State adds new official for India policy

State Department sources confirm that Alyssa Ayres will soon come on board as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, covering U.S. policy toward India.

Ayres worked at State during the latter years of the Bush administration as a special assistant to then under secretary for political affairs Nicholas Burns and she was involved in the crafting of and negotiations surrounding the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement. Since then, she has been leading the India and South Asia practice at the consulting firm McLarty Associates, according to her personal website. Last year, she authored a book on language and nationalism in Pakistan entitled, Speaking Like a State.

The position had been widely expected to go to Georgetown professor Christine Fair, but Fair took herself out of the running late last year for reasons that remain unclear. Ayres will report up to SCA’s assistant secretary, Robert Blake.

Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has worked with Ayres, praised the choice while simultaneously lamenting the fact that it took the Obama administration more than 18 months to fill the slot.

“She has worked in the government before, she understands the importance of India strategically, and her heart is in the right place,” he said. “This is a smart decision they’ve made, even if they’ve made it late.”

Some in the State Department wondered privately why the administration didn’t choose someone with more solid Democratic Party bona fides, as Ayres has only worked for a Republican administration. But Tellis said she is no ideologue and is eminently qualified.

“That she worked in a GOP administration is completely accidental because she came into government through a fellowship program from the Council on Foreign Relations,” he said.

According to her McLarty bio, Ayres speaks fluent Hindi and Urdu and previously worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross as an interpreter in Jammu and Kashmir. She received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.