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After a week-long reduction in violence to test the Taliban’s ability to control their fighters on the ground in Afghanistan, the US and the Taliban signed their long-awaited peace agreement on February 29 in Qatar’s capital, Doha. The deal, officially titled the Agreement for Bringing Peace...
In this guest edition of The Interview, Nilanjana Sen and Varuna Shunglu talk to Maheish Girri, the national secretary of the BJP. In 2014, the world’s largest democracy elected the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, with Narendra Modi as the prime minister. Modi came to victory on the...
The prospect of a peaceful Afghanistan is only realistic if the Taliban breaks ties with other terrorist groups, agrees to a ceasefire and joins the intra-Afghan peace talks. The Afghan government has been calling for peace talks for many years, yet only in November 2018 did the Taliban agree to...
It is important that any peace deal should further legitimize the current state, strengthen the post-2001 democratization process and include all the parties involved in the conflict. With the US stating its intention to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, the doors have opened for political...
In the shifting sands of the power play unfolding in Afghanistan, New Delhi remains a mere spectator. The latest round of US negotiations with the Taliban in Doha has garnered considerable international attention, with the group’s co-founder, Mullah Baradar, leading the insurgent team. As the...
Kashmir is the only place in the world where three nuclear powers have a border dispute. In the beautiful and terrifying novel The City of Devi, communal hatreds escalate in India and Pakistan until the two countries feel compelled to threaten each other with nuclear weapons. At least, it...
The world’s major nuclear powers are treaty-bound to move toward disarmament. The India-Pakistan clash underscores the need to get moving. The recent military clash between India and Pakistan underscores the need for the major nuclear powers — the US, Russia, China, Britain and France —...
India and Pakistan can either make peace or continue in an endless cycle of violence. On February 14, a suicide bomber killed more than 40 paramilitary police in Indian-administered Kashmir. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a militant group based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack....
Fears resurface of Pakistan stoking Sikh separatism in the Indian state of Punjab. In November 2018, an attack against the premises of the Sant Nirankari Mission in the Indian state of Punjab has once again brought back fears of the revival of Pakistan-backed Sikh separatism, known as the...
The G-20 summit offers India a strategic opportunity to emerge as one of the stabilizing poles in a world with growing geopolitical uncertainty. Foreign policy has been a key highlight of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term. In the last four years, India’s global standing and...
The demonization of Muslims may be less a cudgel to wield against the small Muslim-American community than against Democratic opponents who can be lambasted as “soft on terrorism.” These days, our global political alliances seem to shift with remarkable rapidity, as if we were actually...
