Latest Articles about South Asia
Tajikistan and Pakistan at a Crossroads: Energy, Trade and Transport Across Central and South Asia
Pakistan and Tajikistan have actively advanced their partnership in the energy, trade and transport spheres in recent months. The three pillars of cooperation are crucial components of the national strategies of these countries in bilateral and multilateral formats as they seek to break their relative... MORE
Defeating the “Forces of Paganism”: Former Military Intelligence Chief Hamid Gul Blends Pakistani Nationalism and Islamic Revolution
The retired former chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, is one of the most controversial political figures in Pakistan. Despite his once extremely close ties with the American Central Intelligence Agency during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Gul has since... MORE
Moscow Airport Attack: Carried Out by Nogai Militants Trained in Pakistan?
No individual or group has yet claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on January 24, which killed 35 people and wounded at least 125. However, the Russian media has been full of the theories and rumors about who may have been... MORE
Russia Prepares to Re-Enter Afghanistan
Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, and Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, received the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, on January 21-23 for an official visit. It was the first Russian-Afghan presidential-level meeting since a freshly installed Karzai had met the then President Putin in 2002. Russia is now... MORE
TAPI: The Audacity of Pipeline Hope
On December 11 in Ashgabat, the top officials of four participant countries signed agreements on a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, favored on and off (currently on again) by the US government. Presidents Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, and Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari,... MORE
Turkmenistan Encourages Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline
Framework agreements on a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) are scheduled for signing by high-level officials of the four countries on December 11 in Ashgabat (Turkmen Television, Press Trust of India, December 8, 9). Its economics and its political symbolism aside, TAPI’s implementation is hardly conceivable on... MORE
A Portrait of Azam Cheema: LeT’s India Strategist
Mohammed Azam Cheema (a.k.a. Baba/Babaji) is widely regarded as the “number three” of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s (LeT) anti-Indian operations. Azam Cheema has masterminded several high-profile attacks against India over the years from his safe haven in the dusty city of Bahawalpur in Pakistan’s southern Punjab Province on... MORE
New Light on the Accuracy of the CIA’s Predator Drone Campaign in Pakistan
Widely-cited reports of the inaccuracy and disproportionality of civilian to militant deaths in the CIA’s ongoing Predator drone campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are grossly misleading. The most detailed database compiled to date, assembled by the authors of this article, indicates (among... MORE
Ranjit Debbarma: A Close Up View of the Leader of the All Tripura Tiger Force
The outgoing chief of the Tripura state police, Pranay Sahay, informed the public during a briefing on October 11 that the top militants of the state are still operating from neighboring Bangladesh, but their strengths are fast dwindling due to the positive approach of the... MORE
The Face of Hindu Extremism: Mumbai’s Bal Thackeray
Background Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, envisioned India to operate as an inclusive, secular democracy. Secularism was a core value in the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885, long before independence from the British Crown. Nehru’s secularist ideology, ideally, attempted to prevent... MORE