Where is Syria headed?
Syria sits astride the confluence of many different currents in the Middle East: geographically, between the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris, and those which descend from Mount Hermon. Ethnically,...
View ArticleOn a multilateral chessboard: Iran tests India’s policy
India will have to walk a tightrope at the India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue starting in Washington D.C. on June 13. The pivot of this balance will be India’s relations with Iran at a time when, according...
View ArticleEgypt remains the key
Mohamed Morsi’s election as Egypt’s first freely elected President with 51.73 % of the vote, called a ‘historic moment’ by the British Foreign Secretary Hague and a ‘milestone’ by the White House, was...
View ArticleWhat must now happen in Syria
The latest reports from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, paint a grim picture of unending instability and targeted violence between government forces and opposition groups. The same is true in all the...
View ArticleA Green Agenda for Africa
The recently-concluded Atlantic Dialogues in Rabat, Morocco, brought together over 300 officials, policy-makers, businesspersons, opinion-makers and media representatives from countries around the...
View ArticleObama Redux: The view from India
Barack Obama’s victory on the night of November 6, which gave him a second term, was nothing short of a landslide. In his victory speech, President Obama said that “the best is yet to come” for the...
View ArticleIndia and the OIC: To join or not to join?
The question of India joining the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was reportedly raised once again. This time it was at the Congress Party’s Japiur chintan shivir, at a discussion on ‘India...
View ArticleIndia navigates the Arab Uprisings
On February 11, two years ago, Hosni Mubarak stepped down from his position as Egypt’s long-time President, after protests from his young population rocked the country. It seemed as if the revolution...
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Protests and Possibilities: West Asia and India
Protests and Possibilities This abstract is a part of the larger paper, titled ‘Protests and Possibilities: West Asia and India,’ co-authored by Ambassador Rajendra M. Abhyankar, Chairman, Kunzru...
View ArticleWill Rohani plough a reformist furrow in Iran?
The landslide victory of the reluctant moderate Hassan Rohani, who got 50.7% of the 36 million votes cast in Iran’s eleventh presidential elections on June 14, heralds testing times for the country....
View ArticleIndia finally reconnects with Iraq
Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid’s visit to Baghdad on 19-20 June has reconnected India with Iraq in the penultimate year of the United Progressive Alliance government. India desperately needed to...
View ArticleMaliki’s visit lays ambitious goals
After Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s visit to India from 22-25 August 2013, cooperation in the oil and petrochemical sector could become the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship. Both...
View ArticleSyria: An unwarranted intervention
The United States, with only France and Turkey left amongst its NATO allies, is poised to “punish” the Bashar al-Assad regime for an alleged chemical attack on 21 August in the Ghouta, a verdant...
View ArticleDecoding the UNSC Resolution on Syria
The Resolution passed by the UN Security Council (UNSC) on 28 September 2013 does not apportion blame to the Bashar al-Assad regime or to anyone else – notwithstanding the threat of unilateral military...
View ArticleThe Gulf comes to India
High-level delegations from three countries – Saudi Arabia, Iran and Bahrain – are visiting India this month. It is not clear whether the visits coming together in the span of a few days, and at a...
View ArticleSave Damascus, now
Rumours are rife in Damascus that the anti-Bashar al-Assad rebel coalition has shifted focus to the city and will enter it by March. This may well happen. The U.S., fed up of diplomacy with the...
View ArticleWill ISIS redraw the West Asia map?
The escalating violence by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the better-armed and ruthless off-shoot of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, is now impacting India. As widely reported, 39 Indian...
View ArticleModi, Obama and the Islamic State
Press reports ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s visit suggest that the U.S. will ask India to become a non-NATO ally. Apart from its other downsides, it will immediately put us on par with Pakistan and...
View ArticleCan Cuba become a Singapore?
The U.S.’ withdrawal of Cuba from its list of “states sponsoring terrorism” on May 29, 2015, after over 20 years, was the first step in Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro’s agreement in December...
View ArticleReassessing our Israel, Arab engagement
The announcement on 4 June 2015 at the major Washington-based think tank, Council on Foreign Relations, of a Saudi-Israeli alliance against Iran, comes a little before the visits to Jerusalem by...
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