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Despite being a key contributor to rebuilding Afghanistan, India was elbowed out from the four-party meeting held in Beijing in July to advance the Afghan peace process. Earlier talks with the Taliban in Doha and Moscow already hinted at the sidelining of New Delhi from future peacebuilding...
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...
The question that still haunts rational minds is whether Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s two-nation theory — one that Islam and Hinduism constitute two incompatible cultural, social, political and religious systems — was right or wrong. A journey back in time exploring the motives both of...
Washington and Islamabad see the threat of terrorism, the role of Afghanistan and the larger world in fundamentally different ways. For an administration accustomed to public backlash, the Pentagon’s recent decision to withhold $300 million set aside for Pakistan has received relatively little...
