🌍 Two more neighbours at war
Plus: Why the Nobel Committee couldn’t find this winner
|
Today’s briefing: |
|
Good morning Intriguer. A few weeks after becoming a dad, I was on a work trip to Vegas and pacing around the Caesar’s Palace pool area with my tiny daughter in the carrier strapped to my chest, hoping she’d doze off to sleep.
But after a few minutes, a burly security guard approached and said ominously, “Sir? You and your fake baby are going to have to leave the pool area immediately.”
Responding to my confused silence, he repeated (louder) that me and my fake baby must leave. But before I could ask what he was talking about, my little daughter made a noise and wriggled, at which point the security guy realised my daughter was, um, a real baby.
Apologising profusely, he explained he thought I was yet another guy on a big stag weekend with a fake baby, to re-enact the Zach Galifianakis character from The Hangover.
If I had to draw a link with today’s briefing (on some veeeery intriguing developments between Pakistan and Afghanistan), it’s that one wrong assumption can be all it takes.
Haul of the day
$160M
That’s roughly how much one mysterious crypto trader earned on Friday, after shorting Bitcoin and Ethereum just 30 minutes before President Trump’s 100% China tariffs tweet triggered crypto’s biggest single-day wipeout in history. The timing and scale of this big crypto bet have revived concerns around market manipulation and insider trading.
Meanwhile, both DC and Beijing seem to have toned down Friday’s spike in trade war rhetoric, with rosy futures trading suggesting markets are hopeful it was just a blip.
Will Pakistan and Afghanistan go to war?
Just as one war ended over the weekend, Pakistan and Afghanistan said "hold my chai".
You'll recall we mentioned on Friday the epic Hollywood potential here, so we've channelled our inner Michael Bay for today’s briefing.
Smell that? It's popcorn, as we open with…
-
Backstory
It's a classic sepia flashback to happier times: these Afghan and Pakistani neighbours actually share plenty in common, across ethnicity (part-Pashtun), language (both draw on Farsi), theology (predominantly Sunni), and even sport (cricket). But then…
-
Inciting incident
When the US ousted the Taliban in response to the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan found it didn't like neighbouring Kabul yet again being run by a foreign-backed government which might a) favour rival India, b) stir separatism along Pakistan's border, or c) allow the US to conduct drone strikes on Pakistani turf. So Islamabad went for…
-
A victory
The Pakistanis started quietly helping Pakistan-based fundamentalists called Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) with close ties to the Taliban, basically hoping for what geopolitics nerds call 'strategic depth' (aka keeping threats away from Pakistan's own borders).
And it ✌️worked✌️ in the sense that the TTP helped its Taliban kin re-establish a Pashtun-dominated Islamist regime in Kabul. Mission accomplished, right? Wrong.
-
A betrayal
The TTP happily accepted Pakistani help, but that's not the same as saying the TTP ever liked Pakistan. To the contrary, the TTP always hated it for a) being insufficiently devout, b) partnering with the US, and c) violating TTP-controlled lands to quash separatism.
So with its Taliban friends now back in power, the TTP turned on its own Pakistani backers, launching ~1,500 attacks since 2021. And Pakistan has kind of flailed ever since, until…
-
Explosions
It was Pakistan’s infamous ISI intelligence agency that long helped the TTP, meaning those ISI spooks still have excellent sources on the inside. That’s partly how the Pakistanis found out TTP leaders were gathering in Kabul last week.
And so… emboldened by May’s hits on rival India, and irked that the Taliban is now cosying up to India so much, Pakistan conducted Kabul drone/air strikes Thursday night that might’ve killed the top TTP leader, Noor Wali Mehsud. That’s a massive deal.
Roll the credits, turn the house lights on, print money at the box office, right? Wrong.
That just unleashed a weekend of more violence, with Taliban forces hitting (and capturing) Pakistani outposts along their shared border, reportedly leaving dozens dead (the Pakistanis are claiming similar counter-attacks).
So now what? Everyone's declaring victory and calling for restraint, which is often a sign things might settle for now. But given the history above, you can bet there’ll be a sequel.
Intrigue’s Take
This conflict is an interesting example of several broader truths in geopolitics.
First, cultural affinity can (counterintuitively perhaps) be a complicating rather than unifying factor. Strong cross-border identities won’t always align with how neighbouring capitals are thinking about the world — sure, that opens up the possibility of wielding any shared identity against a neighbour, but the reality is they can use it against you, too.
Second, the fact the Taliban would cosy up with semi-distant India as a counter to more familiar Pakistan is a reminder that no ethnic, linguistic, or religious distance is ever enough to rule out alignment if the mutual need is there.
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
 |
🇮🇱 ISRAEL – Hostages released. Comment: We explored the war’s impact here, and examined the peace deal’s prospects here. One of our doubts (whether Hamas will disarm) bubbled up over the weekend, with violence breaking out between Hamas and rival Gazan factions. It’s hard to see any group disarming amid the presence of armed rivals. |
 |
🇫🇷 FRANCE – Sixth time lucky? Comment: Obviously the big question is whether Lecornu 2.0 will do any better than Lecornu 1.0, who just broke records as France’s shortest-lived PM. Both France’s populist left (France Unbowed) and populist right (National Rally) have already pledged to torpedo his government, so it’ll come down to what the Socialist Party decides — politically that might mean ditching Macron’s pension reforms, though economically that might worsen the fiscal mess Macron is trying to solve in the first place. |
 |
🇳🇱 NETHERLANDS – I’ll take that, thanks. |
 |
🇪🇸 SPAIN – Defending their honour. |
 |
🇮🇩 INDONESIA – Dual use. Comment: Interestingly, the proposal appears to have emerged out of discussions with Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, who moonlights as an advisor to Indonesia’s president. It looks a bit to us like a reboot of Paul Romer’s ‘charter cities’ idea. |
 |
🇪🇨 ECUADOR – “Noboa out, out!” Comment: It’s still unclear whether last week’s motorcade incident was an assassination attempt on the young conservative president, or just rock-throwing protestors — various media fact-checkers have struggled to find evidence of gunfire. |
 |
🇿🇦 SOUTH AFRICA – New name? |
Extra Intrigue
🤣 Your weekly roundup of the world’s lighter news
-
Employees have retrieved a popular Virginia store cat after she ended up hitchhiking on a truck to another state.
-
Body cam footage has revealed an Ohio police officer struggling to chase down a runaway inflatable pumpkin.
-
And while we’re in Ohio, a public school administrator has resigned after the board accused him of selling school lawnmowers on Facebook Marketplace.
-
An AI bot has accumulated a fortune in cryptocurrencies, and it’s now fighting for legal rights.
-
And the Nobel Committee has had trouble reaching a winning scientist with the good news, because he was on a digital detox.
Food of the day
Credits: Daesang.
Is there a more polarising food than South Korea’s kimchi? Maybe Southeast Asia’s durian fruit, or Australia’s vegemite spread? Anyway, fans go feral for kimchi’s tangy flavour, crunchy texture, and gut-friendly probiotics. For others, the mere whiff of all that fermented cabbage can be enough to pull a full-blown Gordon Ramsay spit-take.
So why are we talking about kimchi? The 15th Arrondissement of Paris (home to a large Korean community) just declared November 22 as ‘Kimchi Day’, the first in the EU. And to celebrate, Korea’s Daesang food brand just bankrolled a big proclamation event, featuring kimchi-making, food tasting, and even K-pop performances.
They’re hoping that by spreading the kimchi love, it might boost Korea’s brand and drive demand for all things Korean. Daesang is already planning a new kimchi factory in Poland.
All this talk of food leads us to…
Today’s poll
If you could only eat one cuisine for the rest of your life, what'd it be?(and tell us why!)
|
Yesterday’s poll: Do you think this Palestinian-Israeli peace will last?
🕊️ Yes, it's the closest we've come (17%)
❌ No, the underlying issues remain (80%)
✍️ Other (write us!) (3%)
Your two cents:
-
❌ E.K.H: “Peace only lasts if people want peace, and the leaders on both sides don't. A good chunk of the populace are ready for it — certainly Gazans are — but that doesn't matter until there's new elections.”
-
🕊️ C.H: “We have to start from somewhere.”
-
❌ M.G: “Too many unresolved issues. The agreement has been rushed to meet the desires of certain people who want to win the news cycle, not truly solve the war.”
-
✍️ D.R: “Short term yes, both sides are conflict-exhausted. Long term no, as the conflict has already pushed the cycle of violence too far to have a meaningful peace within this generation.”