WORLD ROUNDUPThe Fall and Fall of Mahmoud Abbas | Why East Germany Is Such Fertile Ground for Extremists | Al Qaeda Expands Its Footprint in Afghanistan, and more

Al Qaeda Expands Its Footprint in Afghanistan  (Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy)
Al Qaeda has set up nine new terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 2024, a sign of the Taliban’s increasing tolerance of terror groups in their backyard in spite of pledges to crack down, according to an Afghan resistance leader visiting Washington this week.
These are training centers; these are recruitment centers,” said Ali Maisam Nazary, the top diplomat for Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) based in the country’s Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. “The Taliban have even allowed al Qaeda to build bases and munitions depots in the heart of the Panjshir Valley. [That’s] something unheard of, something impossible even in the 1990s for al Qaeda to have achieved.”
Nazary said that since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021, just before the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, terror groups including al Qaeda, the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have exploded in size and scope, as the country’s unguarded borders have allowed foreign fighters from Arab countries, Central Asian neighbors, and Europe to pour into Afghanistan. Nazary said that 21 known terror groups are currently operating inside the country.

America Is More Desperate for a Cease-Fire Than Israel and Hamas  (Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy)
Last weekend’s negotiations in Cairo for a cease-fire in Gaza collapsed as both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas’s leadership refused to budge on key differences. An Arab official aware of the ongoing negotiations told Foreign Policy that the technical teams are meeting in Doha this week but that he didn’t expect a cease-fire “anytime soon.”
Both sides have been unrelenting. Despite coming under immense pressure from the families of hostages held in Gaza, Netanyahu insists on maintaining the Israeli military presence in Gaza and continuing the military operation against Hamas on the ground. Hamas, on the other hand, is refusing to hand over the hostages even as Palestinians, whose rights it claims to represent and fight for, are struggling to survive the deprivations inflicted by Israel’s incessant bombings. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Yet while both Netanyahu and Hamas have made it a habit to walk away from the talks, the United States seems more desperate for a cease-fire and hostage release than either party to the conflict.
Experts say the political imperatives driving Netanyahu and Hamas and the Democratic leadership in the United States