South Asia

The South Asia Channel

India Sees a New Regional Role for Its Navy

India has been busy in the eastern Indian Ocean of late. In early February, the country finished its second International Fleet Review, which brought together 52 countries and more ...

The South Asia Channel

To Save Bangladesh, Political Parties Must Return to the Country’s Founding Principles

In declaring independence from Pakistan, Bangladesh sought to leave behind the country’s long history of ethnic and provincial discrimination. It also sought to dispel the radical ...

The South Asia Channel

Pakistan’s Quiet Revolution Against Polio

Every morning, Naseeba travels to the local health facility in Taxila, Pakistan, to collect a cooler packed with polio vaccines. With these, an area map, ...

The South Asia Channel

Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Challenge

Of late, especially in the wake of the attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, and Brussels, the international discussion around countering violent extremism has centered on Western societies ...

The South Asia Channel

Is Pakistan Safe for Christians?

Christianity in Pakistan has come under brutal attack, most recently with March’s Easter Sunday bombing. However, Pakistan’s intensely restrictive religious environment is as much to blame as ...

The South Asia Channel

The Ultimate AfPak Reading List

What follows is the Ultimate AfPak Reading List -- an amalgamation of syllabi from classes I've taught at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard ...

Protest demanding justice for Afghan woman Farkhunda in Kabul

The South Asia Channel

For Afghan Women, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Basbibi, 25, begs on the streets of Makrorayan, a neighborhood some 200 yards from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Wearing a burqa to hide her youth and ...

The South Asia Channel

A Landmark Women’s Rights Bill Could Decide Pakistan’s Future

The legislative assembly of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, on Feb. 24 passed violence against women legislation that included unprecedented protections for women and penalties for ...

Top LeT Commander Abu Qasim Killed In Kashmir

The South Asia Channel

How Afghanistan Survives the 2016 Fighting Season

Spring has finally arrived, and with it, the beginning of another bloody season of fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan central government. On April ...

The South Asia Channel

Can Afghanistan Survive September?

On Tuesday morning, April 19, the Taliban carried out the first deadly attack of their spring offensive, killing over a dozen people and wounding more ...

Pakistani shoppers examine goods at a cr

The South Asia Channel

Squandered Progress in Pakistan

Several years ago, a Pakistani economist lamented the lack of tower cranes in Pakistani cities -- an absence, he said, that signified urban underdevelopment. In ...

The South Asia Channel

On the Trail of the Islamic State in Afghanistan

“From here on, everything is full of Daesh,” our driver comments as we pass what is said to be the last police checkpoint in the ...

The South Asia Channel

In President Ghani, Afghan Women Have A Champion Like No Other

The story of Afghan women and their struggle for equality and empowerment continues. Despite recent historic gains, much of the world still thinks of Afghanistan ...

The South Asia Channel

A Year Later, Still No Justice for Farkhunda

On March 19, 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada was murdered by a mob of angry Afghan men because a local religious cleric had falsely accused her of ...

Indian Panel to Address Concerns Over Tamil Nadu Nuclear Plant

The South Asia Channel

Lahore Tragedy is Pakistan’s Moment of Reckoning

The March 27 bombing in Lahore was, in many ways, a grim déjà vu for Pakistan’s Christian community, as a suicide bomber belonging to a ...

The South Asia Channel

After Lahore, The Taliban’s Rise in Pakistan Continues

On Easter Sunday, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), killed over 72 people and wounded hundreds in an attack on a ...

The South Asia Channel

Terror in Lahore: Pakistan’s Toughest Test

On March 27, Easter Sunday, militants attacked Lahore’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal park, killing at least 72 people -- many of them women and children -- and wounding ...

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN-US-CHINA-TALIBAN-TALKS

The South Asia Channel

China: Peacemaker in South Asia?

On Feb. 6, the third meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), a coalition between the United States, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, which has the ...

The South Asia Channel

Islamabad Must Confront Its Islamic State Problem

How great a threat does the Islamic State (IS) pose in Pakistan? On Feb. 9, Aftab Sultan, the head of Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, told a ...

An armed Pakistani Taliban chats with re

The South Asia Channel

Pakistan Thinks It Can Play Nice with Terrorists. It’s Wrong.

The start of 2016 has been marked by hope for a peace agreement in Afghanistan, a result of multiple meetings of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group ...

BANGLADESH-PAKISTAN-WARCRIMES-COURT-HANGING-UNREST

The South Asia Channel

Escaping the Shadow of Pakistan

Pakistan’s dysfunctional relationship with India and its symbiotic relationship with the Afghan Taliban often overshadow the country’s troubled relations with other regional neighbors. Iran has ...

The South Asia Channel

Pakistan’s F-16s: Finding a Fair Price

U.S.-Pakistan relations are never stress-free. At issue now is whether the U.S. Congress will allow the sale of F-16 aircraft to Pakistan at subsidized rates, ...

Protest In Favour Of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar, Demand Release

The South Asia Channel

Pakistan’s Big Threat Isn’t Terrorism—It’s Climate Change

For decades, Pakistan has struggled to manage urgent crises, ranging from infrastructure woes to terrorism. While its policies focus on short-term conventional threats, a potentially ...

SRI LANKA-INDIA-CHINA-MALDIVES-DIPLOMACY

The South Asia Channel

Love and Politics: Valentine’s Day in Pakistan

On Valentine's Day 2016, a mustached man with a wide smile held a provocative placard in the upper-class Karachi suburb of Clifton. It read, "We ...

The South Asia Channel

Kandahar’s Enforcer Fights Evil with Brutality

General Abdul Raziq is one of the more prominent cases of the warlord paradox shaped by the U.S. state-building agenda in Afghanistan. Labeled by some ...

The South Asia Channel

Reimagining Afghanistan’s Future, One Pupil at A Time

Now that NATO bases in Afghanistan have rolled up, the embeds are over, and journalists can no longer trade tales late into the night at ...

The South Asia Channel

Afghanistan on the Brink, Part 2

The following is the second in a two-part series by Ioannis Koskinas, a Senior Fellow at New America, assessing the risks to the Afghan state. ...

The South Asia Channel

Afghanistan on the Brink, Part 1

The following is the first in a two-part series by Ioannis Koskinas, a Senior Fellow at New America, assessing the risks to the Afghan state. ...

The Prince Of Wales And Duchess Of Cornwall Visit India – Day 3

The South Asia Channel

A Pipeline to South Asia Prosperity

In 2015, the Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India natural gas pipeline (TAPI) shifted from theoretical concept to pragmatic initiative. That progress was due to three major breakthroughs: an agreement ...

The South Asia Channel

Straight Talk on Afghan Peace Talks

Hopes for reviving the Afghan peace process have risen once again. Meetings on Jan. 11 and Jan. 18 in Islamabad and Kabul brought Afghan and ...

The South Asia Channel

To Counter IS in Bangladesh, Look To The Bloggers

The recent attacks in Paris and the Sinai brought attention to the Islamic State’s (IS) ability to perpetrate terrorist attacks around the world. In Bangladesh, ...

The South Asia Channel

Chabahar Port: A Win for South Asia

When Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah visited Iran on Jan. 4, one of the top items on his agenda was the finalizing of the ...

The South Asia Channel

America’s Afghan Refugee Crisis

The humanitarian catastrophe that has brought more than a million refugees to Europe over the past year is not just a European crisis. The American ...

The South Asia Channel

A Plan Colombia for Afghanistan

On Feb. 4, President Barack Obama will host Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos at the White House to discuss a peace deal that will end the ...

About South Asia Channel

The South Asia Channel, a collaboration with New America and Johns Hopkins SAIS, features deep analysis of issues concerning Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, and covers everything from politics to business to culture.

Editor, Peter Bergen
Assistant Editor, David Sterman

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