South Asia Center

With no regional consensus on the way forward, the mixed dangers of Afghanistan morphing into another Somalia, or breaking into a loose confederacy of statelets like the former Yugoslavia, or becoming the next drug-replete Medellin is not a distant possibility.  

Eleven former US ambassadors and commanders issue an urgent warning to Washington and its allies.

Ambassador Omar Samad speaks with four Afghans, two of whom are still in Afghanistan, to discuss events leading to the fall of Kabul, the transition that is underway, and how each speaker is coping with new realities as Afghans facing grave humanitarian challenges are now in survival mode. 

Videos circulating on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms showed a violent mob dragging a half-dead man on the streets of Sialkot, Pakistan on December 1, 2021. As the TLP’s influence grows and its ideology spreads, the de-radicalization of Pakistani society looks like an even more distant dream.

This week, a commander of the anti-Pakistan terrorist outfit Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was killed by sniper fire in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar. While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Afghanistan’s new ruling dispensation under the Afghan Taliban is unlikely to have had a hand in the hit, despite Islamabad’s insistence that the new regime take action against the outlawed terrorist group.

After two years wait and amid growing friction between the United States and India on thorny digital trade issues, India’s Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on Personal Data Protection Bill was tabled in Parliament on Thursday, December 16, 2021. South Asia Center experts react to the Bill.

Pakistan’s water situation is at a crossroads. The country has been increasingly cited by international organizations for being on the brink of water scarcity because of its declining per capita water availability. At the same time, the architecture of water resource governance in the country is undergoing a major overhaul.

Recently appointed to his position, Shaukat Tarin has positioned the budget as being growth oriented in focus, with significant increases to subsidies, public-sector development, and salaries of government employees.

The United States and India have long striven to maintain and deepen bilateral ties, weathering Cold War tensions and antagonisms over India’s nuclear tests to reinvigorate linkages and strengthen cooperation.