IDR Blog
SAARC is Dead! Long Live Regional Cooperation
The 19th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit is scheduled for November this year in Islamabad. As with previous SAARC summits, doubt persists as to whether the Summit would take place with all Heads of State/Government in attendance. Pakistan has played its cards on Jammu and Kashmir and continues to justify...
NSG and China’s Grand Strategic Flip-flops: Some Plausible Explanations
When India responded cautiously to the international tribunal’s rejection of China’s claim over the South China Sea (SCS), many commentators construed it as India ceding crucial ground on an issue where a tit-for-tat response would have been more appropriate to China’s ‘sabotage’ of India’s admission to the Nuclear Suppliers Group...
In Mind and in Sight: The Persisting Legacy of Karzai in Afghan Politics
Following almost four decades of violence and conflict, a new political framework was introduced in Afghanistan on the back of international and regional material and moral support. Beginning 2001, Afghanistan was inducted into the world order as a nascent democracy and a new republic. What was called as the ‘Agreement on Provisional...
PLA Unit 77656 at India's Chumbi Gate
By honouring the PLA Unit closest to India’s vulnerable Siliguri Corridor, Beijing has responded to Delhi’s efforts to assert itself along the border through improved military presence and development of border areas. Lord Curzon was a man in a hurry. In 1904, he decided to march to Lhasa to open negotiations with the Tibetan Government which...
Kokrajhar Massacre: Land Conflict at Root of Bodo Militancy
The terrorists struck again in Assam’s restive Bodo-dominated area in India’s Northeast on August 5 shattering peace in the region. Three masked gunmen in black raincoat fired indiscriminately and hurled grenade at a crowed bi-weekly market near Kokrajhar town, killing 14 people and injuring 20. Assam has been confronting militancy since the...