Afghanistan Archive

Dave Dilegge at the Small Wars Journal blog put together a useful overview of reaction to Obama’s national security team. I think Laura Rozen nailed it, too, when she described the event and the team as “sober.” Add an “m” and you’ve got the mood that will probably apply come Jan. 20, when the gang starts realizing the task they’re up against. I want to avoid getting too deep into the “rotisserie league” diplomacy game. There’s no real way to predict how all the parts will ultimately fit together once they are in motion. And to paraphrase the wartime cliche […]

For those of you who enter the site through the blog, I’d like to call your attention to our latest theme issue on the front page, the Asia Triangle. In three deep analysis pieces (M.K. Bhadrakumar on India here, Jing-dong Yuan on China here, and Arif Rafiq on Pakistan here), we examine the balance of power on the South Asian subcontinent between India, Pakistan and China, and how that might impact the emerging consensus calling for a “regional approach” to turn the tide in, and ultimately stabilize, Afghanistan. We’ve had this feature in development for a while now, and last […]

Last week’s attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai focused the world’s attention on what some are already calling the latest front in the War on Terror. Many questions remain as to the attackers’ origins as well as what, if any, ties they had to Pakistani terror groups previously operating in Kashmir, global terrorist networks like al-Qaida and the Pakistani military intelligence service. Two WPR articles put the attacks in their regional context:Mumbai Attacks Complicate U.S. Regional Policy, by M.K. BhadrakumarMumbai Attacks Put Scrutiny on ISI, by Jayshree Bajoria.

Pakistan’s Perpetual Precariousness On Nov. 26, 2008, terrorists laid siege to Mumbai, making the poshest area of India’s commercial capital a war zone for several days. The attacks once again raised the specter of an Indo-Pak war. Yet, earlier in the day, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had arrived in New Delhi to continue recently renewed peace talks with his Indian counterpart. The two South Asian states, playing to a script performed before, had in a short period of time taken two steps forward toward peace and 10 steps back. Relations between India and Pakistan are clearly fragile and […]

With the security situation in Iraq improved to the point that analysts no longer shrink from using the word “endgame,” Washington has increasingly turned its attention to the alarming situation in Afghanistan, where the insurgency has taken full advantage of safe havens on the Pakistani side of a border that exists largely in name only. Attempts to address the problem of how to intervene militarily without in turn destabilizing an already fragile Pakistan have led to an emerging consensus regarding a “regional approach,” one that includes the India-Pakistan rivalry as a key to stabilizing the South Asian subcontinent. But lurking […]