Center for Regional Strategy and Global Affairs - CRSGA

07/10/2026

18/08/2026

🇵🇰 Applications for Pakistani Delegates are now OPEN!

The 4th International Youth Summit Pakistan (IYSP 2026) brings together young leaders, thinkers and changemakers from across Pakistan and beyond.

What’s covered by the organizers:
• Accommodation during the summit
• Meals
• Local transportation in Lahore & Islamabad
• Airport pick-up/drop-off
• Cultural and official visits
• Summit activities and programme

Please note: Travel to and from Lahore is the responsibility of the delegate.

There is no registration fee — selection is through the application process.

📅 27 November – 4 December 2026
🌐 IYSP.CRSGA.ORG

Apply now and be part of IYSP 2026.

12/08/2026

The coalition holding Ukraine’s Western support together may be quietly running out of leaders.

It’s called the Coalition of the Willing — more than thirty countries, built by the UK’s Keir Starmer and France’s Macron, coordinating everything from military aid to securing the Strait of Hormuz.

Starmer has already resigned, replaced by Andy Burnham — seen by European diplomats as more domestically focused, with limited foreign policy experience. To his credit, Burnham moved fast, hosting Zelensky at Portsmouth as his first meeting with a foreign leader. But Macron cannot run again in 2027, and the frontrunner to replace him is Marine Le Pen, who has promised to pull France out of NATO’s command structure and lift sanctions on Russia.

This coalition was never built on institutions. It was built on two people. One is already gone. The verdict is live.

10/08/2026

Spain’s government blamed a recent Supreme Court ruling, claiming traffickers convinced migrants that arriving by sea meant they couldn’t be deported. But legal experts are clear — the ruling was far narrower than that. It only means Spain can’t summarily push people back at sea without due process. It does not mean anyone gets to stay.

So what actually caused the surge? A Spanish mass regularisation policy is one factor, flagged by 22 EU countries. Some observers point to something else entirely — tension between Spain and Morocco over Gaza. Spain refused to let a weapons shipment for Israel dock on its soil in 2024. Morocco welcomed a similar warship instead.

The verdict is live. Watch it.

Anza Saqib Akhund

05/08/2026

Brussels just put a number on what Pakistan stands to lose. Seven point five billion euros.

It’s called GSP+ — the EU trade scheme that’s let Pakistan export tariff-free to Europe since 2014, in exchange for implementing 27 international conventions on human rights and governance. The EU’s newest report is one of the toughest Pakistan has ever received — citing enforced disappearances, shrinking media freedom, and a formal complaint now on file.

Those are fair criticisms. Pakistan should answer them.

But this is the same European Union that’s watched catastrophic civilian loss of life in Gaza and instability across Lebanon — without threatening a single trading partner’s tariff status over it. If human rights conditionality is the principle, principles don’t selectively apply only to the partners with less leverage to push back.

The verdict is live. Watch it. Share it.

02/08/2026

There’s a mineral in almost everything modern — your phone’s chip, every fighter jet’s night-vision system, every AI data center on earth. It’s called antimony.

China controls sixty percent of the world’s supply and nearly all of the high-grade refining. In 2024, Beijing simply cut off antimony exports to the US. Prices doubled overnight — proving a mineral most people have never heard of can bring a superpower’s supply chain to its knees.

In 2025, fresh antimony deposits were discovered in Balochistan. Overnight, Pakistan wasn’t just hosting a Chinese port — it was sitting on ground the entire US-China rivalry suddenly needed. And this year, Pakistan fought an actual war on its western border, striking militant sanctuaries across the Afghan border that keep bleeding the province.

Balochistan isn’t unstable by accident. The verdict is live. Watch it.

28/07/2026

Three villages in south Lebanon are supposed to prove Hezbollah is disarming. One mayor already calls it theater — and he might be right, for a reason nobody’s saying out loud.

Look at the design of the test itself. Two of the three pilot villages sit outside Israel’s buffer zone — no Israeli soldier has to move for that “pilot” to count as a success. Only the third village actually requires a withdrawal, and it’s already stalled with no timeline.

Srifa’s own mayor told Al Jazeera he wasn’t even informed his village was part of the plan. His words: “Today is the same as yesterday.”

Netanyahu’s office calls disarmament “far from sufficient.” Hezbollah calls the framework “null and void.” Lebanon’s president is in Washington asking Trump for the one thing the deal itself couldn’t guarantee.

This isn’t a plan being tested. It’s a plan being staged. The verdict is live.

19/07/2026

In March this year, Iranian drones hit two Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE, and damaged a third in Bahrain. For the first time in history, a data center became a confirmed military target.

That should raise an uncomfortable question. Where does Pakistan’s data actually live?

For years, mostly not here. Pakistan has roughly 30 data centers total — tiny by global standards. Most of the country’s cloud computing, banking backups, and AI processing ran through foreign servers, sitting in the Gulf, in Europe, anywhere but home.

That’s finally changing. A $230 million Huawei data center deal. A $4.5 billion sovereign cloud opportunity. A billion-dollar government commitment to domestic AI infrastructure.

A data center isn’t just a warehouse of computers. It’s where a nation’s memory, money, and privacy physically live. The verdict is live. Watch it. Share it.