India And Its Intelligence Famine
Even as the government promises to set up a new spy centre, intelligence services say little effort has been made to enhance existing capacities. Read Here – The Hindu
Tag: Terrorism
Militants, the bane of Pakistan’s future
Pakistan is in the grips of militancy because of its fraught relationship with India, with which it has fought three wars and innumerable skirmishes since the countries separated in 1947. Militants were cultivated as an equalizer, to make Pakistan safer against a much larger foe. But they have done the opposite, killing Pakistanis at home […]
The Evolution of Irregular War
Pundits and the press too often treat terrorism and guerrilla tactics as something new, a departure from old-fashioned ways of war. But nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog, warfare has primarily been carried out by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, and lightly armed volunteers who […]
The David Headley Problem
There is understandable anger and grief in India over the United States recently sentencing David Coleman Headley to 35 years in prison. Formerly known as Daood Sayed Giulani, the Pakistani American Headley was one of the masterminds behind the November 26, 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai that left 166 persons dead, including six Americans, and […]
Is Pakistan’s Behavior Changing?
Islamabad has been trying to send signals over the last few months indicating that it is pursuing a new course of action, both internally and externally, that is more in line with international norms. Pakistan has tried to improve its relationship with India. It has also indicated a preference for a negotiated peace in Afghanistan […]
New Year, New Problem? Pakistan’s Tactical Nukes
October of last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Many Asian policymakers will read the lessons of that harrowing episode with some self-satisfaction. When India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear weapon tests in 1998, foreign analysts repeatedly told them that, as poor countries with weak institutions, they could not be entrusted with […]
A Chinese Lesson
When nations become strong and their companies begin to spread business to other countries, interests are bound to either collide or come together. For decades, it was the turn of the Western multinationals to face political wrath in faraway countries. Remember India threw out Coca Cola and IBM? Now it is the turn of Chinese and […]
Ticket To Paradise In A Brutal World
Kasab, the world came to call him, “the butcher”: butcher not because he shot dead 55 women, men and children, Hindu and Muslim at short range with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, but because it denoted his underprivileged southern Punjab caste. For millions of Indians, the man caught on closed circuit television cameras as he walked […]
Afghanistan’s Fraught Future
President Hamid Karzai’s visit to India comes at a time when his nation’s future, more than at any point since 9/11, is shrouded in a fog of fear. This weekend, shells fired by his troops were reported to have killed five civilians in Pakistan’s South Waziristan agency, the latest in a series of cross-border skirmishes. […]
The Judge, the General, and Pakistan’s Evolving Balance of Power
The tenuous nature of Pakistan’s democratic transition was put on display this Monday when the country’s army chief and Supreme Court chief justice appeared to warn one another to not transgress their constitutionally-defined roles. Pakistan’s Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani decried what he claimed were attempts to create divisions between the Pakistani military and its […]
looking beyond borders 