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Taliban is gambling for strategic autonomy. Will Iran, China fill the Pakistan-sized hole?

Cutting trade ties with Pakistan is easier said than done: the neighbouring country is Afghanistan’s largest single trading partner, taking in 45 per cent of Afghan exports in 2024.

Kashmir’s new-generation jihadis want to attack India’s heartland, not just its army

Lack of movement on building a genuine democratic culture in Kashmir after 2019 is helping the region’s jihadists.

Saudi oil power is waning. What this means for its ties to the US

There’s little doubt that Saudi Arabia contributed to its own problems, driven by leadership hubris and poor advice. The Line is a case in point.

Sudan shows what happens when the world is happy to let mass killers rule

Fourteen million refugees, and 25 million facing acute hunger, should be reason enough for the world to dismantle the dystopia in Sudan — even if the sadism of its rulers is not.

War was the norm between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Asim Munir is bringing it back

Pakistan massively enhanced the funding for Islamists in Afghanistan, hoping to bury ethnic nationalism. That strategy has now backfired spectacularly.

Russia’s super-missile test shows a new, expensive technological race—with dire outcomes

The test raises a question. Why have Russian nuclear strategists now invested in the Burevestnik, when the US abandoned nuclear ramjet propulsion in 1964?

Trump wants to control ‘unruly’ regimes—so he launched a war on Venezuela

Like drug wars in the past, Trump’s efforts are likely to deepen the chaos in Central America—exposing the US to greater danger.

America imagines Asim Munir is the cure to jihadism. He is the disease

Less than an hour earlier, William Putscher had been lunching on a hot dog by the poolside, in the congenial environment of the American...

FM Muttaqi’s Deoband visit signals Taliban sharpening daggers for Pakistan

Taliban factions nurture the TTP as both an ideological ally and because Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada’s regime views the borderlands as Afghan, not Pakistani.

America gifted China its rare-earth monopoly — and India helped too

The rare-earth crisis shows how misplaced government policies and corporate greed can collude to create a strategic crisis.

On Camera

Youth Congress, your foolish protest helped the Modi govt climb out of the AI summit hole

In tactical terms, the shirtless protest was worse than a self-goal. Suddenly, the fiascos of the AI Summit were forgotten, and the Youth Congress’s disruption became the issue.

In the West, there’s anxiety. In India, optimism—Rishi Sunak says India poised to be leader in AI

On Wednesday, the former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was speaking in New Delhi at a Carnegie & Observer Research Foundation event on AI.

MoD, IAF agree on some exemptions to HAL for Tejas Mk1A, but no compromise on ‘must-have’ capabilities

IAF is fine with accepting the aircraft with 'must-haves', even if some other steps remain pending, which may take at least another year, it is learnt.

No country is ever fully sovereign. Cold War era taught India its real meaning

India’s fraught neighbourhood places multiple constraints on its strategic choices. It leaves no time to take a deep breath, lean back and reset.