Shanthie Mariet D'Souza

Naval War College · Strategic &, Defence Studies

This volume of case studies examines the rise in violent extremism, terrorism and insurgency in South and South East Asia, and subsequent state responses. The South and South East of Asia has experienced various forms of extremism and violence for years, with a growing demand for academic or policy-relevant work that will enhance understanding of...

Militant jihad as witnessed in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is centred around the primary objective of finding a separate homeland for the Muslims of the state. Opinion on whether this homeland would be an independent entity or merged into Pakistan remains inconclusive. And yet, this externally sponsored violent extremism, spearheaded by interlinked mil...

Notwithstanding an existential crisis, which has wracked its operations following the announcement of the death of its supreme leader Mullah Omar, the Taliban-led insurgency remains a potent force drawing their sustenance from a wide range of sources both within Afghanistan as well as outside. Not only has it been able to withstand the military pro...

Afghanistan is at a cusp of 'change'. As 2014, the date for the drawdown of international forces draws near, the international community is confounded by the complexities of an effective inteqal (transition) as by the modalities for ensuring it. This book brings together varied Afghan voices to set the agenda, address critical gaps in the ongoing i...

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2016.1266163

n the shifting sands of the power play unfolding in Afghanistan, New Delhi remains a mere spectator. The latest round of US negotiations with the Taliban in Doha has garnered considerable international attention, with the group’s co-founder, Mullah Baradar, leading the insurgent team. As the search for an end to the long war in Afghanistan has int...

This volume of case studies examines the rise in violent extremism, terrorism and insurgency in South and South East Asia, and subsequent state responses. The South and South East of Asia has experienced various forms of extremism and violence for years, with a growing demand for academic or policy-relevant work that will enhance understanding of...

Following the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland, a massive international military intervention in Afghanistan aimed at decimating the Taliban–Al Qaeda combine. More than a decade and half later, ‘peace and stability’ continues to be elusive in the conflict ravaged country. The search for quick-fix solutions by the international community to bring pea...

Its long history and destabilising impact notwithstanding, banditry has received scant academic attention in India. Confined mostly to occasional and incident-driven media reportage, the socioeconomic factors that fuelled insurgencies and banditry and the milieu which provided a context for the operations of these outlawed movements received little...

Much speculation abounds on India’s evolving policy towards post-2014 Afghanistan. While India’s aid-only policy in post-2001 Afghanistan has been criticized for piggy backing on the US military efforts, it has generated domestic debate, given the vulnerabilities its projects and personnel face in Afghanistan. The debate is bound to grow more inten...

While the world watched the closely contested Presidential elections in the United States in much anticipation, most observers and policy wonks in South Asia were bracing for change or continuity in the foreign policy that the new administration in Washington would herald. Although India received scant mention during the third Presidential debate w...

Since 19 July 2012, a wide range of issues, combined with gargantuan administrative ineptness, has produced nearly 100 dead bodies in India's northeast state of Assam and displaced close to 400,000 people from their places of residence. The month-long violence between the Bodo tribal community and the Muslims had its impact on distant Indian cities...

The search for peace and stability in Afghanistan is taking a detour from a narrow security-centric approach to trade and investment, aiming to use the country's resource potential to build its economic viability, sustainability and independence. The New Delhi Investment Summit on 28 June 2012 is a gamble worth taking to ensure that Afghanistan's e...

As the search for the Afghan ‘end game’ has intensified in the United States, a Strategic Partnership Deal (SPD) entailing a limited but long-term presence of US forces in Afghanistan is seen as a crucial cornerstone to prevent the return of Afghanistan to the pre-9/11 days. A series of incidents such as the burning of the copy of the Holy Quran an...

The latest violent protestation in Afghanistan over the burning of copies of the Holy Quran has a demonstrative effect. It has yet again brought to light the nature of the international intervention and the challenges of stabilising this war-torn country. While on the surface the incident appears to be a religiously motivated episode, a growing sen...

On October 4, 2011, the day that India and Afghanistan signed an agreement on strategic partnership, I traveled from Kabul to Kandahar, getting what was for me a rare glimpse of the average Afghan's perception of Indian developmental activity in his country. What was striking was the widespread support I saw in the Pashtun heartland for an even gre...

The formalisation of the Agreement on Strategic Partnership (ASP) between India and Afghanistan on 4 October 2011 caught instant and worldwide media attention. Coming ahead of the much convoluted US-Afghan strategic partnership, this agreement is seen to be a new twist in the great game. For the Afghans, it is a reaffirmation of the positive role I...

All hopes and attention are yet again riveted on another international conference in Bonn, Germany, later this year. Taking place, almost a decade after the last conference in Bonn, the forthcoming conference (Bonn II) is seen as a window of opportunity for the Afghans and the international community to address the past shortcomings and set the par...

Amidst talks of rising instability and violence in Afghanistan, what seems to have eluded the eye is the progress on the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) gas pipeline project. The projected gain from the pipeline is seen as an opportunity to create a win-win deal among local and regional stakeholders in Afghanistan by binding th...

New Delhi, in recent times, has been confronted with some hard choices in Afghanistan. A decade-long policy of providing huge humanitarian and developmental assistance, which has accrued tremendous goodwill among the Afghans, is now perceived to be in imminent danger of being disrupted and overwhelmed by the United States (US) decision of condition...

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-insurge...

Afghanistan seems to be sliding into chaos notwithstanding the initial euphoria that followed the toppling of the Taliban regime. The long-term stability of Afghanistan is mainly contingent upon its integration in a regional cooperative framework. The Afghanistan Compact adopted at the London Conference in January-February 2006 identified regional...

Following the 9/11 attacks on the American homeland, India and Pakistan emerged as important states in the US-led Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The gathering momentum in the Indo-US relations during the Clinton Presidency underwent a dramatic transformation. Although increased cooperation in defence issues is understood to have ‘led’ the India–US...

More than six years after the initiation of Operation Enduring Freedom the Taliban and its affiliates are back, wreaking havoc on the fragile security situation and impeding development activity in Afghanistan. The Taliban-led insurgency is spreading its tentacles to new areas, with the relatively stable north swinging towards instability. This pap...