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India’s long war with Maoists has a huge void — no number of dead bodies can fill it

Weak governance, corruption and poverty continue to define tribal life in India. The introduction of industrial and mining projects has benefited...

10.12.2025 8

Praveen Swami

1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case still haunts Indian policy-making in Kashmir

The kidnapping—followed by the killing of four Indian Air Force officers soon after, and the executions of Intelligence Bureau personnel—made the...

03.12.2025 30

Praveen Swami

Washington shooter’s story is about American barbarism, not ‘Third World’ backwardness

Part of a CIA-trained zero unit, Rahmanullah Lakanwal was evacuated to the US before the fall of Kabul in 2021. But his long journey failed to wash...

30.11.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Rajnath Singh is discovering India-Pakistan civilisational ties

Even as India, Pakistan have seemed on the edge of war, their intelligence services have often sought to find space to de-escalate tensions and reduce...

26.11.2025 5

Praveen Swami

Taliban is gambling for strategic autonomy. Will Iran, China fill the Pakistan-sized hole?

Cutting trade ties with Pakistan is easier said than done: the neighbouring country is Afghanistan’s largest single trading partner, taking in 45...

23.11.2025 6

Praveen Swami

Kashmir’s new-generation jihadis want to attack India’s heartland, not just its army

Lack of movement on building a genuine democratic culture in Kashmir after 2019 is helping the region’s jihadists.

14.11.2025 6

Praveen Swami

Saudi oil power is waning. What this means for its ties to the US

There’s little doubt that Saudi Arabia contributed to its own problems, driven by leadership hubris and poor advice. The Line is a case in point.

09.11.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Sudan shows what happens when the world is happy to let mass killers rule

Fourteen million refugees, and 25 million facing acute hunger, should be reason enough for the world to dismantle the dystopia in Sudan — even if...

05.11.2025 3

Praveen Swami

War was the norm between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Asim Munir is bringing it back

Pakistan massively enhanced the funding for Islamists in Afghanistan, hoping to bury ethnic nationalism. That strategy has now backfired...

02.11.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Russia’s super-missile test shows a new, expensive technological race—with dire outcomes

The test raises a question. Why have Russian nuclear strategists now invested in the Burevestnik, when the US abandoned nuclear ramjet propulsion in...

29.10.2025 4

Praveen Swami

Trump wants to control ‘unruly’ regimes—so he launched a war on Venezuela

Like drug wars in the past, Trump’s efforts are likely to deepen the chaos in Central America—exposing the US to greater danger.

23.10.2025 4

Praveen Swami

America imagines Asim Munir is the cure to jihadism. He is the disease

Less than an hour earlier, William Putscher had been lunching on a hot dog by the poolside, in the congenial environment of the American Embassy’s...

19.10.2025 9

Praveen Swami

FM Muttaqi’s Deoband visit signals Taliban sharpening daggers for Pakistan

Taliban factions nurture the TTP as both an ideological ally and because Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada’s regime views the borderlands as Afghan, not...

15.10.2025 20

Praveen Swami

America gifted China its rare-earth monopoly — and India helped too

The rare-earth crisis shows how misplaced government policies and corporate greed can collude to create a strategic crisis.

12.10.2025 10

Praveen Swami

1948 need not define Gaza’s destiny. Arabs and Israelis must learn to live together

When Israelis pushed out Arabs in 1948, they didn’t think that embittered refugees would turn into a permanent threat to their new state. This was a...

08.10.2025 5

Praveen Swami

1979 Mecca siege flashback—Saudi resorts to Pakistan to protect the Kingdom

Even though the Western media sometimes gives the impression that young Saudis overwhelmingly back Prince Salman’s efforts, some data suggest there...

22.09.2025 10

Praveen Swami

England must brace for a war that can no longer be deferred

There’s little doubt that the unravelling of English politics is taking place at a speed few anticipated. Even though figures show net immigration...

17.09.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Manipur has seen too much pain to be seduced by promises

Nehru learned the truth the hard way when 3,000 Nagas walked out of his 1953 rally. The people of the Northeast aren’t easily seduced by baubles.

14.09.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Qatar played all sides, peacemaker to Islamist safe haven. Now there’s no place to hide

As the world order threatens to buckle under new strains, peacemaking is becoming an ever more dangerous business.

10.09.2025 6

Praveen Swami

India-US relationship has survived darker times. Intelligence ties bind us together

India-US intelligence ties flourished even in the shadow of the Cold War, as New Delhi resolutely proclaimed its commitment to non-alignment.

07.09.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Trump’s 4,500 troops can topple Nicolás Maduro—not fix Venezuela

The US troops could dislodge the government in Caracas, but it won’t be enough to police a country ringed by drug cartels and insurgents.

03.09.2025 10

Praveen Swami

A vicious pest is teaching Americans a lesson on why global cooperation matters

The screwworm has breached the biological wall established in Panama over decades. The pest is relentlessly marching northwards—helped by Trump’s...

27.08.2025 3

Praveen Swami

India-China conflict began in 1947, not 1962 war. Its lessons still haunt New Delhi

Indian political leaders will have to prepare their public for the prospect of concessions India never really held—just as Chinese leaders must...

24.08.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Trump govt considering ban on Muslim Brotherhood—Is the West’s romance with Islamism over?

Trump had promised to ban the Muslim Brotherhood in 2019. The plan disappeared into the sands.

20.08.2025 10

Praveen Swami

China wants to create new order in Myanmar. India must switch gears or be dealt out of the game

India’s policy on Myanmar has been to deal with its Generals and maintain a distance from the country’s insurgent groups and political struggles....

17.08.2025 20

Praveen Swami

Asim Munir wants to be guardian of the Middle East. He’s fated to fail at home

Countering insurgency needs the Pakistan Army to demonstrate a political will that ties leaders at the centre with those in the borderlands. But it...

14.08.2025 7

Praveen Swami

There’s a method in Trump’s Pakistan romance. It’s all about Gulf security

Like Turkey and Egypt, Pakistan is one of a handful of powers with the human resources and infrastructure to help secure the Persian Gulf as Trump’s...

10.08.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Restoring J&K’s statehood won’t be enough. Kashmiris need to be treated like other Indians

Kashmir has never been, in any sense of the world, allowed to be a normal state, with normal politicians and normal citizens.

06.08.2025 10

Praveen Swami

A year after Bangladesh’s Monsoon Revolution, a parched summer looms ahead

Mob violence, Islamist rise, and political collapse haunt Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. Can April 2026 elections restore order?

27.07.2025 7

Praveen Swami

Pakistani accomplices, shootouts, sealed chargesheet—how the 7/11 blasts case fell apart

After 19 years, the Bombay High Court finally held what governments and intelligence services have long known: The men sentenced for their role in the...

23.07.2025 6

Praveen Swami

Can Syria’s tiny Druze minority survive West Asia’s new storms? There’s little hope

Indians see West Asia as one uninterrupted wash of Islam, but the reality is more complex. For the Druze, support from Israel—where they are a...

20.07.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Martyrs’ Day row has reopened Kashmir’s deepest wounds

For many Muslims, the message from this Martyrs’ Day is that it doesn’t matter who the community votes for, Kashmir’s identity and history will...

16.07.2025 10

Praveen Swami

ICC warrant against Taliban chief gives world a second chance to do right in Afghanistan

The International Criminal Court at The Hague has issued arrest warrants against the supreme leader of Afghanistan, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his...

13.07.2025 20

Praveen Swami

Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy

The world has a shared interest in helping Afghan farmers move on from poppy. But time and again, it has abandoned them and the young Afghans killed...

09.07.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Dalai Lama decides to reincarnate. His successor may only get an imagined homeland to rule

There is little doubt about what Beijing will do if the successor to the Dalai Lama is chosen from within Tibet. China has no intention of allowing...

06.07.2025 7

Praveen Swami

Turkey’s looking more like Pakistan every day. Blasphemy-obsessed, imprisoned by hatred

Erdoğan’s beliefs are increasingly evident beyond Turkey’s borders, too. The new regime in Syria has embraced Sharia as the basis of its laws,...

02.07.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Asim Munir is playing good jihadi-bad jihadi game. Suicide bombing shows he’s failing

As a succession of generals before Asim Munir learned, cooptation of Pakistani jihadism is a dangerous—and mostly short-lived—enterprise.

30.06.2025 7

Praveen Swami

Why 1969 USSR-China conflict has crucial lessons for Iran & Israel

In its conflict with the USSR, China learned that a nation with a fledgling nuclear arsenal could not hope to deter a significant power.

25.06.2025 6

Praveen Swami

Trump’s seduction of Asim Munir won’t get him cheap labour to uphold American Peace

Trump’s gushing reception of Field Marshal Asim Munir has caused no small anxiety in India. For the first time since 26/11, the US seems to be...

22.06.2025 5

Praveen Swami

Iran and Israel are fighting their demons, not a war. They are prisoners of their nightmares

The world needs leaders awake to the abyss that lies ahead of this Israel-Iran war. But there are no signs of any, not in Tehran or Tel Aviv, nor in...

18.06.2025 20

Praveen Swami

Israel crushed Ayatollah’s regime, but stopping Iran’s nuke programme will need total overthrow

Israel and the United States are now betting that Iran’s leadership will acknowledge their military and economic weakness and return to the...

15.06.2025 8

Praveen Swami

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is tearing LA apart—a city built by Mexican settlers in 1781

Chinese massacres, Zoot Suit beatings, Watts violence, and Rodney King riots show how Los Angeles has always been America's testing ground for racial...

11.06.2025 30

Praveen Swami

Srinagar train reminds us Kashmir was secured by iron and rock, that’s how soldiers moved in

The war India really needs to win is to make Kashmir’s people secure, prosperous partners in the project of India. Each journey on the new train...

08.06.2025 4

Praveen Swami

Lashkar’s renewed blossoming shows war hasn’t coerced Pakistan Army into giving up on Kashmir

Islamabad knows it cannot take Kashmir by force, and yet it persists in waging a war without an end. To give up the conflict would mean giving up the...

04.06.2025 20

Praveen Swami

India paid for ignoring warnings in 1965 war. It can’t afford to repeat those mistakes today

Even though the Indian Army had repeatedly war-gamed attacks by Pakistan since at least 1956, Lieutenant General Harbaksh Singh said the Pakistani...

01.06.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Trump’s corruption is eroding America’s global power. India can’t count on it

The goals India cares about—containing China, targeting jihadists in Pakistan, securing trade routes and energy—don’t seem to matter to Trump.

28.05.2025 10

Praveen Swami

Maoism became irrelevant to India’s working class much before Basavaraju’s death

Adivasis supported Maoists sometimes for tactical gain or to avenge state violence, but had little interest in the project of making a revolution.

25.05.2025 10

Praveen Swami

India needs to focus on winning in Kashmir, not fighting Pakistan

Like it or not, the Pakistan Army has shown it is willing to fight. And this has given renewed hope to the pro-Pakistan constituency within Kashmir.

19.05.2025 8

Praveen Swami

Trump’s Kashmir fixation is dangerous for India. New Delhi must begin preparing

Former US President John F Kennedy’s mediation effort on Kashmir in the 1960s had led Pakistan to sharpen its sword, not beat them into ploughshares.

14.05.2025 10

Praveen Swami

For Pakistan Army, war is the performance of its nationhood. Ceasefire violation warns of new conflicts ahead

The end India should seek is the construction of Pakistan other than the country its generals and clerics have imagined into being. Furious words and...

11.05.2025 10

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India’s long war with Maoists has a huge void — no number of dead bodies can fill it

Praveen Swami

1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case still haunts Indian policy-making in Kashmir

Praveen Swami

Washington shooter’s story is about American barbarism, not ‘Third World’ backwardness

Praveen Swami

Rajnath Singh is discovering India-Pakistan civilisational ties

Praveen Swami

Taliban is gambling for strategic autonomy. Will Iran, China fill the Pakistan-sized hole?

Praveen Swami

Kashmir’s new-generation jihadis want to attack India’s heartland, not just its army

Praveen Swami

Saudi oil power is waning. What this means for its ties to the US

Praveen Swami

Sudan shows what happens when the world is happy to let mass killers rule

Praveen Swami

War was the norm between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Asim Munir is bringing it back

Praveen Swami

Russia’s super-missile test shows a new, expensive technological race—with dire outcomes

Praveen Swami

Trump wants to control ‘unruly’ regimes—so he launched a war on Venezuela

Praveen Swami

America imagines Asim Munir is the cure to jihadism. He is the disease

Praveen Swami

FM Muttaqi’s Deoband visit signals Taliban sharpening daggers for Pakistan

Praveen Swami

America gifted China its rare-earth monopoly — and India helped too

Praveen Swami

1948 need not define Gaza’s destiny. Arabs and Israelis must learn to live together

Praveen Swami

1979 Mecca siege flashback—Saudi resorts to Pakistan to protect the Kingdom

Praveen Swami

England must brace for a war that can no longer be deferred

Praveen Swami

Manipur has seen too much pain to be seduced by promises

Praveen Swami

Qatar played all sides, peacemaker to Islamist safe haven. Now there’s no place to hide

Praveen Swami

India-US relationship has survived darker times. Intelligence ties bind us together

Praveen Swami

Trump’s 4,500 troops can topple Nicolás Maduro—not fix Venezuela

Praveen Swami

A vicious pest is teaching Americans a lesson on why global cooperation matters

Praveen Swami

India-China conflict began in 1947, not 1962 war. Its lessons still haunt New Delhi

Praveen Swami

Trump govt considering ban on Muslim Brotherhood—Is the West’s romance with Islamism over?

Praveen Swami

China wants to create new order in Myanmar. India must switch gears or be dealt out of the game

Praveen Swami

Asim Munir wants to be guardian of the Middle East. He’s fated to fail at home

Praveen Swami

There’s a method in Trump’s Pakistan romance. It’s all about Gulf security

Praveen Swami

Restoring J&K’s statehood won’t be enough. Kashmiris need to be treated like other Indians

Praveen Swami

A year after Bangladesh’s Monsoon Revolution, a parched summer looms ahead

Praveen Swami

Pakistani accomplices, shootouts, sealed chargesheet—how the 7/11 blasts case fell apart

Praveen Swami

Can Syria’s tiny Druze minority survive West Asia’s new storms? There’s little hope

Praveen Swami

Martyrs’ Day row has reopened Kashmir’s deepest wounds

Praveen Swami

ICC warrant against Taliban chief gives world a second chance to do right in Afghanistan

Praveen Swami

Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy

Praveen Swami

Dalai Lama decides to reincarnate. His successor may only get an imagined homeland to rule

Praveen Swami

Turkey’s looking more like Pakistan every day. Blasphemy-obsessed, imprisoned by hatred

Praveen Swami

Asim Munir is playing good jihadi-bad jihadi game. Suicide bombing shows he’s failing

Praveen Swami

Why 1969 USSR-China conflict has crucial lessons for Iran & Israel

Praveen Swami

Trump’s seduction of Asim Munir won’t get him cheap labour to uphold American Peace