A Turning Point: The Gulf Reorders Itself, and Pakistan Moves to the Centre
For eighty years, the security of the Middle East ran through Washington. Gulf monarchies bought American arms and hosted American bases, and in return they assumed the guarantee would hold when it counted. Today that assumption is being retired. What is taking its place is a regional order built by the region’s own powers,…
Afghanistan’s Terrorism Ecosystem: How Taliban Rule Is Sustaining a Regional Security Threat
Five years after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan remains a significant base of operations, sanctuary and networking for multiple terrorist organisations. The central security problem is not that the Taliban command every militant group operating from Afghan territory. Rather, Afghanistan has developed into a terrorism ecosystem base: a Taliban-controlled territorial…
The Gulf Slips Away: How the Makkah Pact Ended India’s Decade of Gulf Diplomacy
The formalisation of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August 2026 marks a pivotal structural shift in the security architecture of West Asia and South Asia. Signed in the holy city of Makkah by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the trilateral…
Bhan Singh’s List: Recording the Sikh genocide of June 1984
The June 1984 Indian military assault on the Sikh religion’s most sacred place of worship, the Golden Temple complex, Sri Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Sahib, stands as a monumental watershed in modern Sikh and Indian history. This historical event exposed a profound rift between state-mandated narrative and collective trauma. The Indian government classified…
Militant Hindutva as a Form of Extremism
The communal violence that unfolded in Leicester in 2022 marked a turning point in discussions about extremism, diaspora politics, and social cohesion in the United Kingdom. Long regarded as a model of multicultural coexistence, the city witnessed unprecedented clashes between sections of its Hindu and Muslim communities. In 2026, a major independent inquiry led…
The Hydro-Geopolitical Chessboard: The Teesta River Dispute, China’s Ingress, and India’s Strategic Dilemma
Transboundary rivers have historically served as the lifelines of human civilisation, yet in modern South Asia, they increasingly function as arenas of intense geopolitical competition. The long-festering dispute over the Teesta River between India and Bangladesh serves as a prime case study of how a localised, upper-versus-lower riparian resource conflict can mutate into a…
