Q1 - 2010

S. No.	Title	Author	Description	Link	Link
001	Students Islamic Movement of India and The Indian Mujahideen: An Assessment	C. Christine Fair	This essay assesses the organization, ideology, and membership of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Indian Mujahideen (IM), as well as India's ability to contend with this domestic security threat.
002	China, the Financial Crisis, and Sino - American Relations	Pieter Bottelier	The current global financial and economic crisis is among the most severe in modern history. The follow-on effects of the crisis, which largely originated in the U.S. mortgage market, have had an impact on the export-oriented economies of Asia, including China. Compared to the other major economic powers of the world, however, China is emerging strongly and quickly. These changing economic realities have raised a host of questions concerning the future of the international monetary system, the rise of China, and the future of U.S. hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.
003	The State of the Afghan State	Anders Fänge	This paper is a part of the AAN Discussion Paper Series. The series aims to provide a platform for a wide variety of views and contributions on developments in and around Afghanistan, with an aim to further inform and encourage debate. AAN member and Country Director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan gives his view on where Afghanistan stands, what went wrong and what can be done.
004	Pakistan’s existential threat	SHUJA NAWAZ	In Pakistan, it would be a disservice to look at this current conflict solely as an Afghanistan issue because Pakistan too faces the same wars within. There is a continuous battle between what the government of Pakistan wants, irrespective of its complexion, and what the people of Pakistan want. Our history clearly indicates that whenever we have experienced long periods of autocratic rule, particularly military rule, the result is a stunting of all democratic systems and institutions of civil society.
005	U.s.-China relations : seeking strategic convergence in Pakistan	BRUCE RIEDEL - PAVNEET SINGH	Pakistan is under the infuence of a dangerous cocktail. It at once faces a growing insurgency led by Taliban and al Qaeda militants, a domestic political system characterized by interminable infghting, and an economic meltdown. Inside the U.S. government, preventing against a Pakistani collapse has become the clarion call for inter-agency coordination.
006	Harvard International Review – Stabilizing South Asia	DAN BLUMENTHAL	India sees a strong Pakistan as a constraint on India’s aspiration for great power status rivaling China. This drives India to make consistent efforts to undermine its neighbor. Islamabad sees Delhi’s present interference in Balochisan as testimony of this. India also seeks to achieve the same objective by acquiring and asserting overwhelming military superiority over Pakistan. A critical part of this effort involves neutralizing Pakistan’s strategic deterrence capability. India’s rejection of Pakistan’s long-standing proposals for a South Asia strategic stability regime based on nuclear and conventional restraint highlights this, as do Indian efforts to deny Pakistan a similar civilian nuclear deal to that forged with the United States and actions that play up the danger and challenge the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
007	An anvil of clay: Pakistan’s military balks at Obama’s Afghan surge	Robert Matthews	Pakistan’s cooperation is crucial to the success of the current US and Nato strategy in Afghanistan. Yet the Pakistani military not only has misgivings about the Nato surge but also its own agenda. Central to the discord is the military’s view of the Afghan Taliban as assets to counter rival India’s spreading Afghan footprint. The military views the US surge and the 18-month timeframe as acts of desperation by the Obama administration – as well as a vindication of Pakistan’s strategy of keeping its options open through a “selective counter-insurgency approach”. Thus, there is little indication that Pakistan is willing to undertake campaigns against militants in the tribal areas. Or play the role of anvil to the US hammer along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
008	PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR FUTURE: REINING IN THE RISK	Henry Sokolski	With any attempt to assess security threats, there is a natural tendency to focus frst on the worst. Consider the most recent appraisals of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Normally, the risk of war between Pakistan and India and possible nuclear escalation would be bad enough. Now, however, most American security experts are riveted on the frightening possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities falling into the hands of terrorists intent on attacking the United States. Presented with the horrifc implications of such an attack, the American public and media increasingly have come to view nearly all Pakistani security issues through this lens. Public airing of these fears, in turn, appear now to be infuencing terrorist operations in Pakistan.
009	More Women in Media	Uks - A Research, Resource & Publication Centre on Women and Media	The report through the media monitoring and content analysis presents a comprehensive picture of issues that are faced by women in the media, revealing that there are many challenges in bringing more women in mainstream media, but none that cannot be tackled. Working journalists, editors and owners need to fully understand the issues and concepts behind the title of this report – “More Women in Media: The Way Forward.” The research indicates that it is not that women are not reported, the issue is whether or not they are reported competently, positively and in the mainstream media – rather than being ghettoized in women’s pages, or women’s hours, etc.
010	Planet Pakistan	ROBERT M. HATHAWAY	In Pakistan, people see Al Qaeda as an imagined threat, and shadowy U.S. agents as the secret power behind major events. How can the United States forge a better partnership with this country that has become the epicenter of global terrorism?
011	NEGOTIATIONS AND RECONCILIATION WITH THE TALIBAN: The Key Policy Issues and Dilemmas	Vanda Felbab-Brown	Negotiations and reconciliation frequently have been a critical component of ending conflict, reducing violence, and saving lives: be they the pentiti laws in Italy directed toward the Red Brigades or amnesty for the Shining Path’s soldiers in Peru or negotiations between the Provisional IRA and the Unionists in Northern Ireland.
012	Conceptualizing AfPak: The Prospects and Perils	Ayesha R. Khan	The Obama administration’s AfPak strategy has created the opportunity to recalibrate US engagement with Afghanistan and Pakistan to reverse the Taliban momentum and ‘disrupt and dismantle’ the terrorist threat from the border region. The strategy advocates an increase in US/NATO troops, reconciliation with ‘moderate’ Taliban, and a regional approach to the conflict that includes tackling the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In its current conceptualization, it lacks implementation mechanisms and analysis of the border region to manage the insurgency and quell the violence. This paper analyses some of the contradictions, anomalies and structural flaws in the AfPak strategy that risk further destabilizing the Afghanistan–Pakistan border region.
013	Is There an Islamic Way of War?	Mehar Omar Khan / SMALL WARS JOURNAL	Fear mongering has become the fastest growing industry over the last ten years in the global fight against terrorism. Thousands of books and articles written by self-proclaimed terror experts, war correspondents and regional gurus have perpetrated intellectual sabotage on the unsuspecting minds of readers and viewers. No limits seem to have been respected in the exercise of intelligence and intellect in defining the ‘enemy’. With dehumanization of faceless terrorists, many a legitimate freedom struggle and a whole faith professed by no less than 1.5 billion people have been condemned. Unfortunately, countless sane minds have fallen prey to the vagaries of dishonest words and perverted pictures.
014	Don’t Try to Arrest the Sea: An Alternative Approach for Afghanistan	Mehar Omar Khan / SMALL WARS JOURNAL	No sane citizen of our world, let alone a Pakistani infantry officer who may soon end up being another name on an ever-growing list of the fallen soldiers in the war against terror, enjoys thinking about the painful possibility of our world’s greatest military power and history’s most inspiring nation retreating in the face of an onslaught by Kalashnikov-wielding bearded barbarians riding on the back of motorcycles, hungry horses and perspiring mules. What is being realized with increasing intensity is the pain of a seemingly endless and bloody war for almost a decade now; the pressure of a US public opinion that’s almost irreversibly weary of war (at least for now); the misery of a mismatch between resources and mandate; the rising groans of despairing allies unwilling to persevere and, the scary scarcity of success stories. However what needs to be realized is the fact that abandoning Afghanistan will be an unmitigated tragedy.
015	Afghanistan: Seven Fundamental Questions	Mehar Omar Khan	Our world therefore seldom has a place for ‘sentiments’ – pure, sincere, honest and spontaneous as sentiments are. But when it comes to war in Afghanistan, I am not deterred by the tyranny of the trend. I like, in fact I am forced, to think through my heart. What else can you do when you see images of your countrymen; innocent and unsuspecting men, women and children; ripped apart by other human beings exploding in their midst almost on a daily basis? How can I not worry about my daughter when I see a pale and empty face of a mother in Kabul or Peshawar, bent like a broken branch of an old, dried up tree; over the dead body of her child? How can I not cry when the soul of my nation is hit and hurt by violence that is so inextricably linked with bloodshed beyond the snaky Khyber Pass?