Articles By Vikram Sood
Paris Attacks: If IS faces setbacks, may react with more terror
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 16 Nov , 2015
The serial terror attacks in Paris on Friday, which left more 127 dead and many more injured, was the third terror incident in recent times and by far the largest ever in France. They were...
Strategic relevance of Gilgit and Baltistan
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Vol 20.4 Oct-Dec 2005 | Date: 27 Sep , 2015
Gilgit and Baltistan are parts of India, as much as the rest of the J & K state is, but this region does not seem to figure too prominently on our collective radar screen. Instead, we seem to...
Are we a bad news nation?
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 13 Jul , 2015
Have we have become a ‘bad news’ nation, forever self-flagellating and unable to see anything positive around ourselves? We are also showing up as a nation that is incapable of sustained...
China’s move on Lakhvi not about terrorism, but about sending India and...
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Courtesy: Economic Times | Date: 29 Jun , 2015
The Chinese bailout of Pakistan on the Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi case in the United Nations on Tuesday was as obvious as a hurtling fivetonne truck around the corner. What was more astonishing was...
Becoming a leading power isn't easy
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 16 Apr , 2015
Prime Minister Modi’s seven-day mission to France, Germany and Canada will have taken him to seven cities, covering several thousand kilometres and attending innumerable functions. By all...
Six years later, are we ready?
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Courtesy: MidDay Mumbai | Date: 27 Nov , 2014
Six years ago most of us sat and watched a carnage in Mumbai being enacted on our TV screens. It seemed like a bad dream as we watched terrorists in action and nothing could have brought home the...
The Gathering Storm
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Courtesy: MidDay Mumbai | Date: 30 Oct , 2014
It is a troubled world that we live in today and there are many reasons for this. Draw a straight line from Pakistan to Turkey, swing down to the Gaza Strip and from there to Yemen, and we have an...
Kill funding to kill terrorism
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Courtesy: Economic Times | Date: 27 Oct , 2014
Terrorism, like almost every other human activity that involves production and creation of goods and services, needs money. Collecting funds initially through donations, borrowing or robbing...
When Modi made his moves in the US
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 17 Oct , 2014
There was more to Narendra Modi’s visit to the US than the razzmatazz of Madison Square Garden and Central Park. He had gone to the US after three basic foreign policy initiatives, and was...
Reinvention of Jihadi Terror from Pakistan
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 27 Sep , 2014
The Islamic State of Iraq and Shams (ISIS) is neither a magical nor a mythical creation but the creation of vested interests. The Afghan Mujahedeen, followed by al-Qaeda and...
Why jihad against India must continue
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 09 Sep , 2014
The statement by Al Qaeda leader Al Zawahiri about India, Myanmar (he called it Burma – something that the Americans do also) is too important to be ignored by the media. Yet the issue and its...
Role of Pak Army in domestic turmoil
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 30 Aug , 2014
This is no Arab Spring. There is no Tahrir Square either. There is no spontaneous peoples’ movement. Only a movement led from the top and more a soup of four ingredients – one man’s ambition...
The India Pakistan merry-go-round
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Courtesy: MidDay Mumbai | Date: 21 Aug , 2014
Narendra Modi’s invitation to SAARC leaders for the swearing in May was a smart move and it threw three groups into a spin. As the startled Nawaz Sharif government went into a confused silence,...
Armageddon in slow motion: Threat to India
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 24 Jul , 2014
Bloody wars have been fought before but today’s media communications and live coverage has brought the horrors to our bedrooms, in almost real time. In the past nations fought in the name of...
Afghanistan's Three New Crises
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 10 Jul , 2014
Afghanistan today faces three emerging crises just when one felt that the country, after decades of turmoil and violence unremittingly imposed from external forces, might be looking at a chance of...
The games nations play
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Courtesy: MidDay Mumbai | Date: 26 Jun , 2014
In the early days of the Cold War, nationalism was a particularly bad word in underdeveloped or developing countries, whose primary purpose was to service the First World and fulfil its economic...
Pakistan’s Domestic Jihad
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 18 Jun , 2014
Pakistan watchers would not find the current spate of terror in that country surprising because there has been a steady escalation in its lethality, its dramatic impact, geographical range and...
Siachen is not low hanging fruit
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 03 May , 2014
History’s lessons, the immutability of geography and the politics of any region will determine how nations behave with each other. Nations cannot up and away and change location from a difficult...
Pakistan - On a treadmill, going nowhere
By: Vikram Sood | Date: 18 Apr , 2014
There are not many in Pakistan or outside who can confidently describe the situation there. Far too many contradictions have surfaced. Maybe no-one is really in charge. There are peace talks, but...
Other countries pay real price for US' mistakes
By: Vikram Sood | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 05 Apr , 2014
Recently The New York Times announced with breathless urgency that China was ramping up its military spending to $148 billion, up from $139.2 billion last year, adding that China already spent...