The Pakistani military and intelligence service will not easily break the ties with Islamist terrorist groups in Afghanistan like the Haqqani network. Islamabad wants to keep a foothold in Afghanistan when western troops leave and use Islamic extremism as a counterforce to ethnic conflict and inco
Many powerful states tend to view current global conflicts through the lens of Islamism, and to put military action at the heart of the response. But the deeper roots and character of these conflicts are to be found in poverty and marginalisation, not ideology.
Mediation has been successful at bringing down levels of violence and bringing popular welfare and social justice demands onto the political agenda. These gains are underthreat as the government fails to take the process seriously.
Caught between the restrictions placed on them by the state and a relationship with the general public framed by suspicion of collaboration with the West, Pakistani peacebuilders need to articulate their work on their own terms.
Any militant force fighting against NATO forces in Afghanistan has to abide by the Taliban war codes which compel outsiders to fight under only one banner, that of Emarat-i-Islami. Hitherto, this strategy has damaged but also benefited the allied forces by keeping the lethal Al Qaida and other ant
As Afghanistan looks to a future beyond international intervention, regional support will become ever more important.
Ten years on from the Gujurat riots, the survivors still do not have justice and the bureaucracies that made them possible remain unchanged. This is not a one-off but a trend, which it will take hard questions and an insistence on answers to reverse.
Amidst the deep hurt of civil war, many think it impossible to speak with, let alone work with, people from across divisions of conflict. A diverse group of young British Sri Lankans have directly experienced this. Here they examine reconciliation as not only a possibility, but a present undertaki
Is Sanka Abayawardena a government stooge, Sinhala nationalist, or peace activist? He warns his critics against forgetting the class basis of this conflict.See the debate: Is reconciliation possible in Sri Lanka?
This week is the third anniversary of the end the Sri Lankan civil war. Yet there is hope: it lies within Sri Lanka's reach to move from 'post-war' to 'post-conflict', as Sri Lankans work towards a new era of equitable governance.See the debate: Is reconciliation possible in Sri Lanka?
There will be a very large number of Afghans – primarily, but not only, women – who will be left to pay a heavy price for their “collaboration with the enemy”. This, above all, will be the inevitable legacy left by the hurried, unwise and poorly planned invasion of 2001.
India has tried to strike a balance between support for the Sri Lankan government and calls for Tamil rehabilitation - ultimately backing the UN resolution urging Sri Lanka to investigate abuses of international law during the final phase of the civil war. Behind this lie a number of external, int
