Salman Rafi Sheikh

The “oil war” started by the Saudis (and the US has, within a matter of weeks, already led to a change in the narrative from purportedly establishing ‘shale oil dominance’ to ‘energy market management’ and avert a crisis that could ultimately destroy the very shale oil industry of the US. This resulted in the US president  holding a phone conversation with Russia...

The on-going Saudi ‘oil war’ with Russia has its roots in the logic of increasingly using natural resources for geo-political and geo-economic purposes. While this is not something entirely new, the latest push comes against the backdrop of increasing competition between the US and Russia for global leadership roles and the former’s attempts at forcing the latter out...

Whereas the US-Taliban ‘truce deal’ is historic in many ways, the fact that real peace in Afghanistan remains hostage to a lot more complex power dynamics than the US war has become sharply evident ever since the announcement of the deal. The Ghani administration has already rejected the part of the deal about the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners...