First Impressions: Uncertainty, yes; but also Optimism about future The creeping sense of despondency, even defeatism, over the future of Afghanistan post 2014 that seems to have set in among a section of the strategic community and top pol....
VIF organized a round table discussion focusing on Afghanistan on 11th October 2013. Participants in the discussion included Mr. Ajit Doval, KC, Director VIF, Gen. (retd) N. C. Vij, Lt. Gen. (retd) Ravi Sawhney, Amb G. Parthasarathy, Amb S....
Afghanistan was the main focus of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit held in September this year at the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. Though there was some distraction caused by the Syrian crisis with all the members supporting non-inter....
Lt. Gen Ravi Sawhney, Distinguished Fellow and Sushant Sareen, Senior Fellow, VIF, were invited by the Afghan Institute of Strategic Studies to attend the prestigious Second Herat Security Dialogue on 5-6, October, 2013. Around 80 foreign delegates f....
2014 will be a turning point in Afghanistan. Power will be handed over to a new President after elections. The US military will complete its withdrawal. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will take over the security responsibility for the cou....
A moderate and balanced Afghanistan is not only an absolute necessity for regional security but is equally imperative for rest of the world. A radicalised and unstable Afghanistan, imbued with an intolerant jehadi fervour, has implications for US or ....
The so-called Afghan endgame is really nothing more than the US endgame in Afghanistan. For the Afghans, there is unlikely to be any endgame. Even the Americans suspect, even fear, that their exit from, nay abandonment of, Afghanistan will most likel....
With the 2014 deadline for withdrawal from Afghanistan fast approaching and the ISAF military effort unable to break the back of the Taliban insurgency, the US appears to have concluded (one daresay wrongly) that it has run out of options for effecti....
Sectarian violence aimed at religious minorities and social groups professing a version of Islam that is at variance with the fundamentalist and puritanical Wahabi philosophy continues to remain a hallmark of the social and spiritual landscape of con....
Introduction Just days after Barack Obama announced fresh stipulations on the use of drones, a US drone strike on May 29 killed the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) deputy chief Waliur Rehman. The TTP confirmed his death the next day, decl....