International Affairs

China did not start this war and will not finish it. What it will do is walk away with something more valuable than victory; the data, the proof, the blueprint for the confrontation it is quietly rehearsing on the other side of the world in the western Pacific.   When three American F-15E Strike Eagles spiralled out of the sky over Kuwait on the night of March 1, the story that dominated headlines was one of tragic friendly fire. Kuwaiti Patriot batteries, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Iranian drones and ballistic missiles crisscrossing the Gulf, misidentified their own side’s aircraft in a chaotic, saturated battlespace. All six aircrew ejected safely. The jets did not survive. CENTCOM was unambiguous: friendly fire in a saturated sky, not Iranian action. Iranian state media claimed otherwise. The Pentagon held its line. But the deeper question remains: why that sky was so saturated in the first place. The answer leads not to Tehran. It leads to Beijing. China has not fired a single shot in this war. It has condemned the strikes on Tehran as violations of international law. And yet the weapons flying over the Gulf, the drones that refused to be jammed, the missiles that found their targets, the internet blackout sealing 93 million Iranians from the outside world, all rest on a technological architecture Beijing spent a decade carefully constructing. Not as charity. As a field test. This is the war behind the war. China using Iran as a live laboratory for systems it will one day need against adversaries whose weapons it is now learning to defeat. Every drone that navigates through Western jamming. Every radar that acquires a stealth aircraft. Every $20,000 drone that forces the expenditure of a $4 million Patriot interceptor. Beijing is watching, logging, and learning. The most operationally significant Chinese technology active in this conflict is BeiDou-3, China’s sovereign alternative to GPS. Following Isreal-Iran’s Twelve-Day War last year, in which GPS spoofing partially blinded Iran’s guided munitions, Iran drew a hard lesson. It formally abandoned the American system and transitioned its military navigation architecture to BeiDou. The encrypted network resists allied electronic warfare; its integrated short-message service sustains command node communication even when terrestrial infrastructure is destroyed. Iran’s 2026 missile campaign has demonstrated navigational resilience its 2025 predecessor lacked, striking targets across all six GCC states simultaneously and forcing the UAE alone to intercept 161 of 174 ballistic missiles fired at it. But BeiDou is not merely Iran’s tool. It is China’s proof of concept, a navigation system battle-hardened against the world’s most sophisticated jamming apparatus, stress-tested under real combat conditions. The telemetry flowing back to Beijing from every Iranian strike package is worth more than any simulation its engineers could run. The same scenario applies to the YLC-8B anti-stealth radar, reportedly transferred to Iran after the 2025 war. Engineered to operate on VHF frequencies that defeat radar-absorbent coatings, it addresses the defining challenge of modern air warfare: how do you acquire what your adversary designed to be invisible? Whether the YLC-8B batteries survived the opening strikes of Operation Epic Fury remains unclear, the IDF claims over 200 Iranian air defence systems destroyed. But even degraded performance data feeds directly into China’s own development cycle. Iran is the test range. The PLA is the end customer. This Chinese pattern of real-world testing was visible long before this war. Last May, during India’s Operation Sindoor strikes on terrorist and Pakistani army infrastructure, Chinese-origin PL-15 beyond-visual-range missiles and HQ-9 surface-to-air systems were active on the Pakistani side. Beijing opportunistically leveraged the conflict to test its weapons in live combat. It did not stop at data collection. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission confirmed that China deployed fake social media accounts to circulate AI-generated imagery purporting to show debris from aircraft destroyed by Chinese weapons. A deliberate campaign to discredit India’s Rafale purchase and advance sales of China’s J-35. Chinese embassy officials reportedly persuaded Indonesia to pause a Rafale procurement already in process. Beijing said nothing publicly. It did not need to. Iran and Pakistan have become China’s two most valuable proving grounds. One tests area-denial and air defence against American and Israeli platforms. The other tests beyond-visual-range air combat against Indian platforms. China supplied roughly 82% of Pakistan’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, it had substantial strategic investment in the outcome. Together, both theatres are delivering what no exercise can replicate: live performance data against real Western hardware. The supply chain completes the picture. On February 25, three days before the strikes began, the US Treasury sanctioned procurement networks supplying precursor chemicals and sensitive machinery to Iran’s IRGC missile and drone programmes, following 2025 designations of six Hong Kong and PRC-based entities feeding Iranian arms production. The $20,000 drones flooding the Gulf, cheap enough to force the expenditure of interceptors costing two hundred times more are products of that chain. A think tank report warned that US high-end interceptors including SM-3, PAC-3 MSE and THAAD could be depleted within days of sustained high-tempo operations. That attrition calculus is now live. Away from the battlefield, Iranian internet connectivity has collapsed to roughly 4% of normal levels. The tools enforcing that blackout bear Chinese brand names: Huawei and ZTE deep-packet-inspection platforms, Tiandy facial-recognition hardware explicitly supplying the IRGC. The function is unambiguous; seal the population off, suppress evidence of military degradation, keep the regime viable long enough to matter. Prima facie, none of this has made Iran invincible. Khamenei is dead. The IDF has conducted over 700 strike missions. What Chinese technology has done, in both theatres, is keep the fight going longer than it otherwise would have, and send data back to Beijing that no laboratory can replicate. The drones are still flying. The missiles are still navigating. The lights inside Iran are still off. And in Beijing, someone is taking very careful notes. Preparing for the western Pacific.

The joint US-Israeli strike of February 28, 2026 that killed Khamenei was full-spectrum corporate warfighting; satellites, AI, cloud, autonomous swarms, and information dominance working as one lethal system. India watched. It must now evolve.   In the predawn hours of Saturday, February 28, 2026, something extraordinary happened in the Shemiran district of northern Tehran. Khamenei, Iran’s Leader for 37 years, the man who had survived assassinations, wars, and decades of sanctions, was killed not primarily by a bomb, but by an algorithm. The operation, codenamed Epic Fury, was the first high-level decapitation strike in military history to be substantially driven by artificial intelligence across the kill chain. By the time Israeli aircraft and American munitions found their target, Palantir’s software had fused the intelligence, Anduril’s autonomous drone swarms had penetrated Iran’s air defences, Starlink had held communications together across a contested electromagnetic environment, and Claude’s Anthropic’s AI model, deployed on classified US defence networks had processed petabytes of intercepted Persian-language communications and generated targeting scenarios that human analysts would have taken weeks to produce. Ukraine had proved that Silicon Valley could hold a frontline. Venezuela had proved it could topple a government and secure an oil state. Iran was where both lessons converged into a single, decapitating strike. Invisible Architecture of a Visible Strike When news of Khamenei’s death broke, global attention fixed on the ordnance: 200 Israeli fighter jets in the largest military flyover in Israeli Air Force history, US bunker-busters, strikes across 24 Iranian provinces. What received less coverage was the invisible architecture that made it possible. Starlink was central long before the first missile launched. The Trump administration had covertly smuggled thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran in the months prior, sustaining a communications corridor for intelligence sources inside the country even as the Iranian regime drove national internet connectivity down to 4% of normal levels. When Iranian forces shut down Starlink networks, they were confiscating the same infrastructure that was feeding real-time intelligence upstream to US planners. Satellite connectivity was not a supporting element; it was the nervous system of the operation. Palantir provided the operational software layer; sensor fusion, targeting architecture, and the command-and-control framework that translated intelligence into actionable strike packages. Its Lattice system enabled autonomous drone swarms to communicate threat data laterally: when Iranian air-defence radar locked onto one drone, the entire swarm adapted, dispatching subgroups for electronic deception and anti-radiation strikes in real time. This is software-driven warfare weapons that are, as defence-tech investors now openly describe them, “code wrapped in aluminium shells.” Anduril’s YFQ-44A drones, operating through Hivemind AI pilots capable of executing complex missions without GPS, satellite communication, or human operators, demonstrated capabilities that rendered Iran’s hardware-centric air defences clumsy against algorithmic iteration. Shield AI’s autonomous systems operated in environments where traditional military drones would have been jammed and blinded. Amazon Web Services provided the cloud backbone, data continuity, logistics support, and the secure infrastructure that kept coalition planning intact against Iranian cyber-retaliation, which simultaneously targeted US military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. Anthropic’s Claude AI, which had already proven itself in Venezuela processing intelligence, mapping command chains, and generating scenario simulations that compressed weeks of human analysis into hours, ran the same playbook on Iran, this time trawling Persian communications and mapping fractures in the Revolutionary Guard’s targeting structure. Trump banned Anthropic the day before the strikes. US Central Command used Claude anyway, through Palantir and AWS, as bombs fell on Tehran. The corporate stack had become so load-bearing that a presidential order could not sever it mid-operation. It was not peripheral to American military power. It was the operation. From Sindoor to Stack For Indian strategic planners watching the war in West Asia unfold, the lesson is not comfortable. India has pieces of this architecture. It does not have the stack. India’s defence-industrial base is strongest where the old model still dominates: physical production. Native manufacturing capability is real, and Atmanirbhar Bharat has added momentum. But industrial production is the bottom layer of the stack US operation in West Asia demonstrated. Everything above it; connectivity, cloud, AI, autonomous systems, information operations is where India’s ambition is still catching up with requirement. India is building a commercial space sector, with domestic satellite launches accelerating and a small but growing constellation in development. It is not yet capable of blanketing a contested theatre with resilient satcom, let alone covertly sustaining intelligence networks inside an adversary state but the foundation is being laid. In operational software and autonomous systems, an iDEX-incubated startup ecosystem is producing native drones and ISR platforms,  promising early capability, not yet embedded in classified pipelines at wartime depth. In frontier AI, India has launched sovereign large language model initiatives and is developing government-facing AI infrastructure but the institutional pathway from commercial deployment to classified defence integration remains nascent. In the information domain, digital public infrastructure is maturing, though platform-level influence at global strategic scale remains beyond reach. Iran’s near-total internet blackout could not sever the intelligence flow because a commercial satellite alternative existed. India is working toward equivalent resilience. However, it is not there yet. The operation that killed Khamenei was not a triumph of numbers. Iran was never going to match US and Israeli firepower. It was a triumph of the stack; satellites, AI, autonomous systems, cloud, and information dominance mobilised as one unified architecture. India already knows this, because it has lived it. Operation Sindoor 2025 was India’s own inflection point. AI fused multi-source battlefield data in real time. Native electronic intelligence software evolved mid-operation to pinpoint and rank threats. Over 600 drones were defeated in a single wave. Loitering munitions and FPV strike drones executed precision hits on high-value targets. The instinct was right. The native capability was real. But Sindoor also exposed the distance still to travel. The stack America deployed over Tehran was embedded in doctrine. India’s is battle-proven but not yet fully built. India need not replicate America’s model. But the underlying logic is non-negotiable: states that

Three flawless trials at Chandipur signal that India’s last line of aerial defence is no longer foreign. On the evening of 27 February 2026, along the windswept test ranges of Chandipur on Odisha’s coastline, India wrote a new chapter in its quest for aerial self-reliance. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted three successive, flawless flight trials of the Very Short-Range Air Defence System or VSHORADS, a fourth-generation Man-Portable Air Defence System (MANPAD) that has been years in the making. The results were unambiguous: a 100% interception rate against fast-moving aerial targets that mimicked the full spectrum of modern aerial threats. What made these trials extraordinary was not simply the precision of the kills, but the conditions under which they were achieved. For the first time, the system was operated not by DRDO scientists in lab coats, but by soldiers who will one day carry this very weapon into India’s most hostile frontiers. Targets were engaged at varying speeds, ranges, and altitudes, including aerial vehicles engineered to simulate the low thermal signatures of the surveillance and kamikaze drones that have fundamentally altered modern warfare from Ukraine to the Middle East. Technology Inside the Tube To appreciate why VSHORADS matters, one must understand what sets it apart, not just from the Russian Igla-M systems it is designed to replace, but from the world’s most battle-proven MANPADs. The American FIM-92 Stinger, for all its combat pedigree from Afghanistan to Ukraine, requires a coolant gas cylinder to chill its seeker head before firing, adding weight, complexity, and critical seconds to the launch sequence. The British Starstreak, while blindingly fast at Mach 3+, demands a highly trained operator to guide it manually onto the target, making it unforgiving under battlefield stress. VSHORADS sidesteps both limitations. At its heart sits an uncooled Imaging Infrared (IIR) seeker that needs no gas kit and no operator hand-holding. It locks, it fires, it hunts. Where the Stinger and the Igla-M track a point of heat and can be fooled by a magnesium flare, the IIR seeker builds a high-resolution thermal picture of its target. A jet engine looks nothing like a burning flare in thermal resolution, and VSHORADS knows the difference. The system further incorporates a miniaturised Reaction Control System (RCS), using small directional thrusters rather than fins alone to change course mid-flight, granting it the agility to chase a drone executing a sudden corkscrew or a cruise missile hugging a valley floor. Combined with dual-thrust solid propulsion, it keeps pace with whatever the modern battlefield throws at it. Engineered for India’s Terrain Unlike Western or Russian systems designed primarily for European plains or desert theatres, VSHORADS has been engineered from the outset to function in India’s uniquely demanding environments. Himalayas present challenges that most military hardware simply was not designed to overcome: oxygen-thin air that degrades aerodynamic control, sub-zero temperatures that drain batteries and fog optical seekers, and rugged mountain passes where a soldier must carry everything on their back. DRDO has hardened the electronics, optimised the battery systems, and ensured the seeker functions without the coolant gas cylinders that legacy MANPADs require. In Ladakh, where a soldier cannot afford to carry extra weight, that elimination of the coolant bottle is a logistical blessing. The system can be shoulder-fired, tripod-mounted, or integrated onto vehicles, giving commanders tactical flexibility across mountainous, desert, and maritime environments. With an operational range of approximately six to seven kilometres, it comfortably outreaches the American FIM-92 Stinger and is competitive with the Igla-S, while offering superior guidance technology against modern threats. The Strategic Picture: Mission Sudarshan Chakra The February trials are the final milestone before full induction. Production has been assigned and the Indian Army placed an initial procurement order in June 2025. The Ministry of Defence has already issued a Request for Proposal for a next-generation VSHORADS-NG variant, signalling confidence that this platform will evolve with the threat landscape for decades to come. VSHORADS is a cornerstone of Mission Sudarshan Chakra. India’s ambitious roadmap to build native “Iron Dome” style, multi-layered air defence network by 2035. Named after the discus of Hindu deity Vishnu, the mission envisions an unbroken, spinning shield over Indian territory, from the highest Himalayan ridgelines to the coastal perimeter. Within this architecture, VSHORADS fills the most dangerous gap, the first 10,000 feet of airspace, where radar coverage is patchy, and response windows are measured in seconds. Alongside the Quick Reaction Surface to Air Missile (QRSAM) for mid-range threats and emerging laser-based directed energy weapons for close-in interception, VSHORADS forms the innermost and most mobile ring of the shield. The successful trials at Chandipur are proof of concept that Indian ambition, when given the time and resources to mature, can produce systems that stand at the global technological frontier. India’s skies, from the frozen passes of Ladakh to the mangrove coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, will soon be guarded by a weapon born entirely on Indian soil. When VSHORADS finally takes its place in the inventory, it will represent far more than a missile, it will be the outermost blade of the Sudarshan Chakra, finally spinning.

How a colonial boundary drawn in 1893 planted the seeds of war that now threatens to engulf the entire region and why Pakistan is its own worst enemy. On February 26, 2026, Pakistani jets struck targets in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar, Paktika, and Khost provinces. Kabul retaliated. Islamabad declared open war. The international community scrambled for its talking points. But for anyone who has studied the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship with any intellectual honesty, there was nothing surprising about this moment. It was, in every sense, inevitable, the product of a colonial wound never properly healed, an ethnic identity never properly reconciled, and a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions that Pakistan inflicted upon itself In November 1893, British civil servant Sir Mortimer Durand sat across a table from Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan and drew a line across a map. That line, 2,670 kilometres of mountain, desert, and river became the Durand Line, and it bisected the Pashtun tribal homeland with surgical indifference to the people who lived there. It was a colonial instrument of administrative convenience, not a meaningful border between two nations. When Pakistan was carved out of British India in 1947, it inherited the Durand Line as its western frontier. Afghanistan refused to accept it. Kabul was, in fact, the only country in the world to vote against Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations that year, a remarkable act of diplomatic hostility toward a nation barely days old, driven entirely by the conviction that Pakistan had absorbed Pashtun lands that had no business being part of a new Muslim state in the subcontinent. Every Afghan government since; monarchy, communist, mujahideen, the first Taliban, the Western-backed republic, and now the second Taliban has refused to formally recognise the Durand Line as an international border. Pakistan has spent 75 years insisting the matter is settled. It is not settled. It has never been settled. And that unresolved dispute is the tectonic fault line beneath everything that has erupted in 2026. Fifty Million People Who Refuse to Be a Border  Roughly 50 million Pashtuns live across both sides of the Durand Line. They share language, tribe, genealogy, and code,  the ancient honour system of Pashtunwali that governs loyalty, hospitality, and revenge in equal measure. To a Pashtun tribesman in Waziristan, the line on Pakistan’s map means little when his cousin lives in Khost. Cross-border movement, cross-border marriage, and cross-border allegiance are not insurgent behaviour. They are culture. Pakistan’s military establishment has never fully grasped or chosen to accept this reality. Its periodic attempts to fence and fortify the border, most aggressively from 2017 onward, have been met with fierce resistance from tribal communities that view the fence not as a security measure but as a colonial imposition. Skirmishes between Pakistani border forces and Afghan fighters over the fence are practically routine. The current war did not materialise from a vacuum; it escalated from a slow-burning conflict that has been claiming lives along the Durand Line for years. The Monster Pakistan Built To understand how Pakistan arrived at this catastrophic juncture, one must understand the doctrine of “strategic depth.” Pakistan’s generals, perpetually preoccupied with the Indian infatuation on their eastern border, became obsessed with ensuring that Afghanistan would never side with India, or worse, open a second front. The solution, as conceived by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) through the 1970s and 1980s, was to cultivate a network of jihadist proxies in Afghanistan that Islamabad could control and deploy. The Afghan mujahideen. The Taliban. Assorted terrorist networks that moved through Pakistan’s tribal areas with impunity. The Taliban of 1994 were, in significant measure, a Pakistani creation. The ISI funded them, armed them, and provided the political scaffolding that allowed them to sweep to power in Kabul in 1996. For five years, Pakistan had the compliant Afghan government it had always wanted. Then came 11 September. Under intense American pressure, and out of greed for US dollars, Islamabad was forced to publicly disavow the very asset it had spent two decades cultivating. What followed was perhaps the most cynical double game in modern geopolitical history. Pakistan publicly cooperated with the American-led war on terror while elements of its intelligence apparatus continued to shelter, fund, and facilitate the Taliban through two decades of conflict. Safe houses in Quetta. Sanctuaries in Baluchistan. The Haqqani network operating from Pakistani soil. American generals and CIA directors said it in public, in congressional testimony, with barely concealed rage. Pakistan denied everything, pocketed billions in American aid, and continued. Blowback: The Reckoning When the Americans abandoned Afghanistan in August 2021 and the Taliban swept back into Kabul, General Faiz Hameed, Pakistan’s former ISI chief, was famously photographed sipping tea at Kabul’s Serena Hotel. But Pakistan had not fully reckoned with what came next: the Afghan Taliban, now rulers rather than stateless militias, showed little appetite for serving as Pakistan’s instrument. They had decided long ago to govern as Afghans and think as Pashtuns. And they have shown no meaningful inclination to police their eastern border on Islamabad’s behalf particularly not against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban known as TTP. The TTP is, in ideological and genealogical terms, indistinguishable from the Afghan Taliban. They share theology, ethnic identity, and in many cases, blood. The Afghan Taliban’s refusal to launch operations against TTP is not weakness or negligence, it is a deliberate choice rooted in Pashtun solidarity. Pakistan created the militant infrastructure that spawned the TTP. It nurtured the ideology that animates them. It is now being consumed by the very forces it engineered, and it wants the Taliban to solve a problem that Pakistan itself created. That is blowback in its purest form. TTP has killed thousands of Pakistani soldiers since 2007. It has Pakistani military installations. Pakistan has responded by demanding the Afghan Taliban act, and when they don’t, by launching airstrikes into Afghan territory. Those airstrikes kill civilians. They inflame Pashtun sentiment on both sides of the Durand Line. They validate every Afghan suspicion of Pakistani malice. And they make

From autonomous drones to satellite killers, Pyongyang’s Ninth Party Congress signals a profound transformation in how Kim Jong Un intends to fight and win the next war. The Hwasong-20 rolls through Pyongyang during North Korea’s October 2025 Workers’ Party parade.   For decades, North Korea’s military doctrine rested on a simple, brutal calculus: overwhelming numbers, nuclear deterrence, and the willingness to absorb punishment in order to inflict it. That calculus is changing. The closing session of the Ninth Workers’ Party Congress on February 26, 2026, unveiled a five-year weapons plan that is less about raw firepower and more about intelligence, autonomy, and the ability to blind an adversary before a single missile leaves its silo. At the centre of this shift is artificial intelligence. Autonomous Weapons: Drone Army Takes Shape The announcement of AI-powered unmanned attack systems was not a surprise to close observers. As far back as September 2025, Kim Jong Un had visited the Unmanned Aeronautical Technology Complex and declared rapidly developing AI technology a “top priority.” By August 2025, the General Staff Department had already ordered every branch of the Korean People’s Army to submit detailed plans for AI-based combat systems, with testing scheduled to begin during winter training in December. The Party Congress was less a launch than a formal political blessing for a program already well underway. The ambitions are broad and branch-specific. The Army is tasked with developing AI command systems that unify infantry, mechanised forces, artillery, and unmanned platforms into a single operational picture. The Navy is pursuing mixed fleets of crewed and uncrewed vessels for missions ranging from harbour defence to nuclear counterstrike scenarios. The Air Force is experimenting with formations where piloted jets fly alongside autonomous drones, a concept mirroring “loyal wingman” programs already tested by the United States and Australia. Most provocatively, Special Operations Forces have been instructed to deploy unmanned systems for assassinations, demolitions, and infiltration raids. Hardware is already visible. The Saetbyol-4 and Saetbyol-9 drones were shown to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu during a 2023 visit. An upgraded Saetbyol-4 appeared in March 2025, featuring a new optical window and panels consistent with electronic intelligence gathering. South Korean defence officials have noted that some targeting systems on display exceed North Korea’s typical capabilities, with officials suggesting Russian technology transfer, plausible given that North Korean troops deployed to Ukraine would have gained direct exposure to modern drone warfare on a live battlefield. Satellite Killers: Blinding the Alliance The second pillar of Pyongyang’s AI-era military ambition is perhaps its most strategically disruptive: weapons designed to destroy enemy satellites in orbit. Kim Jong Un specifically called for the development of “special weapons for striking enemy satellites in the event of war.” The target is not abstract. US early warning satellites are the linchpin of allied missile defence on the Korean Peninsula. If Pyongyang can threaten to destroy those satellites at the outset of a conflict, the entire architecture of US, South Korean, and Japanese readiness is thrown into question. Developing a functional anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon presents a formidable technical hurdle. A direct-ascent kill vehicle requires onboard optical, infrared, and radar sensors to steer a warhead toward a satellite moving at thousands of kilometres per hour. Even a near-miss can be effective: a fragmentation warhead creates a debris cloud that complicates or destroys the target satellite’s operations, though at the cost of polluting orbital lanes used by every other space-faring nation, including China and Russia. That collateral risk creates a rare alignment of interests between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow in opposing a North Korean ASAT capability, potentially creating diplomatic friction with Pyongyang’s closest partners. Non-kinetic approaches; GPS jamming, laser dazzling of optical sensors, or cyberattacks on satellite ground control stations remain closer to North Korea’s existing capabilities and would carry fewer of the debris risks. North Korea already operates GPS jammers on mobile platforms, a capability demonstrated intermittently since the 2010s. Scaling that logic upward to space denial is a natural doctrinal evolution. The Deeper Implication: AI and the Nuclear Trigger Beyond drones and satellite weapons lies a more unsettling dimension of North Korea’s AI ambitions: the integration of artificial intelligence into nuclear command and control. Plans have reportedly been issued to incorporate AI across a four-stage nuclear operational cycle, from managing warhead storage sites to coordinating launches and planning counterstrikes. No credible evidence suggests North Korea is close to fully automating nuclear decision-making, but the direction of travel is alarming. The combination of autonomous weapons, degraded early-warning satellites, and AI-assisted nuclear command could compress crisis timelines in ways that leave human judgement with no meaningful role. What emerges from the Ninth Party Congress is a coherent, if deeply dangerous, strategic vision. North Korea is not simply trying to build more weapons. It is trying to build smarter ones, systems designed to blind, overwhelm, and outpace an adversary whose technological edge has, until now, made conventional North Korean military power largely irrelevant in any prolonged conflict. The AI-fication of the North Korean arsenal may still be years from operational maturity. But the direction is set, the political mandate is given, and the resources are being committed. The alliance watching from Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington would do well to take it seriously.

For Southeast Asia, the signal is clear, India is serious about its eastern maritime frontier, where China’s influence intersects with ASEAN’s strategic anxieties. At first glance, the Great Nicobar “holistic development” plan looks like a familiar Indian story: build a port, lay an airport runway, power the grid, and grow a township. Look again at the map, and it reads less like a construction schedule and more like a hard-nosed geopolitical play. Great Nicobar sits on the Bay of Bengal’s southern edge, near the approaches to the Malacca Strait, the hinge between Indian Ocean and the Pacific. In the Government’s own bidding document for the Galathea Bay transshipment port, the geography is stated plainly. The island is about 40 nautical miles from the Malacca Strait international shipping channel, and about 35% of annual global sea trade moves through the Malacca corridor. For China, whose trade and energy lifelines run across the Indian Ocean and then through Southeast Asian chokepoints, this is the part of the map that matters in any crisis. But leverage here is not the cartoon idea of “shutting Malacca.” The real strategic question is subtler. Can India raise China’s uncertainty and costs by watching, tracking and, if needed ,  contesting movement, without turning maritime competition into a war on commerce? The plan’s architecture is built for that answer. In formal environmental filings, Great Nicobar is framed as an integrated build: an International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT) planned at 14.2 million TEU, a greenfield international airport designed for 4,000 peak-hour passengers, a 450 MVA gas-and-solar power plant, and township and area development across 16,610 hectares, with a stated project cost of about ₹75,000 crore. The port’s Phase-I bid document pegs Phase-I capital cost at around ₹18,000 crore, and lays out a ramp from roughly 4 million TEUs by 2028 toward 16 million TEUs in the ultimate build-out. Why does that matter for global supply chains? Because India still pays a strategic “tax” for not owning enough of its maritime switching nodes. A Government release notes that nearly 75% of India’s transshipment cargo is handled at ports outside India, and that Colombo, Singapore and Port Klang handle more than 85% of this traffic. When Indian cargo must be relayed through foreign hubs, India loses time, fees, and predictability. In a disruption; conflict, sanctions spillover, a freight shock, dependence becomes vulnerability. Now place China in the backdrop. Beijing’s maritime strategy around India is best understood as a network: access, logistics and influence across the Indian Ocean, commercial port relationships, infrastructure finance, and periodic naval deployments. India’s response is increasingly about denying China a free run in India’s near seas while ensuring India can operate at range. The Andaman and Nicobar chain is central to that response. A Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) brief underlines that the Six Degree and Ten Degree Channels in the Andaman Sea leading to Malacca are vital sea lines of communication. Great Nicobar strengthens that geometry by adding depth and endurance. Maritime power is not only about sensors and ships. It is about sustainment; fuel, repair, berthing, aviation support, and the ability to surge repeatedly without retreating to the mainland. A port-airport-power complex makes persistent maritime domain awareness more feasible and faster response cycles more routine. The subnautical contest sharpens the case. Chinese submarines can enter the Indian Ocean, but geography constrains entry routes and imposes friction. Several analyst assessment note that Chinese submarines access the Indian Ocean through straits such as Malacca, Lombok, Sunda or Ombai-Wetar. India does not need to promise interdiction; it needs to improve detection, cueing, and uncertainty. If the probability of being tracked rises, the cost of deploying quietly rises too, and China must allocate more assets and attention to simply move. For Southeast Asia, the signal is clear, India is serious about its eastern maritime frontier, where China’s influence intersects with ASEAN’s strategic anxieties. A functional node at Great Nicobar can underpin disaster relief, evacuation operations, anti-piracy responses, and maritime policing, public goods that translate into influence when delivered reliably. But masterstrokes are judged by execution and legitimacy. The Government acknowledges the environmental scale: a July 2024 release notes Stage-1 approval for diversion of 130.75 sq km of forest land, estimates potential tree impacts below 9.64 lakh, and sets special conditions for biodiversity planning with institutions such as WII and ZSI. In February 2026, media reports said the National Green Tribunal upheld clearances while directing strict compliance with safeguards. Call Great Nicobar a masterstroke, provided India builds a commercially competitive transshipment hub that shipping lines actually choose, and a security-enabled logistics ecosystem that strengthens supply chains without militarising commerce. If it succeeds, India converts geography into leverage by ensuring that, in any crisis, China must factor Indian visibility, Indian reach, and Indian options into every calculation.  

There is an India-vision lesson beyond missiles. Great powers don’t just buy deterrence, they industrialise it, converting national scale into military leverage. Deterrence is capability in motion. It is measured by one brutal test. Can a force still launch after the first attack? Last September, Agni-Prime gave India a clean answer. A missile lifted off from a rail mobile launcher, not a fixed pad. That choice was the message: Mobility is capability. After the flight, the official readout set the tone. The launch was described as a “textbook launch,” with tracking by multiple ground stations. The statement also signalled what the test was meant to unlock. Success would enable the induction of rail-based systems into service. The most telling lines focused on wartime design. The launcher was described as self-sustained, with independent launch features, advanced communications, and protection mechanisms. This was not showcase language. This was readiness language for a battlefield where minutes decide advantage. Why rails, and why now? Because the contest is increasingly about the kill chain: find, fix, track, target, engage, assess. In a region where warning timelines can be short and intelligence collection relentless, even commercial imagery compresses uncertainty. Mobility is the oldest counter-measure and rail mobility is mobility with mass. A rail-based launcher can reposition across long distances with less logistical drag than heavy road convoys, and it can do so while blending into everyday freight and passenger traffic. The global contrast is instructive. Rail-mobile missiles are not new in theory; they are rare in practice because they demand heavy engineering, a resilient rail grid, and peacetime discipline to keep strategic movement invisible inside civilian patterns. Cold War basing debates showed why major powers flirted with rail mobility: it multiplies potential launch areas and complicates counterforce targeting. India is not inventing the logic; it is applying it to a harsher surveillance environment where persistent ISR is cheaper, faster, and more widely available than ever. India’s unique advantage is structural. Its railways are not a niche logistics channel; they are infrastructure at continental scale. Reporting in 2025 put the network at roughly 69,800 route-kilometres, with over 99% electrification achieved by mid-2025 and full electrification targeted ahead of March 2026. That density creates a military benefit that is easy to miss. A strategic launcher can move through yards, loops, sidings, tunnels, and varied corridors without advertising a distinct “military convoy signature” that analysts can learn and exploit. This is why “short reaction time” and “reduced visibility” are operational claims, not slogans. Capability is measured in minutes: how quickly a system can disperse, receive authenticated orders, appear briefly, and execute. Rail basing shortens long-haul repositioning and reduces the signature of repeated heavy-vehicle movement that can be profiled over time. For an adversary, the challenge is not just spotting a launcher; it is proving, with confidence, where it will be when it matters. Rail mobility attacks that confidence. Rail mobility also aligns with India’s deterrence posture. Under credible minimum deterrence, India does not need symmetrical numbers; it needs survivable capability. Survivable forces reduce incentives for early escalation because they keep retaliation credible even under pressure. Mobility, therefore, becomes stabilising: it discourages any adversary belief that a first strike could be clean, decisive, or cost-free. But rail mobility is not magic. Tracks create chokepoints; bridges, tunnels, critical junctions that can be targeted by sabotage or precision strike. Command links can be attacked through cyber and electronic means. The answer is not to romanticise rail basing; it is to treat it as a system-of-systems problem: route redundancy, hardened holding areas, layered security, counter-sabotage forces, encrypted resilient communications, and strict discipline. Even the best launcher is only as survivable as its command-and-control and security architecture. There is an India-vision lesson beyond missiles. Great powers don’t just buy deterrence, they industrialise it, converting national scale into military leverage. India’s rail grid is one of the few on earth large enough to turn mobility into concealment, and concealment into capability. Rarer still is the combination India is now demonstrating: native missile engineering, a rail ecosystem dense enough to disappear inside, and a command architecture capable of integrating a new basing mode without broadcasting repeatable patterns. The most revealing phrase is the least dramatic reduced visibility. In deterrence, ambiguity is not confusion; it is deliberate uncertainty imposed on an adversary’s targeting cycle. If an opponent cannot be sure where the launcher is, they cannot be sure they can neutralise it and if they cannot be sure, they must plan for retaliation. That is the quiet mechanics of stability. Agni-Prime, India’s futuristic rail-based strike advantage, is therefore more than a new launcher configuration. It is India converting infrastructure into capability, turning mobility into second-strike assurance, and using geography and scale to harden deterrence through operational unpredictability.

Balochistan remains a place where the promises of 1947 are still argued, remembered and resisted Spanning from the Arabian Sea to the deserts bordering Iran and Afghanistan, Balochistan is a land abundant in minerals, history, and unresolved conflicts. Despite being Pakistan’s largest province by territory, it remains the least developed and has been the epicentre of one of South Asia’s longest-standing liberation struggles. The core of the conflict dates back to before Pakistan’s creation: the question of whether Balochistan’s fate in 1947 was a choice or an imposition. The roots of the modern struggle trace back to the princely State of Kalat. Under the 1876 Treaty with British India, Kalat retained internal autonomy, setting it apart from directly administered colonial territories. As British rule neared its end in 1947, Kalat’s leadership sought to restore its sovereignty. A pivotal meeting in Delhi on August 4, 1947, brought together Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and the Khan of Kalat. It was agreed that Kalat will gain independence upon the British departure. An agreement signed on August 11 between Kalat and the Muslim League recognised Kalat as a sovereign state, with an understanding that its independence would be respected. Kalat declared independence on August 15, raising its traditional flag and marking the Khan of Kalat as the ruler of a free state. However, this independence was short-lived. British memoranda soon questioned Kalat’s capacity to function as a fully independent entity in international affairs. Political pressure from Pakistan’s new leadership mounted, pushing for Kalat’s integration into Pakistan. According to Taj Mohammad Breseeg’s book Baloch Nationalism: Its Origin and Development Up To 1980, Jinnah sought accession while the Khan insisted on tribal consent before any binding decision. In March 1948, Pakistani forces moved into Kalat and enforced its accession. For Baloch, this marked annexation, not a voluntary union, and has fuelled multiple uprisings since. Since 1948, there have been five insurgencies, each driven by complaints of economic neglect, loss of autonomy, military repression, and the extraction of local resources without corresponding development. Despite Balochistan’s significant natural gas reserves, copper, gold, and strategic coastal access at Gwadar, many residents feel they see little benefit from these riches. Tensions have recently intensified around the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a CPC infrastructure initiative linking western China to the Arabian Sea. While Islamabad views CPEC as lucrative and transformative, Baloch activists see it as exploitation, displacement, demographic change, and militarisation. Security deployments to protect investments have only deepened local resentment. Rebel groups like the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Baloch Republican Army (BRA) have grown in this environment. Their attacks have targeted security forces, infrastructure, and occasionally foreign interests linked to CPC projects. Baloch activist and rebel groups, including BLA and BRA, alongside civil resistance, have tried to peacefully advocate their cause through diaspora mobilisations, human-rights advocacy, and appeals framed around political repression and missing persons. However, this push has seen limited global action. Major rights bodies and UN-linked voices have repeatedly flagged concerns about human rights crackdowns and enforced disappearances. International human rights groups have documented patterns of disappearances attributed to state security institutions, with calls for Pakistan to end coercive measures against Baloch activists. As non-violent mobilisation space narrows, some rebel factions argue that armed resistance is the only way to attract global attention. This struggle resurfaced in January with coordinated assaults across districts, including Quetta and Gwadar, targeting Pakistani Army forces. Pakistani security forces reported dozens of rebel deaths initially and later claimed at least 177 rebel deaths in subsequent operations. Baloch women have also become more visible in this conflict. After the April 26, 2022, University of Karachi bombing by Shari Baloch, BLA messaging highlighted two Gen-Z, educated women — Hawa Baloch and Asifa Mengal — linked to subsequent attacks. The rebel movement’s headline-grabbing operations have extended beyond provincial boundaries. The March 11, 2025, Jaffar Express hijacking gained international attention, projecting the Baloch cause outward while deepening public trauma. Running parallel to these attacks is the image of families searching for the disappeared, allegations of extrajudicial killings, and the widening gulf between Islamabad’s security narrative and the community’s lived experience of pain and coercion. Another shadow from the past involves Pakistan’s nuclear tests in the Chagai hills of Balochistan in May 1998. While celebrated nationally, many local Baloch argue that the aftermath left lasting geological and human scars: alleged radioactive contamination, barren lands, deformed terrain, and health issues among residents. Diaspora Baloch communities mark March 27, associated with Kalat’s accession, as “Black Day” staging protests to draw international attention. Meanwhile, life in Balochistan continues under heavy security, economic uncertainty, and political distrust. Beyond geopolitics and rebel statistics lies a human story: displaced fishermen in Gwadar, miners in dangerous conditions, students navigating checkpoints, and families caught between violence and crackdowns. For many residents, survival, dignity, and opportunity are paramount. The Baloch struggle is complex and deeply emotional. It is about historical justice and control over their homeland. Seven decades after independence reshaped the subcontinent, the promises of 1947 in Balochistan are still argued, remembered, and resisted.   First published on https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-the-baloch-question-in-pakistans-army-state-ws-l-9877428.html

In an era increasingly defined by a US–China contest for orbit, India’s space wave is emerging as the third force — not just competitive, but trusted. From Sriharikota’s launch pads to orbiting skies, India’s space agency ISRO has quietly become the go-to commercial launcher for dozens of countries. In the past decade, Indian rockets have placed nearly 390 foreign satellites into orbit. The United States is by far the biggest client: 232 US-built satellites have hitched rides with India since 2014, but others are close behind. For example, Britain has sent roughly 83 satellites via ISRO, Singapore about 19, with Canada and South Korea also among the customers (8 and 5 satellites respectively). Space-industry analysts note that ISRO “has become a symbol of reliability and innovation, with rockets praised for precision, efficiency and affordability”. This reputation for dependable, cost-effective launches helps explain why a dozen nations now entrust key payloads to India’s launchers. At the heart of ISRO’s appeal is its workhorse rocket, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Decades of development have yielded an unusually high success rate — about 94 per cent over 63 missions to date — and even occasional world records. In 2017, for instance, a single PSLV mission put 104 satellites into orbit at once, shattering the previous record and demonstrating ISRO’s scheduling precision and multi-payload management. As ISRO executives have noted, each launch showcases India’s growing expertise and boosts international confidence. This technical reliability comes with a financial edge. ISRO’s launch prices are substantially lower than many competitor rates. One survey finds PSLV missions run on the order of $21–31 million apiece, compared with roughly $62–67 million for a SpaceX Falcon 9 and $178 million for Europe’s Ariane 5. Even for very small satellites, India is pushing the cost down. Its new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) is advertised at around $3.7 million per flight — a tiny fraction of Western ride-share prices. In short, ISRO offers clients a low-cost, high-reliability launch option. No wonder space agencies and companies in emerging markets often choose India when budgets are tight or missions are sensitive. Countries and companies have leveraged ISRO’s launchers across a range of applications. In Europe–India collaborations, the UK’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd contracted ISRO to orbit two remote-sensing satellites in 2018: NovaSAR (an S-band synthetic-aperture radar craft) and S1-4 (a high-resolution optical imager) to monitor forests, floods and ships. Likewise, Brazil launched its Amazonia-1 Earth-observation satellite on a PSLV in 2021, gathering critical imagery of Amazon deforestation and agriculture. Singapore has also joined the client roster: in 2023, PSLV carried the TeLEOS-2 radar satellite and a small experimental payload (LUMILITE-4) for Singapore’s government, both intended for maritime and environmental data collection. American commercial entities make heavy use of India’s ride-shares. For example, a single 2017 launch carried 96 cubesats built by US companies — 88 from Planet Labs for high-resolution Earth imaging and 8 from Spire Global carrying weather and ship-tracking sensors. ISRO’s track record gives confidence even for sensitive payloads, from Earth-observation craft to communication satellites. Recent missions have included US tech-firm communications spacecraft (AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird satellite) and French company data-relay microsats, all trusting PSLV or India’s heavy-lift GSLV rocket to deliver them to precise orbits. In every case, India’s rockets deliver their payloads efficiently, attracting clients from around the globe. Back home, this international success has coincided with a boom in India’s private space industry. Since 2020, the PM Narendra Modi-led government has opened the sector, launching an independent regulator (IN-SPACe) and a dedicated $1.2-billion venture fund to back innovation. The result: over 200 new space start-ups have emerged, from launch-vehicle builders to satellite manufacturers and data-analytics firms. These companies are designing everything from small rockets to Earth-observation constellations. Government studies project India’s space economy could quintuple, reaching around $44 billion by the early 2030s as the country captures 8–10 per cent of a global market that could hit that size. Even global investors are taking notice: for example, Google’s parent Alphabet has put $36 million into one Indian satellite start-up to build a hyperspectral-imaging craft. Crucially, India’s start-ups stand to benefit from ISRO’s infrastructure even as they go commercial. By law, private launches must use ISRO launch pads, and new small-launcher ventures are in line to use the upcoming Sriharikota New Spaceport as well as the older coastal range. Meanwhile, partnerships abound: several start-ups work alongside ISRO labs (for avionics, propulsion or data downlinks), and some major projects (like the Gaganyaan astronaut flights) channel advanced R&D that will have civilian spin-offs. In short, India’s home-grown space ecosystem is maturing just as global demand for satellites is exploding. This groundswell highlights the imperative that India is not just a launcher for others, but a growing hub of space innovation. In pure dollar terms, the satellite-launch business has so far yielded moderate sums for India. Official trade data show that ISRO’s foreign-launch revenue from 2015–2024 totalled on the order of $143 million. (By comparison, SpaceX alone earned tens of billions over the same period.) However, a more detailed breakdown highlights rapid growth: India’s Minister for the Department of Space, Dr Jitendra Singh, recently reported about $172 million in receipts from US satellite contracts and €292 million from Europe in the last decade, with more launches on the manifest. Crucially, these revenues come from launch-service fees, not counting the wide range of data and technologies that follow. What matters more is momentum. The global space market is on a steep upward trajectory. Goldman Sachs analysts estimate up to 70,000 new satellites will be launched worldwide in the next five years, as low-orbit constellations multiply and nations seek independent capabilities. To capture a share of that market, India leverages its reputation for reliability and low-cost service. Policy planners note that India’s portion of the global space economy (currently around 2 per cent) could realistically rise into the high single digits or 10 per cent range by the early 2030s. Now competing head-to-head with American and Chinese players, ISRO is no longer

Global jihadists see an opening: a chance to reconnect their Pakistani networks with Bangladeshi extremists, reversing years of counterterrorism and counter-radicalisation gains On a mid-December night in Bangladesh, 25-year-old Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu garment factory worker, was beaten by a frenzy of Islamists, hung from a tree, and set ablaze on a highway. His alleged “crime”? A rumour that he insulted Islam. Yet investigators have since confirmed there is zero evidence that Dipu ever blasphemed at all. Not one can point to a single derogatory remark he made; “no one saw or heard” anything offensive, a Rapid Action Battalion officer admitted. In other words, an innocent Hindu man was lynched and immolated over a lie. One would expect such a medieval atrocity, captured on video and circulated worldwide, to provoke an outpouring of shock from international human rights watchdogs. Imagine if the roles were reversed: a Muslim man lynched and burned by a mob in a Hindu-majority country. The global indignation would be instantaneous and deafening. But in Dipu’s case, the outrage has been oddly muted. Major human rights organisations and Western governments that normally champion minority rights barely mustered a whisper of protest. The deafening silence of these supposed watchdogs is as harrowing as the crime itself, and it exposes a disturbing double standard. Bangladesh’s own minority rights groups vehemently condemned the lynching, the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council decried the “so-called blasphemy” killing as an assault on communal harmony. But where were the urgent press releases from Geneva, the high-profile tweets from Human Rights Watch, the emergency sessions at the UN? Their voices have been either absent or astonishingly subdued. Such restraint stands in stark contrast to their usual activism when religious persecution occurs elsewhere. The message implicit in this silence is chilling: that the lynching of a poor Hindu man in Bangladesh is somehow a lesser transgression on the global human rights ledger. The hypocrisy extends to Bangladesh’s interim rulers. The current government, led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, swept to power in August 2024 after an Islamist-led “Monsoon Revolution” toppled Sheikh Hasina’s democratically elected administration. Internationally, Yunus is venerated for championing human rights and equality. Domestically, his regime’s actions tell a darker story. Chief Adviser Yunus was quick to issue a condemnation of Dipu’s lynching, vowing the perpetrators “will not be spared”. However, such words ring hollow against the regime’s track record: while it denounces one mob killing, it has concurrently overseen the release or escape of hundreds of criminals and Islamist extremists since taking power. At Hadi’s funeral, Yunus himself delivered a eulogy that should have set off international alarm bells. In front of tens of thousands, Yunus heaped praise on Hadi’s “mantra” and vowed to fulfill Hadi’s vision “generation after generation”. Let’s be clear: Hadi was explicitly known for his anti-India and anti-Hindu rhetoric and polarising, Islamist-tinged politics. By publicly sanctifying Hadi’s ideals, Yunus sent a dangerous signal that anti-India and anti-Hindu dictate is now quasi-official ideology in Dhaka. Unsurprisingly, the fallout was swift. Days after Hadi’s death, Bangladesh erupted in fury, not just against alleged conspirators in his killing, but against perceived Indian influence. Mobs attacked the Indian Assistant High Commission in Chittagong, and hundreds of protesters marched on the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, chanting anti-India slogans and even hurling stones at diplomatic compounds. Bangladesh’s police hinted (without evidence) that Hadi’s assassins might have fled to India—where ex-PM Hasina has taken refuge—a claim that only inflamed public paranoia. In the frenzy, fact and fiction mattered little: ‘anti-India and anti-Hindu agenda’ was the rallying cry. Caught in the crossfire were Bangladesh’s Hindu minorities, now doubly scapegoated as both “blasphemers” at home and perceived fifth-columnists for India. Attacks on Hindu homes, temples and community leaders have spiked over the past year-and-a-half. Even before Dipu Das’s lynching, minority groups warned that the post-Hasina political climate had emboldened extremists to settle scores with Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. Tragically, those warnings proved prescient in Bhaluka, Mymensingh, when Dipu’s killers exploited a religious rumour to unleash lethal mob “justice”. Police and RAB have detained 10 suspects—Mohammad Limon Sarkar, Mohammad Tarek Hossain, Mohammad Manik Mia, Ershad Ali, Nijum Uddin, Alomgir Hossain, Mohammad Miraj Hossain Akon, Mohammad Azmol Hasan Sagir, Mohammad Shahin Mia, and Mohammad Nazmul, aged 19-46. The interim regime’s, especially Mohammad Yunis’s own actions, from baiting an anti-Indian agitator to allowing Islamist hardliners back into public life, have fertilised the soil in which Islamist extremism and radicalisation grows. Perhaps most cynical of all has been the Bangladesh foreign ministry’s complicity and the atrocious attempt to downplay these horrors. When India officially protested the mob killing of a Hindu Bangladeshi (and even a small people’s demonstration in New Delhi decrying it), Dhaka’s response was dismissive. Foreign Affairs Adviser Mohammad Touhid Hossain bristled at the notion that Dipu Das’s lynching had anything to do with minority targeting. He then lectured that “such incidents occur across the region” and every country has a responsibility to address them—as if mob lynching and immolation of religious minorities is just business as usual in South Asia, nothing special. This whataboutist shrug is nothing short of an attempt to normalise hate crimes. By equating a communal lynching with generic law-and-order problems everywhere, Bangladesh’s officials signal that the brutal murder of a Hindu for an unproven slur is not a national emergency but a routine matter that merits no extra soul-searching. This attitude is profoundly dangerous. Bangladesh was founded on principles of secularism and communal harmony in 1971, a legacy now under siege. To shrug off anti-Hindu violence as “common in the region” is to abandon the very idea of a pluralistic Bangladesh. It emboldens extremists and tells persecuted minorities that they are essentially on their own. Indeed, Islamist radicals have heard the message loud and clear. With the new regime’s indulgence, dormant terrorist networks are roaring back to life. Key jihadist leaders have re-entered the fray, for example, the jailed chiefs of Ansar al-Islam (an Al-Qaeda aligned group) and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami were freed