…but outside the corridors of power
Ashley J Tellis’s testimony before the US House of Representatives subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia is one of the most clear-headed assessments in Washington.
The only lasting solution to this danger is to press Pakistan to target groups such as LeT conclusively. Many in the United States imagine [...]
General Kayani’s moves suggest that he sees the final lap
President Barack Obama gave his Af-Pak speech at West Point on December 1st, 2009 where he announced his intention “to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.” General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani signaled his policy by the end that month when [...]
Talks will call the bluffs in Rawalpindi, Islamabad & Washington
The sudden and unexplained manner in which the UPA government offered to resume talks with Pakistan has injected a lot of confusion in the public discourse. The confusion—and the political & strategic costs arising from it—must be blamed on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A move as [...]
Why a lamb was sacrificed
The New York Times, which broke the story of the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, supposedly second only to Mullah Mohammed Omar in the Taliban firmament, says that it was the result of a joint US-Pakistani operation in Karachi last week. The news was kept secret in order to [...]
In today’s Indian Express, Rohit Pradhan and I renew our call for India to send troops to stabilise Afghanistan. It summarises the arguments we have made in on INI and Pragati and addresses the most popular objections to the proposal.
Excerpts:
Over time, a co-operative arrangement between India, Iran and Russia could form the bedrock of [...]
A political weapon sought and granted
A brief word on the the drones that Robert Gates offered Pakistan during his recent—perhaps worst—trip to Islamabad. The offer was more political theatre than it was of military significance.
Why? Because—as this old post argues—Pakistan does not need armed drones to conduct counter-insurgency operations within its own territory. It [...]
Would you co-operate with a mere regional power if you feel you have beaten two superpowers?
Kanti Bajpai is one of India’s best academic experts on international relations—and one who this blog holds in high regard. His op-ed in the Times of India today (linkthanks Raja Karthikeya Gundu), however, overlooks something big.
Arguing that India must stop [...]
Complicated, the matter is
One more country has joined the queue. “We have heard,” said Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran’s president, “that certain officials in Pakistan cooperate with main agents of these terrorist attacks in the eastern part of the country.”
The Iranian government summoned the Pakistani charge d’affaires in Teheran and protested against the use of Pakistani [...]
An unsatisfactory assessment
The attackers scored the moment they penetrated the outermost cordon of the Pakistani army’s General Head Quarters (GHQ) complex. They broke a psychological barrier by striking at the heart of the Pakistani military-jihadi complex. That they probably didn’t get anywhere near the innermost sanctums does not matter: they hit the beast in its [...]
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