yesterday, we thought it would be useful to take a deep dive on this issue.

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The ascension of Sanae Takaichi to the premiership marks both continuity and a sharper edge in Japan’s strategic posture.

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