Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Source- TSGT Renee Sitler Source- The Strategic Culture Author- Alexander Vorontsov Is there a hope for restarting the stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program? This question is more frequently asked by experts at international conferences, including the Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism event held this May in northwestern city of Yanji, the seat of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in eastern Jilin province, People's Republic of China.  The majority of participants, especially the representatives of China, spoke in favor of restarting the negotiation process. The event showed it is widely believed that the policy of sanctions and pressure adopted by Washington and its allies against North Korea does not bring expected results. For instance, Japanese scholars emphasized that North Korea is not isolated and is free to do what it pleases, including the continuation of nuclear program. The partic

Taliban in Herat ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons) Source- The Strategic Culture Author- Nikolai Bobkin The leaders of the Islamic State (IS) have announced their intention to spread the group’s activities eastward, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US does not rush to recognize the fact of Islamic State’s presence in Afghanistan, but Kabul does not deny the information that the group’s militants coming from Syria and Iraq are operating in the country.  According to Afghan official sources, the Islamic State is recruiting in Afghanistan with dozens of propagandists sent to spread the group’s ideas among the ranks of young people. «We will either become captors or martyrs», say propaganda messages from the Islamic State published in Fatah, a pamphlet published in local languages and distributed to Afghans. These pamphlets invite citizens of Afghanistan to pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph of IS, and join the jihad against non-b