As the United States seeks to draw down its security forces in Afghanistan, India faces a serious policy conundrum. It has made, as Vishal Chandra argues, significant developmental and infrastructural investments in the country. If the US military withdrawal is significant, even if not precipitate, it may leave the field open to a reconstitution of the Taliban within the country. Such an outcome will dramatically enhance Pakistani influence in the country and thereby place India's very substantial commitments to date at risk.

• Sumit Ganguly
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The prognoses that it will be long before Afghanistan will be at peace with itself; that the Taliban have raised the cost of the Afghan war for the West; that the growing differences between the West and Kabul have aggravated the prevailing uncertainty over the future of the war; and that the US-led Afghan mission appears unwinnable are all unexceptionable.

• Satish Chandra
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The Afghan war has a long way to go. The situation has come to a point where with every passing month one wonders where the war is headed. There can be no doubt that it will be long before Afghanistan will be at peace with itself. At this moment, there does not seem to be any solution to the Afghan crisis. The Taliban and their allies, both Afghan and foreign, have notably succeeded in transforming the war to their advantage.

• Vishal Chandra
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

Migration, a worldwide phenomenon, has often been seen as beneficial for both the sending and receiving countries. However, post-9/11, the phenomenon is seen as a mixed blessing. It is also being realised that it is impossible to check illegal migration unless the sending country cooperates. In South Asia, India has been at the receiving end of the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh. This paper argues that such illegal migration is posing a threat to internal security because the issue has not been properly securitised.

• Anand Kumar
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

Security has been a major driving force of India's neighbourhood policy. India's sympathies with democratic forces and its aversion to extra-regional presence are all geared to optimise its security interest, which is ensconced in its principal belief of a stable neighbourhood while engaging in a mutually beneficial relationship. Within this broad framework, this paper attempts to study Bangladesh's reaction to these parameters of India's neighbourhood policy.

• Smruti S. Pattanaik
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

It is a truism to say that the elite in Pakistan has used Islam to perpetuate its hold on power ever since the state came into being in 1947. The judiciary in Pakistan has been the latest to emphasise its Islamist credentials to legitimise its rise as an important constituent of the influential ‘quartet’ that is ruling Pakistan today.

• Ashok K. Behuria
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The rise of the jihadist movement in Pakistan is driven primarily by ideological and religious factors. Decades of indoctrination of a virulent version of radical political Islam has motivated thousands of people—young and old—to take the path of violent jihad to capture political power, and through it, transform the society, economy and culture to bring about what they consider to be a pristine Islamic order.

• Sushant Sareen
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

India is contesting elections for the non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for a two-year term, 2011–12. If elected, it will return to the Security Council after a gap of 18 years. During this long hiatus, the geopolitical environment in the world has changed dramatically. As a member of the UNSC, India will be called upon to deliberate over a host of new issues and threats to international security.

• Arvind Gupta
• January 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The new radicals in Pakistan have challenged the old Islamists as represented by the religious political parties on the nature of state and the means to capture state power. These new radicals reject the ‘bottom up’ approach followed by the traditional Islamic political parties and prefer a ‘top down’ approach. Their ideological inspiration and reference point is Afghanistan under Taliban.

• Smruti S. Pattanaik
• July 2011
• Strategic Analysis

The historical baggage weighing on the Russo-Afghan relationship is apparently in the process of being jettisoned. The two countries have been cautiously reaching out and engaging each other for quite some time now. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's state visit to Moscow on 20–21 January 2011 – the first by an Afghan head of state in more than two decades – could be perceived as a major step forward.

• Vishal Chandra
• July 2011
• Strategic Analysis

With the Bangladesh general elections not far away in 2018, and the unlikely scenario of the Rohingya problem being fully resolved in the next few months, the issue is likely to deeply influence the posture of the various political parties.

• Gautam Sen
• October 03, 2017
• IDSA Comments

Pakistan’s responses with reference to the US encouraging India to play a greater role in Afghanistan raise an intriguing question: were Trump’s statements on India part of a gambit to extract cooperation from Pakistan?

• Priyanka Singh
• September 11, 2017
• IDSA Comments

While the agreement remains controversial, China is likely to consolidate its presence and Sri Lanka likely to get deeper into the Chinese debt trap even though it has gained temporary relief through the equity for debt swap.

• Smruti S. Pattanaik
• August 14, 2017
• IDSA Comments

The Doklam standoff has emerged as a litmus test for India in terms of how resolutely it can stand up against an increasingly hegemonic China to protect the interests of Bhutan as well as its own interests.

• Ashok Sajjanhar
• August 11, 2017
• IDSA Comments

To effectively cope with the PRC’s hostile attitude, India needs to reduce the power asymmetry, articulate a clear security policy based on a realistic threat assessment, reorganise the military, and revamp the border management mechanism.

• G.G. Dwivedi
• August 11, 2017
• IDSA Comments

While decades of counterinsurgency operations and peace processes have taken the sting out of the region’s major insurgencies, collaboration between groups continues to pose security challenges, particularly in the exploitable border areas adjacent to the upper Sagaing Region of Northwest Myanmar.

• Alex Waterman
• August 10, 2017
• IDSA Comments

Consisting of five major hydropower projects including the Diamer Bhasha Dam, the North Indus Cascade will cut across Gilgit Baltistan as well as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

• Priyanka Singh
• July 19, 2017
• Issue Brief

In December 2015, the Russian Foreign Ministry revealed that Russia was engaging in intelligence sharing with the Taliban to counter the growing presence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

• Parth Sarthi Suhag
• June 21, 2017
• IDSA Comments

The growing vilification of the Kashmiri movement by Salafi-Jihadi terror groups is a part of their overt radicalization attempts aimed at hijacking the sub-nationalist insurgency.

• Adil Rasheed
• May 15, 2017
• IDSA Comments

The revival of Jaish indicates that Pakistan will continue to utilise terrorism as an instrument to advance its geo-strategic agenda in South Asia.

• Raj Verma
• May 15, 2017
• IDSA Comments