Talking to the Taliban: Will it Ensure ‘Peace’ in Afghanistan? The raging Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan underlines the limits of the use of military force. The lack of visible progress on the reconstruction activity and prevailing insecurity has alienated the Afghan populace in the remote villages of South and East Afghanistan. Given that the military option alone has limited utility in Counter-insurgency (COIN), there is a need to exercise an 'out-of-the-box' option to address the present stalemate. Shanthie Mariet D’Souza | March 2009 | Strategic Analysis
Enhanced International Cooperation Through Aided Military Training Programmes: A Study of the US Experience, with Specific Reference to South Asia Major powers have tried to use military training programmes, manifested through military-to-military cooperation running the gamut of training exchanges to joint exercises, to defence-related dialogues through seminars and the like, in order to engage and influence other countries in the furtherance of their strategic interests. The US model is notable for being innovative, flexible, scalable, and broad in its approach, and this has fetched it considerable dividends. Cherian Samuel | March 2009 | Strategic Analysis
India and the European Union: Time to De-Bureaucratize Strategic Partnership Gulshan Sachdeva | March 2009 | Strategic Analysis
Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis Sanjaya Baru | March 2009 | Strategic Analysis
Violence in Pakistan: Trend Analysis January 2009 The first month of the new calendar year saw a reversal of the trend of declining casualties witnessed during the last three months, whilst the incidents of violence continued to rise constantly maintaining the trend of last three months. The withdrawal of ceasefire announced by the Baloch nationalist groups in September 2008, saw a sudden spurt in casualties in Balochistan. During the month the incidents of violence increased to 430 from 388 in December 2008. T. Khurshchev Singh , Alok Bansal | February 28, 2009 | IDSA Comments
India’s Confrontation with Terror: Need for Bold Initiatives Since 2001, Islamic terrorists have struck India with frightening frequency and ferocity. The most disturbing aspect of these attacks is that they have spread into the hinterland from Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which was the main focus of the terrorists in the late 80s and the following decade. Thomas Mathew | February 25, 2009 | Policy Brief
Iran Enters the Space Arena One year ago, in February 2008, Iran launched a sounding rocket into outer space to mark the opening of its first space centre. This rocket essentially belonged to the ‘category’ of instrument-carrying crafts. Such crafts are designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during their sub-orbital flight. Within a year, on 3 February 2009, Iran successfully launched its first domestically manufactured satellite "Omid" (Hope), which was carried into space by the home-built Safir-2 space rocket. Ajey Lele | February 20, 2009 | IDSA Comments
Maoists’ Attacks on Infrastructure Rebels of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) have been repeatedly targeting infrastructure, which are soft targets. The targets of their attacks include telecommunication towers, Railways and power transmission centres and lines, to name a few. P. V. Ramana | February 20, 2009 | IDSA Comments
