Category Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies

India’s Evolving Engagement with the Taliban: Balancing Security, Regional Interests, and Humanitarian Concerns

ON JANUARY 8, Vikram Misri, the foreign secretary of India, held a meeting with the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s (IEA) Acting Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, in Dubai. Marking the most high-level meeting between India and representatives from the IEA, the very act of the senior-most Indian diplomat meeting a Taliban leader and its timing in the aftermath of Pakistan’s airstrikes in Afghanistan and India’s strongly worded statement in support of the latter led to debates about an apparent “pivot” and “shift” in how India is engaging with Afghanistan. Three-and-a-half years after the Taliban usurped power in Kabul and orchestrated the fall of the then republic government, New Delhi’s approach towards the country has indeed been evolving.

Trump’s Global Impact: Challenges and Strategic Realignments

Donald Trump has assumed office on the same day that the US celebrates Martin Luther King Jr’s birth anniversary. It is happenstance that the presidential handover day, Jan 20, falls on the third Monday of Jan when King Jr’s birthday is celebrated, although he was born on Jan 15. It is not a happy coincidence, however. Trump represents and champions the very opposite of the values for which the civil rights activist fought and was killed.

Rising Conflict in the China-US Tech Landscape

The year 2025 has begun on a bad note for Chinese tech companies with the United States (US) designating social media and gaming giant, Tencent, and battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) as military companies. Tencent's interests span the spheres of finance, cloud computing, media, messaging, video-streaming, and movie production. Under American law, a list of entities that may be aiding and furthering the Communist Party of China's military-civil fusion strategy, which aims to leverage private firms in improving technologies that have defense applications, must be maintained.

President Trump’s ‘Golden Era’: A Period of Promise and Peril

President Donald Trump proclaiming that the ‘Golden age of USA’ begins now as he dismantled many of the orders and schemes and policy choices of the Biden Administration. He did not spare the previous administration recounting their failures and wrong foreign and domestic policy choices terming them as ‘Catalogue of Catastrophe‘ in front of squirming Presidents Biden ,Clinton and Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

An Uneasy Israel-Hamas Ceasefire: The First Step to Resolution

'Touch and Go’ has really defined the efforts by the US, Qatar, and Egypt to bring about some kind of ceasefire and cessation of hostilities and some hope for besieged and beleaguered Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, and above all for the hapless Israeli hostages waiting to be released for the last 15 months in the Israel-Hamas war that started with Hamas’ terror attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7.

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