Trump❤️Munir: Why & What It Means
When Gen Asim Munir landed in Tehran on Wednesday, armed with an American truce offer, he was following up on the weekend’s 21 hours of direct US-Iran negotiations, held in Islamabad – the most substantive bilateral engagement between Washington and Tehran, since the severing of diplomatic relations, in 1979. That Pakistan provided both a venue and diplomatic channel for […]
New doctrines, old dangers
One year after Op Sindoor, India’s new normal faces Pakistan’s new abnormal — putting a fragile truce at risk On the anniversary of the 2025 summer skirmish with Pakistan, India can claim to have forged a credible new doctrine of counterterrorism and controlled escalation in a nuclear neighbourhood. The 88-hour conflict, triggered by the Pahalgam […]
BBC: Pakistan’s push in Iran war diplomacy – is India sidelined?
The chatter in Delhi is unmistakable: as Pakistan positions itself as an intermediary in the US-Iran crisis, is India being sidelined? Islamabad has moved with unusual agility, casting itself as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran. Last week, it reportedly relayed a 15-point US peace plan to Iran and offered to host talks – an […]
I was Given 72 hours to Leave Pakistan: A High Commissioner’s Story
August 2019 brought one of the sharpest disruptions in India-Pakistan relations as India revoked Article 370, which had granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. The move rattled Islamabad, sparking hurried diplomacy and an atmosphere thick with speculation. Here, Ajay Bisaria, then India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, recounts the emotional weight and professional turbulence of […]
Review: “Anger Management” by Ajay Bisaria – Former High Commissioner of India to Pakistan
The enduring hostility between India and Pakistan, initiated by the partition in 1947 followed by traumatic violence, and marked by four conventional wars, the bifurcation of Pakistan, proxy sub conventional wars in Kashmir and Punjab, nuclear tests, acts of terrorism, and surgical strikes, has become a seemingly permanent fixture in South Asian geopolitics. The relationship […]
Dictator Next Door
Asim Munir’s power grab in Pakistan makes South Asia a more dangerous neighbourhood. The Pak military is no longer a state within a state. It is the state Yesterday’s attack on the Peshawar headquarters of Pakistan’s Federal Constabulary that killed three security personnel exemplifies the chaos engulfing that country. But the Pakistani leadership appears keen […]
Book Chapter: A Decade of Steady Economic Decay
Authors – Ajay Bisaria, Abhishek Kumar Abstract This piece analyses Pakistan’s persistent economic challenges, particularly in the decade from 2013 to 2024. It links the country’s financial crises with structural weaknesses, primarily military dominance, that has led to political instability, flawed economic choices and an addiction to IMF bailouts. The economic crisis has aggravated from […]
Excerpt: The Great India Game
Narendra Singh Sarila was an aide-de-camp (ADC) to Governor General Mountbatten before he joined the 1948 batch of India’s foreign service and went on to serve for thirty-seven years as an Indian diplomat. In his book on the ‘untold story’ of India’s Partition, Sarila emphasized a thesis that has since gathered wider support based on […]
Sindoor’s New Red Lines Are Drawn
When LeT terrorists struck in Kashmir on 22 April, Pakistan had effectively jumped on the first rung of a familiar conflict escalation ladder. It did so with implausible deniability of its role. But this time was different. The two countries climbed perilously higher into conflict than they had done ever before in this century. Between […]
CSC: In Our Immediate Neighbourhood: What’s Simmering?
Navin Berry: Last few months, we’ve had quite a few startling revelations, so to say. We find that South Asia; we thought we were the dominant power within our South Asian region. Now we begin to see that China is also in South Asia. So, is that true? How the South Asian scene has changed? […]