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Praveen Swami

Praveen Swami

Indian Express

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Trump to Biden–many US Presidents were mentally ill. It’s the elite who deal with the problem

A third of US Presidents between 1776 to 1974 demonstrated symptoms of clinically significant depression, bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse while...

yesterday 6

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Praveen Swami

Abdullah Öcalan’s appeal won’t end Türkiye’s long war with Kurdish minority

There’s a reason to be sceptical about Abdullah Öcalan's call for peace. Efforts to end the fighting in 1993, 1995-1996, and 2013-2015 all led...

05.03.2025 4

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Praveen Swami

Darul Uloom bombing shows the jihadist war is eating its own

A suicide bombing ripped through Pakistan’s Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary last week. It would soon celebrate 200 years of Sayyid Ahmad’s triumph...

02.03.2025 7

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Praveen Swami

Europe is imploding. Blame liberals for German elections, not Nazi terror

The far-right AfD becoming the second-largest formation in Germany's Reichstag raises serious questions about the growing challenges to the democratic...

26.02.2025 9

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Praveen Swami

Trump’s vision for America is apartheid South Africa—Musk ignites white nationalist dreams

From swathed privilege in apartheid South Africa to today’s US power corridors, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel laid the roots of Donald Trump’s radical...

23.02.2025 6

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Praveen Swami

Al-Qaeda’s last Indian soldier is imprisoned in Pakistan. Is the long jihad finally dead?

It's unclear when Mohammad Usman, a former resident of Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh, was incarcerated. But being an anti-India jihadist no longer...

19.02.2025 10

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Praveen Swami

Lalit Maken to Tahawwur Rana—India’s first extradition battle still poses tough questions

The Lalit Maken assassination case set the template for charges of police mishandling of evidence and poor investigation, which have stained many...

16.02.2025 10

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Praveen Swami

Resource-rich Congo is the first battle in New Cold War. India can’t miss out on cobalt

For countries like India, the stakes are enormous. To participate in the post-hydrocarbon global economy, the country needs secure and fair access to...

12.02.2025 5

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Praveen Swami

Elon Musk has seized on UK grooming gangs issue for his own cause, not for rape victims

The figure of the Pakistani immigrant sexual groomer is real—but also serves as a pretext for failing to address toxic youth masculinity and deep...

08.01.2025 5

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Praveen Swami

Islamism & mental illness are simpler answers to New Orleans attack. They’re also misleading

Like other lone-wolf killers, the narrative around Shamsud-Din Jabbar is that he was seduced by online Islamist propaganda. While this is entirely...

06.01.2025 8

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Praveen Swami

Trump’s call to buy Greenland isn’t crazy. Makes perfect strategic sense

As geopolitical competition intensifies, Trump is determined to exercise more direct, physical control over America’s near neighbourhood.

25.12.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

US Cold War fixation let nuclear genie out of the bottle in Pakistan. Sanctions won’t help

Sanctions had first been imposed on the NDC in 1998 by Bill Clinton. And they were waived after 9/11 to enable counter-terrorism cooperation with...

22.12.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

Yoon’s failed coup shows the rise of democracy in South Korea is reversible

Elected on a program of Right-wing populism, Yoon stoked militarism to consolidate power. His opponent was repeatedly prosecuted. South Korea’s...

18.12.2024 20

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Praveen Swami

Khalil Haqqani assassination shows a power struggle in Afghanistan. It’ll have global fallout

Khalil-ur-Rehman Haqqani—brother to Jalaluddin, uncle to his heir Sirajuddin, and a key figure in the network responsible for over 1,000 suicide...

15.12.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

The Assad regime fell due to its own failures, not geopolitical plots. Syrians face new fears

Even though Tahrir al-Sham has promised to protect minorities, and to crush transnational jihadist groups in Syria, exactly what comes next is...

10.12.2024 4

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Praveen Swami

Taliban’s Afghanistan has become a giant prison for women. The world couldn’t care less

Following 9/11, former first lady of the US, Laura Bush, said, ‘The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.’...

08.12.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

It’s jihadists vs secularism in Syria again. Aleppo crisis is a dangerous new turning point

Members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—or Commission for the Liberation of the Levant—brushed aside the Army’s 46 Regiment and captured Aleppo for the...

04.12.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

Arakan insurgents are on the cusp of seizing power in West Myanmar. India faces tough choices

The Arakan Army is now estimated to control eight-tenths of the province of Rakhine, raising speculation the region could be the first to be...

01.12.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

US must counter new Chinese cyber attacks. Remember how it lost nuclear monopoly?

Even if the cost of securing democracies against espionage is high, the price to be paid for not doing so could be catastrophic.

27.11.2024 50

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Praveen Swami

Pakistan’s Shia killings mark the collapse of its nationhood. Islamic State knows only war

There was little Shia-Sunni conflict in the pre-colonial era. In early 20th century, the struggle for political power sharpened the boundaries,...

24.11.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Trump’s planning a war against illegal immigrants. Problem is, it was lost 70 years ago

Each wave of people arriving in America has been decried as unassimilable—only for them to establish themselves as agents of economic growth.

20.11.2024 8

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Praveen Swami

Kashmiri jihadists more resilient than we think. Rebuilding J&K Police is key to counter them

The new jihadists in J&K have harried Indian forces, staged a series of ambushes, and now begun to target Indian civilian infrastructure projects.

03.11.2024 2

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Praveen Swami

Is Donald Trump a fascist or clown? He’s just following the playbook

Trump’s rise has meant a hollowing out of the unstated social agreement on which all democracy rests. Even if he loses this election, repairing...

30.10.2024 40

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Praveen Swami

Iran and Israel are in a lose-lose situation. They can’t cross red line or back out

The story of an aircraft that came down in 1981 helps us understand the forces that are acting to restrain both countries, even as their leaders...

27.10.2024 3

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Praveen Swami

India-China LAC issue needs new imagination. It’s too tangled in nationalism now

The real issue is where India’s frontier with China lies, not a few kilometres of ancient trading routes. A solution to this needs deep reflection...

23.10.2024 2

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Praveen Swami

R&AW must answer why it tolerates poor tradecraft, recruitment standards, officer oversight

The alleged plot to kill Khalistan propagandist and lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun had all the comic elements of an old-fashioned Bollywood cop movie.

20.10.2024 2

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Praveen Swami

Justin Trudeau is rewriting Nijjar killing as a morality play. The real story is more complex

India is learning that lesser nations must pay a price for invoking the principles that govern the great.

17.10.2024 2

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Praveen Swami

Zakir Naik’s empire of hate is built on two centuries of toxic religious identity politics

Maulana Rahmatullah Kairanawi's rebuttal of missionary critiques of Islam profoundly influenced Ahmad Deedat, a South African cleric. The...

13.10.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

Read the Kashmir verdict. It’s time to stop treating it like a national security crisis

Election after election has seen Kashmir’s people demonstrate that, like other Indians, they seek a future shaped by democratic rights and norms

09.10.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination underlines Israel’s military supremacy. Will it win peace?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of being drawn into another attritional war with Hezbollah. His commanders they are...

28.09.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

Will JVP resume war on Sri Lanka’s ethnic minorities? Party’s rise reopens festering wounds

The party had painted over its Marxist red with the colours of Sinhala ethnic nationalism. Tamils and Muslims were consigned to the margins of the...

25.09.2024 30

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Praveen Swami

Kamala Harris seems to have won the US presidential debate. Does it really matter?

Does the debate change the opinions of voters as it famously did in 1960? The answer is about the changing role of image in American politics, not...

11.09.2024 3

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Praveen Swami

The most tragic legacy of 9/11 is a West that wants to repaint itself white

Mass immigration built the multi-ethnic societies that powered an unprecedented period of global prosperity. That era could be one of the things...

08.09.2024 4

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Praveen Swami

IC 814 hijack was a victory for Masood Azhar—and the moment of his strategic downfall

Twenty-five years on, India is debating whether the producers of a Netflix movie should have mentioned the Hindu pseudonyms used by IC814...

05.09.2024 2

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Praveen Swami

Chinese, Laos officials are shielding East Asian crime empires. Time to act now

For criminal cartels of all kinds, the casino cities on China’s peripheries offer security and immunity. In Kings Romans Casino, prison-like...

01.09.2024 3

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Praveen Swami

Telegram CEO arrest set the stage for a law vs tech battle. Will shape norms across the world

Across the world, though, organised crime cartels are continuing to use free, easily available tech tools, and the patience of some governments is...

27.08.2024 7

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Praveen Swami

Pakistan’s battle with bandits shows why it is losing all wars within

Earlier this week, gangs of dacoits operating in the badlands between the Koh-i Sulaiman mountains, the Indus and the Cholistan desert, ambushed...

25.08.2024 3

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Praveen Swami

India’s rape rage risks producing judicial lynchings, not real justice. See 2018 Lodha case

There’s no telling if the suspect held for the Kolkata case is guilty, but the Lodha case reveals the criminal justice system just doesn’t care...

21.08.2024 3

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Praveen Swami

Pakistan army’s iron walls are cracking

Too much pressure against Imran Khan could end up opening deep fault lines of class and ideology inside Pakistan's armed forces.

14.08.2024 4

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Praveen Swami

Keir Starmer must address England’s white underclass rage politically—not just by police

Fascism’s progress in Europe and the US means the UK’s handling of the violence it now faces will be watched carefully across the world.

11.08.2024 20

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Praveen Swami

Sheikh Hasina’s fall will lead to rise of the only organised force in Bangladesh—religion

Bangladesh’s political life isn’t an irreducible confrontation between secularism and Islamism. Like in Pakistan, Islam has been the language of...

07.08.2024 9

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Praveen Swami

England has been a melting pot for global jihadists since 1990s—Anjem Choudary is proof

English jihadists such as Andrew Rowe, Saajid Badat, and Muhammad Bilal spread out across the world. UK intelligence paid attention only after...

04.08.2024 3

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Praveen Swami

Kashmir’s Jamaat-e-Islami wants to participate in elections. Modi govt must not allow it

Through the 1990s, the Jamaat-e-Islami had gleefully replaced its political sword with the jihadist gun.

24.07.2024 2

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Praveen Swami

Trump assassination attempt is a symptom of easy gun access. It’s as American as apple pie

The question America needs to be urgently asking itself isn’t why Thomas Crook wanted to kill Trump. It’s what needs to be done to keep guns out of...

16.07.2024 10

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Praveen Swami