South Asia Archive

Few took issue with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bold assertion on Wednesday that the Pakistan-based Taliban pose a “mortal threat” to the United States. The stakes, of course, are high. The Taliban provided safe haven to Osama bin Laden prior to the 9/11 attacks, and could very well be doing so now. Since fleeing Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion in 2001, they have mounted stubborn insurgencies on both sides of the border that separates Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas, and have now established footholds in formerly secure parts of Pakistan. The fact that Pakistan is a nuclear-armed power makes […]

NEW DELHI — A shift in India’s strategic defense thinking has become increasingly apparent over the months following the Mumbai terror attack in November. Before the Mumbai attacks, India’s military infrastructure was predominantly oriented to building against a long-term threat from China, aided by some plodding from a U.S. keen to counter Beijing’s rise in the region. Post-11/26, however, there is every sign that India’s defense preparedness is more focused on the immediate threat from Pakistan. India’s massive $50 billion defense modernization plans are being tweaked accordingly. Indian intelligence agencies have warned that a conflict situation with Pakistan could arise […]

The biggest electoral show on earth is now under way in India. But despite India’s reputation as a growing power on the international stage, foreign policy is set to play at most a marginal role in the decisions of most of its estimated 714 million voters. “I think foreign policy comes up mostly for the English-speaking urban elite and for the television audiences,” says Lawrence Prabhakar, associate professor of political science at Madras Christian College. “But for India’s hinterland, particularly the rural areas, there’s no debate at all on foreign policy. . . . By and large 90 percent of […]

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Swat Valley area used to be known for its lush trees, towering mountains and flowing water gushing through the valley from the glaciers above. Swat was for lovers — young honeymoon couples beginning a new life, families enamored of nature’s display of bounty. An area where you could buy handmade crafts direct from artisans’ humble studios, sipping tea in the shade as apprentices wrapped up your purchases. Yet as 2008 passed into 2009 the trickle of stories coming out of the area concerning public floggings, school bombings, beheaded police officers and political assassinations turned into a […]

Following up on the discussion of regional strategic balance in Asia, this article on Indian-Chinese maritime rivalry in the Indian Defense Review is essential reading. The IDR is often an outlet for the Indian military’s extreme nationalist wing, but this particular article takes an objective analytic approach to the subject that’s well worth a close read. Significantly, the U.S. is trying to wrap up wars in the Middle East andSouth Asia that have increasingly transformed our operational capacityinto a ground-based force of occupation, at the very moment when theemerging strategic focus of just about all of the world’s majormilitary braintrusts […]

World Politics Review contributor Arif Rafiq appeared on Worldfocus yesterday to discuss the visit of Richard Holbrooke and Adm. Mike Mullen to Pakistan. The video can be found here. Rafiq’s WPR feature article, “Pakistan’s Search for Security” (sub. req.) can be found here, and his recent WPR Briefing on the role of civil law in combatting the Talibanization of Pakistan can be found here. (If you’re not yet a WPR subscriber, you can take a four-month free trial with no obligation.)

Last November, in the restive tribal region on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, an American Predator drone circled several thousand feet above the village of Ali Khel. Firing one of its Hellfire missiles, the drone destroyed a compound that was reportedly occupied by two senior al-Qaida officials: Abu Zubair Al Masri, an explosives expert from Egypt, and Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani linked to a 2006 plot to bomb London Heathrow airport. Both Al Masri and Rauf died in the blast, according to intelligence officials quoted by press reports. The attack was just one of scores of air strikes conducted by robotic […]

NEW DELHI, India — A series of brazen infiltration attempts by militant groups in Indian Kashmir have resulted in fierce gun battles with security forces, and threaten to exacerbate already tense relations between India and Pakistan. The skirmishes come amid fears of militant attacks on prominent political leaders as the campaign for India’s parliamentary elections gets under way. A five-day gun battle in north Kashmir’s Kupwara region left 17 militants as well as eight Indian Army commandos dead in the last week of March. The militants were part of an unusually large group of 25 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) […]

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Not very long ago, one of Malik Naeem’s favorite pastimes was an afternoon jaunt to McDonald’s with his granddaughters for french fries and a tour of the playground. Islamabad, the Pakistani capital where Naeem lives with his family, seemed sheltered from far-off concerns about growing militancy and insecurity along the Afghan border. That changed in an instant last September, when militants attacked the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, just a few seconds’ drive from the Pakistani Parliament and Supreme Court buildings. The high-profile attack on a popular public establishment in a heavily guarded area meant that no place […]

No sooner do I finish posting about the G-20’s not-so-safe haven in London than I stumble across this AP dispatch: a federal court ruling extended to prisoners in Afghanistan the legal right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Here I think the fascinating parallel is easier to make: The thought immediately occurred to me that over the past eight years, the U.S. has essentially created its own safe havens, with the network of black-site detention centers being the functional equivalent of the Pakistani FATA, i.e., beyond the rule of law and outside of global governance mechanisms. Significantly, the Obama […]