Sandhya Jain

Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which shares borders with Iran and Afghanistan, has quietly functioned as one of the main arteries through which Afghanistan’s massive opium crop reaches the outer world. Six of the nine major drug trafficking routes from Afghanistan transit through Balochistan en route to Iran, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Afghanistan’s opium production peaked at 9,000 tons in 2017, on account of the country’s rampant instability and lack of viable options for families to sustain themselves.

• Published: September 2018
• Strategic Analysis

China's Belt & Road Initiative (B&RI), also known as One-Belt-One-Road (OBOR), depends for its success on a tacit alliance with Britain and the financial acumen of the City of London. The London-Beijing axis has likely gathered momentum with Britain's decision to quit the European Union (EU) in June 2016 and Prime Minister Theresa May's triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty in March 2017, to begin the divorce process.

• Published: November 2017
• Strategic Analysis

The stunning British vote of June 24, 2016, to quit the European Union (EU)—dubbed Brexit—has triggered a major realignment of economic and political forces across the globe, strengthening the template of a new world order tilted towards Moscow, Beijing and the rising powers of Asia and Africa. As Washington nervously recognizes, there will be a decline in the influence of the US, EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the latter two having served as instruments of US global domination.

• Published: January 2017
• Strategic Analysis

The rise of Dawlat al-Islamiyah f’al-Iraq w Belaad al-Sham (Daesh), or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in the vacuum created by the war in these countries has reignited the Kurdish question that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk skilfully bypassed after World War I, when several nation-states were carved out of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Kurdish problem began in the early 19th century when the Ottomans centralised the administration, emphasised Turkish identity, erased the autonomous Kurdish emirates and ruthlessly suppressed their protests.

• Published: January 2016
• Strategic Analysis

Since assuming the throne on January 23, 2015 following the death of King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, seems to have set about the task of shaking up the ultraconservative kingdom. The punishment or pardoning of Raef Badawi became the litmus test of the new Saudi monarch’s reign as the blogger’s sentence coincided with the last days of the ailing King Abdullah and King Salman was compelled to face his personal past as promoter of Islamic fundamentalism abroad.

• Published: May 2015
• Strategic Analysis

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death will be a serious setback to Daesh as it is different from Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that did not proclaim a ‘caliphate’. As the history of Islam shows, the proclamation of a new ‘caliph’ can be problematic.

• Published: November 11, 2014
• IDSA Comments

In the West, there is growing realisation that only boots on the ground can defeat or substantially destroy the Daesh. Unless a ground force capable of taking back the territories seized by the Daesh arrives on the scene, the advantage will lie with the jihadis.

• Published: October 17, 2014
• IDSA Comments

Bitter last ditch battles are being fought by Kurdish men and women, including boys and girls barely out of their teens, against the Daesh. Some feel that to succeed, Washington must cooperate with the Syrian Kurds (YPG) as Kurdish fighters alone have proved willing and capable of taking on the Daesh.

• Published: October 09, 2014
• IDSA Comments

The participation by the Saudi royal family in the US-led bombing of Daesh positions in Syria indicates Riyadh’s implacable opposition to the mercenary group. Iran, however, has dismissed the air strikes as a “psychological operation”, not a military one.

• Published: September 29, 2014
• IDSA Comments

China, like Russia, suffers from domestic terrorism (the Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement). Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has put China on a list of countries accused of persecuting Muslims, thus making it a target for jihad.

• Published: September 15, 2014
• IDSA Comments