Water for Peace

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Posted on October 24, 2026 by Chellaney

How India can embed new water-sharing arrangements with downstream Pakistan and Bangladesh in peace frameworks by emulating the Israel-Jordan model

Brahma Chellaney, OPEN magazine

India has long maintained that its water largesse to Pakistan cannot be repaid with blood, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaring that “blood and water cannot flow together. ”Pakistan has effectively waged a proxy war against India through terrorism, with the 2008 Mumbai massacre, in particular, still etched in India’s national memory.

But after Pakistan-backed Islamist gunmen, two of whom were identified as Pakistani nationals, slaughtered 25 Hindu tourists in a brutal attack at a resort in Jammu & Kashmir, New Delhi placed the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) “in abeyance”. Concluded in 1960, the IWT has remained the world’s most generous water-sharing treaty, giving downstream Pakistan access to over 80 per cent of the Indus Basin waters.

Unlike the IWT, which has an indefinite duration, India’s Ganges Water-Sharing Treaty with Bangladesh contains a 30-year term and is set to expire soon on December 12, unless it is renewed or extended with potential amendments. The Ganges treaty was signed when Sheikh Hasina was Bangladesh’s prime minister. But Bangladesh has now emerged as a South Asian flashpoint amid rising Islamist extremism and intensifying repression of minorities and political opponents, with the current regime in Dhaka anything but India-friendly.

The Ganges treaty guarantees Bangladesh specific cross-border flows in the critical five-month dry season, setting a new principle in international water relations.

Asia’s water resources are largely transnational, making inter-country cooperation essential. Yet the vast majority of the 57 transnational river basins in continental Asia have no water-sharing treaty or other cooperative mechanism. Indeed, the only treaties in Asia that establish specific formulas for sharing cross-border river flows are those between India and its two downstream neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

India, meanwhile, confronts its own deepening water crisis, driven by a growing mismatch between demand and supply. With surface-water resources under increasing pressure, the crisis has fuelled massive groundwater extraction, further aggravated by climate-induced hydrological unpredictability.

India’s dilemma today over the Indus and Ganges treaties is rooted partly in how these pacts were structured. The two treaties conferred rights without establishing corresponding responsibilities for downstream Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yet rights should come with duties. The treaty obligations fall mainly on India, explaining why Pakistan and Bangladesh have focused overwhelmingly on their treaty-accorded rights.

Pakistan has repeatedly invoked the IWT’s dispute-settlement provisions to constrain India’s ability to address chronic electricity shortages in J&K through modest run-of-the-river hydropower projects. Yet Pakistan itself has generated grassroots opposition in its restive northern regions by pursuing huge storage dams, including the 4,500-megawatt Diamer-Bhasha Dam and the planned 7,000 MW Bunji Dam. Many of Pakistan’s major dam projects are concentrated in Gilgit-Baltistan, where Islamabad has faced persistent local opposition to its rule.

Both the Indus and Ganges treaties were negotiated on the premise that water was essentially a technical resource whose sharing could be agreed upon independently of broader inter-country relations. India’s water munificence, in other words, was not linked to downstream states’ obligations to uphold basic norms of good-neighbourly conduct.

It is past time for India to move towards a new water-sharing framework with its neighbours—one that links the sharing of this vital resource to peace and verifiable good behaviour. Any bilateral treaty must respect the sovereignty, security and well-being of both parties.

This would be a necessary recalibration, recognising that the old framework is no longer tenable. Peace cannot flow from terrorism, hatred or overtly hostile policies.

Instead, upstream India should regard water as an instrument of peace and security. The Israel-Jordan treaty provides a useful template for linking water sharing to a broader peace and security framework.

India’s very different strategic circumstances require adaptation, not replication. Israel’s control over critical water resources in its sub-region was shaped by its capture of the Golan Heights and the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War. China’s seizure of the then-autonomous Tibet in 1950-51, by contrast, transformed the communist giant into Asia’s pre-eminent hydro-hegemon.

India has multiple riparian identities. It is the uppermost riparian on rivers originating on its territory, such as the Chenab and Jhelum, which flow into Pakistan, and the Teesta, which drains into northern Bangladesh. India is a mid-riparian on the Brahmaputra and the main Indus stream. While the Ganges originates on the Indian side of the Himalayas, India is the lowermost riparian on tributaries that begin in Tibet and flow southward through Nepal before entering the Ganges basin in northern India, including the Karnali, Gandak and Kosi (Arun). Few other Asian states occupy all three positions—as upper, middle and lower riparians.

While Pakistan is heavily dependent on the Indus, Bangladesh’s largest source of freshwater is not the Ganges but the Brahmaputra. Yet Dhaka has remained silent on China’s ongoing construction of an unprecedented super-dam near the Indian border that would likely have major implications for the quality and quantity of downstream flows.

China’s upstream dominance and its growing dam-building footprint on the Brahmaputra and other transboundary rivers make it imperative for India to adapt the Israel-Jordan model to South Asian realities. A water-for-peace framework could transform water from an unconditional entitlement into a strategic instrument of cooperation—one in which water sharing is accompanied by reciprocal obligations on security, good-neighbourly conduct and protection of mutual interests.

Such a framework would offer India something the existing treaties do not: A way to make water sharing part of a broader peace architecture, potentially addressing concerns over cross-border terrorism from Pakistan and unconventional security threats emanating from Bangladesh.

By insisting that water sharing is accompanied by reciprocal obligations, India would be updating and strengthening international water norms for an era in which water security, climate stress and national security are increasingly intertwined.

The Israel-Jordan Model

By making water sharing an integral part of a broader peace and security architecture, the Israel-Jordan water arrangement is one of the most distinctive examples of water diplomacy in the world. The arrangement is embedded directly in the 1994 Treaty of Peace between Israel and Jordan, principally through Article 6 and Annex II.

The architecture transforms water from a potential source of conflict into an instrument of mutual security and interdependence. The treaty establishes legally binding allocations from the Jordan River and its Yarmouk tributary, as well as from groundwater resources. It specifies seasonal quantities and operational rules and creates a Joint Water Committee (JWC) to oversee implementation, water transfers, data exchange and compliance.

In this way, water sharing between the two countries has been institutionalised within the peace process itself.

The arrangement also creates a direct connection between water security and broader security commitments. Article 4 of the peace treaty obligates both countries to prevent hostile acts, terrorism and military activity against the other from their territory.

It was the absence of any such mutual obligation in the Indus treaty that emboldened Pakistan, just five years after the IWT came into force, to launch the 1965 war in an abortive attempt to grab India’s J&K.

In the Israel-Jordan treaty, water provisions are implanted inside a comprehensive peace agreement. Article 30 integrates the water-centred Annex II into the whole treaty, and compliance with water allocations is directly tied to Article 4 (Security and Non-Hostility).

Incorporating reciprocal rights and responsibilities, the treaty offers mutual benefits. One of the world’s most water-stressed countries, Jordan relies heavily on water supplied from or through Israel. Israel significantly benefits from a stable and cooperative eastern border and sustained security coordination in the Jordan Valley.

Because Israel controls important upstream diversion and transfer infrastructure, reliable water deliveries require continuing technical cooperation, communication and security coordination between the two governments. Annex II requires each side to protect water systems in its territory that supply the other from pollution, damage, contamination or unauthorised withdrawals. Protecting water infrastructure and maintaining the conditions for reliable water transfers are, therefore, part of the broader obligations of peace.

While Annex II established a baseline obligation for Israel to supply Jordan with about 50 million cubic metres in total water transfers, bilateral protocols and commercial agreements brokered through the JWC subsequently expanded transfers to address severe droughts in Jordan.

In a 2021 deal, Israel agreed to sell Jordan an additional 50 million cubic metres of desalinated water annually on top of the original 50 million cubic metres guaranteed under the 1994 treaty. But those supplementary allotments were scrapped in late 2025 after Jordan declined to make diplomatic concessions sought by Israel. This shows that the treaty, while establishing a durable legal foundation, has left room for the parties to adapt water cooperation to changing climatic and political circumstances.

The water allocations in the Israel-Jordan treaty are indeed very small compared with what India agreed to reserve for Pakistan under the Indus pact. Yet what makes the Israel-Jordan arrangement particularly significant is not the volume of water exchanged but its uniqueness in integrating water into a larger bargain for peace. In this framework, water is simultaneously a humanitarian necessity, an economic resource, a security interest and a mechanism for continued political engagement.

The arrangement establishes reciprocal dependence: Jordan has a vital interest in maintaining peace and reliable water cooperation, while Israel has a major stake in preserving the stable security environment and bilateral mechanisms that make that cooperation possible.

This model should hold special appeal in other water-stressed regions such as South Asia, where rivers cross political borders and water scarcity exacerbates existing inter-country tensions. By embedding water-sharing obligations within broader peace and security arrangements, co-riparian states could make predictable water access, infrastructure protection, data sharing, drought management and emergency water release components of a larger political bargain.

By adapting this model to local hydrology, power asymmetries and upstream realities, other states sharing transnational rivers could create a parallel architecture of reciprocal dependence. That would create legally defined water entitlements, joint institutions, continuous hydrological-data exchange, water-infrastructure protection, mechanisms for adjusting allocations during droughts and, above all, a political understanding that water security and regional security are inseparable.

A Peace Dividend

India needs a new way to think about water, especially because it has major water-sharing treaties with both its downstream neighbours. This is in stark contrast to China, which has not concluded a single water-sharing treaty with any of the multiple countries that depend on cross-border flows of rivers originating on the Tibetan Plateau.

The region’s great rivers cross some of the world’s most contentious and militarised borders. Climate change, for its part, is making water supplies increasingly unpredictable. Yet India’s treaties governing the rivers flowing to Pakistan and Bangladesh have treated water as a purely technical resource, insulated from the political, security and economic issues that bedevil bilateral relations.

Learning from the experience of Israel and Jordan, India should seek to make water sharing an instrument of peace to help advance regional security and its own well-being. The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty offers a unique model because it explicitly links water-cooperation commitments to the maintenance of peace and security. Water sharing is thus not a standalone technical agreement but part of a larger political bargain.

The traditional approach in South Asia has been to insulate water from politics. The Indus treaty, for example, was focused on the separation and allocation of river systems, while the Ganges treaty centred on dry-season flows. But the experience over the years has underscored the limits of trying to separate hydrology from geopolitics. When one side flouts even international norms of good-neighbourly conduct, even technically constructed water arrangements come under increasing strain.

Treaties are built on mutual trust and good faith—or, as the IWT’s preamble puts it: “a spirit of goodwill and friendship.” India steadfastly adhered to the IWT for 65 years, even when it meant compromising development in its water-stressed regions, even though Pakistan persistently acted in bad faith, including employing the treaty’s dispute-resolution mechanisms to drag India repeatedly into international arbitration over minor engineering differences so as to obstruct India’s ability to use its rightful share of water.

Rather than pretending that security and water are unrelated, a treaty should make them mutually reinforcing. That way water becomes an incentive for maintaining peace, and peace in turn becomes the basis for maintaining reliable water supplies.

That approach has particular relevance to India’s relationships with Pakistan and Bangladesh, although the two cases require very different adaptations.

With Pakistan, the most difficult issue is its asymmetric warfare in the form of cross-border terrorism, including helping state-trained Islamist gunmen sneak into Indian territory. Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, has been fanning the flames of conflict by exhorting Pakistanis to teach their children that Muslims are “different from Hindus in every possible way.”

International law supports the view that when a treaty’s fundamental conditions collapse, or one party persistently violates them, the other party has the right to suspend or withdraw from the pact. For now, India has stopped short of formally walking away from the IWT, instead placing the treaty “in abeyance”, a term undefined in international law.

New Delhi has thus retained strategic ambiguity, while sending a resolute message that water sharing can no longer be unconditional. It has not sought to disrupt current cross-border water flows. Yet Pakistan has responded by suspending all bilateral agreements, including the 1972 Simla Agreement, which governs peaceful dispute resolution.

India should propose a new water-sharing treaty with Pakistan that explicitly links water quotas to maintenance of peace. India could offer Pakistan the lion’s share of the Indus-system waters but embed the arrangements in a bilateral peace pact.

The new treaty would incorporate a form of “water for security” reciprocity: India’s continued commitment to predictable transboundary water flows would be linked to verifiable Pakistani commitments to prevent hostile activity, including sponsorship of cross-border terrorism.

Far from using “water as a weapon” against Pakistan, India would be doing the opposite—helping to shape “water for peace”. The objective of the new treaty would be to allow both sides to acquire something vital. Pakistan would receive predictable and transparent water flows. And India would get binding security assurances and mechanisms for verifying compliance.

The Israel-Jordan precedent is instructive precisely because its water provisions exist within an integrated treaty framework in which security, non-hostility, infrastructure protection and water cooperation are mutually connected. That means a material breach of fundamental treaty obligations is likely to have consequences for treaty performance under international law.

For India and Pakistan, that principle could be translated into a carefully calibrated arrangement, with New Delhi guaranteeing transboundary baseline flows. While protecting core downstream entitlements, the new treaty would also offer supplemental water arrangements or water-trading mechanisms tied to measurable security commitments.

This would create a major incentive for Pakistan to preserve the treaty-based framework. The objective would be to transform water from an arena of confrontation into a resource for subcontinental stability.

The Bangladesh case offers an equally important but somewhat different opportunity. India and Bangladesh share the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and smaller rivers. Their water relationship increasingly intersects with climate change, flooding, groundwater depletion, coastal vulnerability and salinity intrusion.

Low-lying Bangladesh has too much water during the annual summer monsoon, when large parts of the deltaic country become inundated, and too little in the dry season. Bangladesh’s annual per capita water availability averages 8,252 cubic metres—or more than five times that of India—but the major inter-seasonal variations and the limited storage capacity of its aquifers make its water situation challenging.

As the Ganges Treaty approaches its December expiration, this creates an opportunity for India to update the architecture of bilateral water cooperation. This opportunity has been reinforced by Dhaka’s stated preference for negotiating a new agreement or heavily revised framework rather than a simple extension. Ahead of formal bilateral talks, Bangladesh has established a dedicated expert and technical panel to draft its proposal points, including greater dry-season flows.

India could offer a broader water-for-cooperation bargain. In return for a mutual commitment in the new treaty to prevent hostile actions, acts of terrorism or third-party military deployments from their territory against the other party and to maintain active bilateral security cooperation, India could guarantee dry-season flows combined with flood-data sharing, joint river-basin management, transit and connectivity arrangements, coastal-erosion management and investment in water infrastructure.

The water-sharing terms would be legally contingent on an overarching peace agreement.

The strategic rationale for such a treaty is particularly weighty given the porous Indo-Bangladesh border and Indian concerns over the potential spillover of growing Islamist violence in Bangladesh. Instead of letting water, security and political differences become mutually reinforcing, India could seek to build institutionalised interdependence that gives Dhaka a strong interest in stable, friendly and cooperative ties with New Delhi.

India and Bangladesh already have the bilateral Joint Rivers Commission (JRC), through which the Ganges Treaty’s renewal or revision is to be discussed. Like the Israeli-Jordanian JWC, the JRC provides a permanent institutional mechanism beneath the political level that allows technical officials to deal with seasonal water transfers, hydrological data, operational disputes and other issues. Yet, with Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government stoking anti-India sentiment, Dhaka might be loath to accept peace and security commitments in exchange for a broader water package with India.

Still, a separate water-for-peace treaty with Bangladesh and Pakistan would open the possibility of establishing permanent bilateral river-basin commissions with authority to jointly monitor flows, exchange real-time hydrological data, manage droughts and floods, and adjust operational arrangements as hydrological conditions change.

Such cooperation would be particularly valuable as climate change makes historical averages of river flows increasingly unreliable. Fixed water allocations or the reservation of flows of major tributaries almost entirely for the downstream country may with time become less workable due to erratic monsoons, retreating glaciers and more frequent extreme weather events. The Israel-Jordan treaty offers a useful principle that the legal framework should be durable but the operational arrangements within it must be adaptable.

However, there is an important difference between the two regions, which explains why the Israel-Jordan model cannot simply be transplanted to South Asia.

Israel controls the upstream water resources and infrastructure, whereas India is downstream of China on the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej systems as well as the Ganges tributaries. India cannot guarantee fixed cross-border flows over the long run when an upstream power can alter river flows, timing or sediment regimes through mega-projects. Therefore, joint mechanisms may be needed for adjusting water allocations according to verified upstream inflows from Tibet.

The new India-Bangladesh and India-Pakistan treaties should extend beyond surface water to groundwater resources, which, like rivers, cross political borders. The groundwater dimension has long been neglected on the subcontinent. Excessive pumping in the upstream and downstream basins of transboundary rivers is depleting shared aquifers and causing groundwater contamination and salinity. Such problems cannot be solved by allocating river waters alone.

A South Asian water-for-peace framework should thus include joint groundwater monitoring, extraction limits, shared aquifer mapping and real-time data exchange. In divided Punjab, India and Pakistan could cooperate on monitoring transboundary aquifers and preventing unsustainable extraction. In the Bengal Basin, India and Bangladesh could combine surface-water cooperation with groundwater management, arsenic mitigation and protection against saltwater intrusion into coastal areas.

More fundamentally, water security could become part of regional security architecture only if Indian policymakers recognise the central importance of linking predictable water-sharing to verifiable good-neighbourly conduct. To make water security and national security mutually reinforcing, New Delhi must view a bilateral water agreement not just as a resource-sharing mechanism but also as a security instrument and a stake in upholding peace.

India must bring water and geopolitics into the same bargain, thus making each a reason to preserve the other. If Pakistan and Bangladesh want India to do what China refuses—agree to long-term sharing of river waters—they must at least accept verifiable commitments to peace under new water-for-peace arrangements. In fact, China’s refusal to enter water-sharing arrangements with any downstream neighbour makes a reciprocal model for India both more necessary and more challenging.

Water should become a peace dividend, not an unconditional entitlement. Instead of water being a casualty of geopolitical conflict, it must become a key incentive that sustains peace itself, transforming shared water vulnerability into shared strategic interest.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of two award-winning books on water: Water, Peace, and War; and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

In divided Bangladesh, election delivers power, not stability

Posted on February 17, 2026 by Chellaney

Without order and growth, the country risks sliding into Islamist majoritarianism

Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Tarique Rahman, left, and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman. (Source photos by Ken Kobayashi and Reuters)

Brahma Chellaney

Nikkei Asia

After 18 months of turmoil, lawlessness and Islamist violence, Bangladesh’s national election has produced a government with a commanding parliamentary supermajority. On paper, that should be a recipe for stability. In practice, it may instead entrench a new and potentially more dangerous form of instability.

The central question is no longer who holds power in Bangladesh, but whether the world’s most densely-populated large country can still function as an inclusive, rules-based state at all.

Bangladesh stands today at a perilous crossroads. Without political reconciliation and economic revival, it risks sliding toward the kind of Islamist dysfunction that has long plagued Pakistan, the country from which it seceded in a bloody war of liberation in 1971.

For half a century, Bangladesh’s politics has been dominated by two dynastic forces: the Awami League, established by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s charismatic founding leader who was killed in a 1975 army coup, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), launched in 1978 by military ruler Ziaur Rahman, whose son Tarique Rahman now heads the new government. These parties have alternated between power and persecution, each using the state against the other.

Sheikh Hasina, Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, once symbolized democratic resilience and kept both the military and Islamist militancy in check. But her increasingly undemocratic rule triggered a violent, student-led, Islamist-backed uprising in 2024 that forced her into exile after she lost the military’s support. What followed was not a democratic transition but a dangerous vacuum.

The interim regime led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus presided over widespread repression, institutional purges and a resurgence of Islamist vigilantism. Armed mobs attacked minorities with impunity, journalists were silenced and thousands were imprisoned. Even more alarmingly, the regime rehabilitated extremist groups previously linked to terrorism, including releasing convicted terrorists, and allowed radical Islamists to enter the political mainstream.

The result is that Bangladesh now risks shifting from a secular-authoritarian order to an Islamist-majoritarian one.

Against that backdrop, this month’s election was less a democratic reset than a managed transition. The secular Awami League, historically the country’s largest political force, was arbitrarily outlawed last year and thousands of its members remain in jail without trial. As much as 30% to 40% of the electorate was effectively excluded from the election.

In that vacuum, the BNP emerged as the dominant electoral force. But it faced a new challenger in its former ally Jamaat-e-Islami, a hardline Islamist party. The election thus pitted an Islamist-leaning bloc against a coalition led by a hardline Islamist group, rather than offering a pluralistic national choice. Unsurprisingly, many Awami League supporters boycotted the vote and turnout fell sharply in minority-heavy constituencies, where intimidation and violence created a climate of fear.

The result is a 300-member parliament that may be numerically stable but socially brittle. It includes just seven women and only four members from religious and ethnic minority communities, though these groups make up about 10% of the population.

Even before the new government settles in, its legitimacy is already under challenge.

For years, the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami accused the Awami League of rigging elections. Now, with the banned Awami League gone, the accusers have turned on each other. Jamaat — once the BNP’s indispensable ally, providing street muscle — has charged the BNP with rigging the the latest election, alleging widespread ballot fraud and irregularities.

This rupture reflects a deeper contest over who represents the spirit of the 2024 uprising, which Islamist groups helped organize and sustain. If the Islamist-led opposition believes it has been cheated of its “revolution,” Bangladesh may soon see renewed unrest.

Compounding this fragility is the near collapse of judicial credibility. Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has repeatedly reinterpreted the constitution to suit those in power, legitimizing coups, overturning its own precedents and even invoking a “revolutionary mandate” to justify continuance of an unelected interim regime.

In such a system, law becomes an instrument of power rather than a constraint on it. This is hardly a foundation for stability or investor confidence.

The new government, in fact, inherits an economy in distress. Growth has slowed sharply, inflation has surged, investor confidence has collapsed and foreign debt has risen. The BNP has indicated it will continue with the IMF bailout package negotiated by the interim regime, but austerity, subsidy cuts and banking reforms will impose real social costs, especially on a restless youth population.

The government must restore macroeconomic stability while delivering visible improvements in jobs and governance. Failure on either front could quickly translate into renewed street anger.

Bangladesh’s trajectory will have consequences beyond its borders. For India, instability raises immediate security concerns, including the risk of militant infiltration across a porous border. Bangladesh’s direction will also shape the regional balance between China, a major infrastructure investor, and Western partners seeking greater market access.

A parliamentary supermajority gives the BNP-led government enormous formal power. But political dominance is not legitimacy. Bangladesh’s cycles of instability have historically been driven not by weak governments but by exclusive ones — regimes that rule for one party while suppressing rival political forces. This election risks reproducing that pattern in a new ideological form.

True stability will require something Bangladesh has rarely sustained: national reconciliation. Countries emerging from deep trauma, from Rwanda to South Africa, recognized that durable peace depends on bringing former adversaries into a shared political framework. Bangladesh will need to do the same, to create a pathway for the Awami League and its supporters to reenter politics, protect minorities and dissenting voices, restore judicial independence and revive civil society.

Otherwise, the country risks replacing one form of autocracy with another: trading secular illiberalism for majoritarian Islamism, and stability for a cycle of confrontation and lawlessness.

The election has produced a government, but not a political settlement. Unless the new leadership uses its supermajority to widen inclusion, rebuild institutions and rein in extremist forces, the promise of stability and economic revival will remain elusive. The real test of this election will not be whether it delivered power, but whether it can deliver peace.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground,” which won the Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

Trump’s Travel Bans Threaten US National Security

Posted on January 23, 2026 by Chellaney

For all Donald Trump’s talk about security, he proves far more interested in lining his own pockets. No country that hosts a major Trump-branded property or strikes a high-profile business deal with a member of Trump’s inner circle – including some with well-documented ties to global terrorism – faces US travel restrictions.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

Last month, US President Donald Trump banned or severely restricted nationals of 20 additional countries from entering the United States, expanding the entry restrictions he put in place in June, supposedly to mitigate “national security and public safety threats.” But a cursory glance at the list of targeted countries makes clear that this is just another case of ethnonationalist politics dressed up as an anti-terrorism measure.

Many of the countries Trump targeted in 2025 – including Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Haiti, Laos, Malawi, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – have virtually no history of exporting transnational terrorism. But a large share of them – 16 out of the 20 announced last month and 26 of the 39 targeted in 2025 – are in Africa. The obvious conclusion, especially in light of Trump’s wider agenda and rhetoric, is that racial bias is informing US policy, much as religious bias guided his first administration’s 2017 restrictions on travel and resettlement from seven Muslim-majority countries.

To be sure, US officials say their decisions reflect “demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing,” as well as criteria like visa-overstay rates and even refusal to accept US deportation flights. But these justifications are more improvised than airtight. For example, as the American Immigration Council observes, the Trump administration is using non-immigrant overstay rates to justify bans on immigrant visas.

Moreover, much like Trump’s tariffs, the criteria are being selectively applied, with some countries, such as Egypt and Kuwait, facing no new restrictions, despite high overstay rates, documented information-sharing, and vetting deficiencies. Even countries with longstanding links to global jihadism, such as Pakistan and Qatar, are being spared, despite Trump’s claim to be motivated by national-security considerations. Saudi Arabia belongs to both groups, yet it has never been targeted by Trump.

Some of these privileged countries are almost certainly dangerous. What they have in common is not that they are safe, but that they are useful. Countries like Egypt and Iraq are considered strategically indispensable. Saudi Arabia is not only a key US defense partner; it is, like Qatar, a major investor in the US – and in the investment firm of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Pakistan signed a major investment deal with World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm majority-owned by the Trump family, as part of its aggressive courtship of the US administration. It’s a strategy that never fails to pay off: No country that hosts a major Trump-branded property or has struck a high-profile business deal with a member of Trump’s inner circle faces US travel restrictions.

A telling example of this pattern is that while the Trump administration tightened restrictions on many countries, it lifted its pre-existing ban on non-immigrant visas for Turkmenistan, which has supposedly made “significant progress in improving its identity-management and information-sharing procedures.” Conspicuously, the decision came just a few weeks after the reclusive, gas-rich country agreed to cooperate with the US on energy and critical minerals, and to consider granting preferential treatment to US firms.

This lesson is clear: countries that have strong personal ties to the Trump administration or lucrative business relationships with his family and cronies receive favorable treatment. The boundary between US public office and private gain has never been so porous, with Trump’s business empire expanding rapidly since his return to the presidency.

The result is absurd. A citizen of Burkina Faso, a country with no history of threatening US security, is barred from entering the country, but a national of Bangladesh, which is beset by Islamist violence and anti-American extremism, is not. This incongruity undermines the credibility of US diplomacy and counterterrorism efforts, as it sends a dangerous message to states that sponsor or tolerate extremism: accountability is negotiable.

If Trump actually wanted to protect the US from terrorism, he would pursue a strategy based on credible intelligence and consistent standards. He would recognize that international terrorism is not confined to weak or isolated states; on the contrary, some of its most prolific enablers are regional powers. And he would demonstrate a willingness to confront US partners and adversaries alike.

Unfortunately, for all of Trump’s talk about security, he has proven far more interested in lining his own pockets. His latest travel restrictions are a case study in how the language of national security can be repurposed for coercive diplomacy and private gain.

In a sense, this was the natural evolution of the “America First” ethos. The concept was always intended to justify a transactional approach to international engagement. But during Trump’s second presidency, it has ascended to a higher level of cynicism. Now, those who fail to produce adequate offerings for Trump are punished, while those who prove themselves useful to him can act virtually with impunity – US national security be damned.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

How Pakistan’s army won over Trump — and staged a constitutional coup

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Chellaney

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has rarely escaped the grip of its powerful army. Even when not ruling outright, generals have wielded authority from the shadows, making and breaking governments, shaping foreign and security policy, and ensuring that no civilian leader ever becomes truly independent.

Now, for the first time, the military has reasserted direct control in a novel way. Instead of staging a coup d’état, it has engineered something more durable and more insidious: a constitutional coup.

Army chief Asim Munir — extolled by President Trump as “my favorite field marshal,” “a great, great guy” and “an inspiring personality” — has effectively become Pakistan’s ruler behind a civilian façade.

This has been made possible by Pakistan’s 27th constitutional amendment, which formally enshrines the military’s supremacy over all state institutions. By codifying the army’s preeminence, the recent amendment legitimizes its status as the ultimate arbiter of foreign policy, national security and even economic strategy. Civilian leaders have been reduced to little more than figureheads, their authority hollowed out by constitutional design.

In effect, Munir has achieved what Pakistan’s past military dictators never quite managed: absolute power with legal cover.

He now exercises power without responsibility, enjoying the insulation of a civilian front government while maintaining control over all the levers of state power. Meanwhile, the country’s most popular politician — Imran Khan, who was removed as prime minister in 2022 after falling out with the generals — languishes in prison, even though his supporters won the most parliamentary seats in last year’s elections.

The U.S. has watched all this with striking silence. While Trump has chanted “I love Pakistan,” Pakistan’s already frail democracy is being strangled. Rather than push back against an action widely condemned by international human rights and legal bodies, Washington has effectively acquiesced.

The International Commission of Jurists has called the amendment a “full-frontal assault on the rule of law,” while UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that it gravely undermines judicial independence and raises serious concerns about the military’s accountability. Yet Trump is openly courting Pakistan’s generals.

This marks a remarkable reversal. During his first term, Trump cut off security assistance to Pakistan for failing to sever ties with terrorist groups. He charged that the country gave the U.S. “nothing but lies and deceit” in return for billions in aid, citing how Pakistan secretly sheltered Osama bin Laden for nearly a decade until U.S. Navy SEALs killed him in 2011.

What explains Trump’s pivot from punitive isolation to warm embrace?

Pakistan invested heavily this year in a targeted Washington lobbying campaign, hiring two of Trump’s closest confidants — George Sorial of the Trump Organization and former Oval Office director Keith Schiller. Pakistan also employed effusive flattery, claims of rare-earth reserves and a lucrative cryptocurrency partnership with the Trump family-controlled firm World Liberty Financial.

In June, Trump hosted Munir for a private White House luncheon — the first time a U.S. president had welcomed a Pakistani army chief who was not the country’s official leader. The symbolism was unmistakable: Washington was prepared to work directly with Pakistan’s real power center.

Emboldened, Munir moved to secure his dominance. Using a pliable government that he helped install, he maneuvered himself into the rank of field marshal — the first such promotion in almost six decades. Then came the constitutional amendment that elevated him to Pakistan’s first-ever “chief of defense forces,” giving him command over the nuclear arsenal, army, air force and navy. The amendment also hands him lifelong immunity from prosecution and an additional five years in office.

Perhaps most extraordinarily, it specifies that any general elevated to field marshal is a “national hero” who “shall retain his rank, privileges, and remain in uniform for life.” This is constitutionalized militarism — the formalization of a praetorian state.

Pakistan, a nation of 250 million, has often been compared to a one-party system akin to its longtime patron, China. But the analogy is imperfect. China’s People’s Liberation Army is an arm of the ruling Communist Party; Pakistan’s army is itself the ruling institution. It controls the state, not the other way around.

With the amendment, Pakistan has taken a decisive step: The military no longer needs to manipulate politics from the shadows. It can now dictate the direction of the government, economy and society openly, with constitutional legitimacy.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif warned in 2020 that the army was evolving from a “state within a state” into a “state above the state.” That prophecy has now come true. And as Sharif observed, this dominance is the “root cause” of Pakistan’s dysfunction — sustaining a violence-prone state that nurtures terrorist groups while suppressing democratic forces.

What has changed is not Pakistan’s military but Washington’s willingness to look away. By offering tacit approval, the U.S. risks being complicit in cementing a constitutional dictatorship in an unstable, nuclear-armed nation. The cost of that complicity will not be borne by Pakistan alone.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Trump’s Dangerous Liaison With Pakistan

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Chellaney

With a combination of flattery, symbolic gestures, and promises of personal enrichment, Pakistan seems to have cracked the code for dealing with US President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the United States has turned its back on India – and on a strategic partnership that is crucial for countering China.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

Donald Trump’s first social-media post of 2018, during his initial presidential term, highlighted his mounting frustration with Pakistan. Over the preceding 15 years, he lamented, the United States had “foolishly” handed the country more than $33 billion in aid, and gotten “nothing but lies and deceit” in return. He subsequently suspended security assistance to Pakistan over its support for terrorists, including its concealment of Osama bin Laden for almost a decade after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Today, Pakistan continues to provide safe haven, as well as military and intelligence aid, to terrorist groups. It also remains a close ally of China – which, despite reaching a trade truce with the Trump administration earlier this month, remains America’s leading rival. Yet, far from admonishing Pakistan, the US is now eagerly pursuing closer ties with it.

Trump administration officials have justified this reversal by casting Pakistan as a valuable partner in efforts to contain Iran and rein in terrorist groups that could threaten US interests in the region. But Pakistan has proved time and again that it is not a reliable security partner, and there is no reason to think this has changed. The real explanation for Trump’s embrace of Pakistan probably lies in the convergence of his personal financial interests and his transactional approach to foreign policy.

Consider the controversial investment deal Pakistan signed in April with World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm majority-owned by the Trump family. The firm’s CEO, Zach Witkoff – son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East – leads a company in which both the Trumps and the Witkoff family are the principal beneficiaries. The deal has alarmed ethics watchdogs and former US officials, who warn that Trump’s business entanglements are bleeding into US foreign policy (Trump insists that conflict-of-interest rules do not apply to him). It has also reinforced a regional perception that personal enrichment is Trump’s top foreign-policy priority, further undermining US credibility.

The romance continued in July, when the US and Pakistan announced that they had reached a trade agreement. While the details have not been fully disclosed, Pakistan has celebrated the reduction in US tariffs and the prospect of increased US investment. Pakistani officials declared that the deal “marks the beginning of a new era of economic collaboration especially in energy, mines and minerals, IT, cryptocurrency, and other sectors.”

Since then, Pakistan has sought to build an image as a potential supplier of critical minerals that could help the US reduce its dependence on China’s near-monopoly over rare earths. In September, its military-linked Frontier Works Organization signed a $500 million agreement with the private firm US Strategic Metals (USSM) to develop critical-mineral deposits in Pakistan.

For Pakistan, this was not so much a business deal as a diplomatic coup. When Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan’s powerful military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, subsequently met with Trump in the Oval Office, they presented him with a polished wooden box containing mineral samples. Soon after, Pakistan dispatched a token shipment of enriched rare earths and other critical minerals to the US – a largely symbolic gesture meant to seal the new alignment.

But it is far from clear that Pakistan will be able to deliver meaningful quantities of rare earths to the US. The country’s oft-repeated assertion that it possesses $6-8 trillion in mineral wealth is based on unverified estimates, and most of the claimed reserves lie in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, where active insurgencies make large-scale extraction highly risky. As one analyst quipped, “Pakistan has long promised gold and delivered gravel.”

Trump is particularly susceptible to such grand promises, especially when they are accompanied by personal flattery. It is no accident that Pakistan’s leaders have lavished Trump with over-the-top praise, even nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize he so covets. For a president whose diplomacy often hinges on personal rapport, such gestures can have an outsize impact. It seems that Pakistan has cracked the Trump code. Emboldened, Pakistan’s leaders have pushed through a constitutional amendment that elevates the army chief – whom Trump extols as his “favorite field marshal” – to the position of de facto ruler, reducing the elected government to little more than a civilian façade.

For India, the Trump administration’s embrace of Pakistan feels like betrayal. The country has spent over two decades cultivating a strategic partnership with the US, grounded in shared democratic values and a mutual desire to counter China. Now, the US is actively working against India’s diplomatic and security interests.

The problem extends beyond Trump’s deal-making with Pakistan. Last May, after a three-day military clash between India and Pakistan ended in a ceasefire, Trump publicly took credit for stopping the fighting. India flatly denied the claim, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that he had never even spoken to Trump during the conflict. But Trump stuck to his story, crediting his own trade threats, rather than India’s targeted airstrikes, for the truce.

This undermined Modi’s standing at home and reinforced the view in India that the US cannot be trusted. Modi’s refusal to endorse Trump’s bid for a Nobel Peace Prize deepened the rift. Soon, the spat spiraled into a trade war, with Trump imposing a 25% tariff – later raised to 50% – on imports from India, supposedly over India’s own trade barriers and continued purchases of Russian oil.

In India’s view, the tariffs amounted to political retribution – an extension of the diplomatic feud over Pakistan. After all, the European Union, Japan, and Turkey have not faced secondary US sanctions over their large Russian energy purchases, and pro-Trump Hungary, which gets some 90% of its energy from Russia, received an explicit sanctions exemption from his administration.

For India, these are more than diplomatic setbacks. They threaten to unravel a hard-won strategic partnership, which successive US administrations have recognized as critical to Indo-Pacific security. By letting Pakistan win him over with flattery, symbolic gestures, and the promise of personal enrichment, Trump is putting the entire region at risk, much like America’s Cold War leaders did with their cynical policies toward South Asia.

India’s Kabul return may recast global Taliban policy

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Chellaney

New Delhi’s embassy reopening reflects a realist approach to regional relations

Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi (center) leaves after attending a news conference at the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi on Oct. 12. The reopening of India's embassy in Kabul followed Muttaqi’s recent visit to India's capital. — Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi (center) leaves after attending a news conference at the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi on Oct. 12. The reopening of India’s embassy in Kabul followed Muttaqi’s recent visit to India’s capital. | AFP-JIJI

By Brahma Chellaney, Contributing Writer, The Japan Times

By reopening its embassy in Kabul on Oct. 21, India has chosen engagement over isolation — a move that could prompt other major democracies, from Japan to the United States, to follow suit.

The decision restores direct communication with the Taliban rulers at a time when Pakistan’s airstrikes last month triggered several days of border conflict with Afghanistan, sharply worsening bilateral relations. India’s move also signals a readiness to deal with those in power — however unpalatable — to safeguard its long-term interests in Afghanistan and beyond.

The reopening followed Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s recent visit to India, enabled by a special United Nations sanctions exemption. While marking a cautious reset in India-Taliban relations, the visit indicated a shift in Afghanistan’s regional power dynamics as New Delhi and Kabul seek to counterbalance the influence of China and Pakistan.

The Taliban, meanwhile, are resisting U.S. President Donald Trump’s pressure to let America reclaim Bagram Airbase, which served as the nerve center of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan. On Sept. 20, Trump warned that “bad things” would happen to Afghanistan if it did not return control of Bagram to the United States.

For New Delhi, the decision reflects a hard-nosed recognition of reality: The Taliban are in control and ignoring them would mean ceding ground to geopolitical rivals.

For more than three years, India maintained only a minimal presence in Afghanistan, limiting itself to humanitarian aid and discreet contacts through intermediaries. The cautious stance stemmed from India’s deep discomfort with the Taliban’s ideology and their historic ties to anti-India, Pakistan-backed terrorist groups. Yet as the regional landscape shifts, pragmatism is overtaking principle.

The embassy reopening suggests that the Taliban have provided credible assurances — both on the security of Indian personnel and on ensuring that Afghan territory will not be used by groups hostile to India. These guarantees, if honored, would mark a sharp break from the 1990s when the Taliban regime hosted Pakistani terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Some skepticism is warranted. Critics argue that reopening the embassy lends de facto legitimacy to a regime that continues to suppress women’s rights and exclude minorities from governance. India has carefully avoided formally recognizing the Taliban regime. Yet, in practice, reopening the embassy implies a gradual normalization of relations.

India’s engagement rests less on trust than on calculation: It is safer to have a diplomatic foothold than to operate from the sidelines. For New Delhi, the calculus is strategic rather than moral: Regaining influence in Afghanistan is essential to India’s security and to balancing Pakistani and Chinese leverage.

India has long been among Afghanistan’s leading development partners. It has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure, education and health projects — from the Salma Dam and the Afghan Parliament building to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul. These investments won India enduring goodwill among Afghans and embodied its soft-power approach to regional influence.

The Taliban’s return in 2021 froze most projects and raised fears that India’s hard-won gains would erode. The return of Indian diplomats will help safeguard these assets and could revive stalled initiatives, especially in sectors that benefit ordinary Afghans rather than the Taliban leadership.

For India, economic engagement is also a means to reassert its strategic footprint. Trade and connectivity form the backbone of this renewed outreach. New Delhi is keen to expand the use of Iran’s Chabahar Port — a vital alternative to the China-run Gwadar Port in Pakistan — for trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Facing isolation and sanctions, the Taliban have sought Indian participation in mining and infrastructure projects. Afghanistan’s vast untapped reserves of lithium, copper and rare earths could eventually become a new arena for cooperation, though the political risk remains high.

The timing is significant. The sharp deterioration in Afghanistan-Pakistan ties opened a window for India to reengage. The India-Taliban rapprochement represents a major setback for Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence agency spent over 25 years nurturing the Taliban as a strategic asset.

More broadly, India’s approach reflects a shift toward issue-based realism in its neighborhood policy. Across South Asia, New Delhi has been recalibrating its diplomacy — engaging whoever holds power, including the Islamist-leaning regimes in Bangladesh and the Maldives and Myanmar’s military junta. In Afghanistan, India will have to walk a fine line: supporting the rights and aspirations of the Afghan people while engaging the Taliban to ensure the country does not again become a sanctuary for anti-India terrorism.

That balancing act is complicated by the international community’s divided stance. While some countries — such as China, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan — have accredited ambassadors to the Taliban regime, others, especially in the West, remain unwilling to go beyond limited humanitarian engagement.

The Trump administration, however, has sent high-level officials to Kabul for meetings with the Taliban, signaling a shift toward more direct engagement on certain issues. U.S. officials like Special Envoy for Hostage Response Adam Boehler discussed possible economic arrangements, security cooperation and even an American presence at Bagram.

Like Washington’s pragmatic engagement with the Taliban, India’s return to Kabul represents a quiet but consequential recalibration. It reflects a recognition that in a volatile region, diplomatic absence is a luxury no major power can afford. Engagement gives India leverage, intelligence and access — tools indispensable for managing the crosscurrents of regional security.

India’s action could now lead other important players to also choose realism over principle, tacitly acknowledging that effective diplomacy often requires engaging regimes as they are, not as one wishes them to be. Strategic absence in Afghanistan is no longer a viable option.

Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Bangladesh Is a South Asian Time Bomb

Posted on August 5, 2025 by Chellaney

Many hoped that the overthrow of long-time leader Sheikh Hasina last year would open the way for Bangladesh to transition to democracy after an authoritarian lurch under the country’s “iron lady.” Instead, the country has faced proliferating human-rights abuses, intensifying repression, and widespread Islamist violence.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

In the year since the violent, military-backed overthrow of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government, Bangladesh has descended into chaos. The economy is reeling, radical Islamist forces are gaining ground, young people are becoming increasingly radicalized, lawlessness is taking hold, and religious and ethnic minorities are under siege. The country’s future has never looked bleaker.

Many had hoped that Hasina’s ouster would open the way for Bangladesh to transition to democracy following an authoritarian lurch under the “iron lady.” After all, they reasoned, it was a student-led uprising that toppled her regime. But this narrative downplayed the decisive role of the powerful military, which had long chafed under Hasina’s attempts to curb its influence and ultimately forced her into exile in India. Similarly, Islamist forces – who provided much of the muscle behind the student protests – viewed her overthrow as an opportunity to end the marginalization they faced under her secular rule.

The illusory promise of Hasina’s overthrow was further enhanced by the installation of Muhammad Yunus – the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate celebrated as a savior of the poor for pioneering microcredit through his Grameen Bank – as the nominal head of the interim government. But, again, the headline misrepresents reality.

In fact, the Nobel Committee’s choice was less about the Grameen Bank’s actual impact than it was about geopolitical signaling. In presenting the award, the Committee chair invoked Yunus as a symbolic bridge between Islam and the West, expressing hope that his selection would counter the “widespread tendency to demonize Islam” that had taken hold in the West after the US terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It is no coincidence that former US President Bill Clinton had lobbied for Yunus.

As the leader of Bangladesh’s interim government, Yunus has promised sweeping reforms and democratic elections. But elections have been repeatedly postponed. Meanwhile, despite lacking constitutional legitimacy, the interim government has launched sweeping purges of independent institutions, ousting the chief justice and the next five most-senior Supreme Court justices, and outlawing Hasina’s Awami League, the country’s oldest and largest political party, which led Bangladesh to independence.

The government has also presided over proliferating human-rights abuses and intensifying repression. Those identified as Hasina’s supporters – including lawyers, academics, journalists, artists, and opposition figures – are being jailed in droves, with thousands reportedly detained since February. International media watchdogs have sounded the alarm over escalating attacks on journalists, many of whom are charged with bogus crimes, from murder to abduction. Reports of extrajudicial killings and torture in custody have become commonplace.

But perhaps the most alarming development is the rehabilitation of Islamist extremists. The military-mullah regime that Yunus nominally leads has reversed bans on jihadist groups previously linked to terrorism, and has freed notorious Islamist leaders. Several extremists now occupy ministerial or other government posts, and mobs affiliated with them openly terrorize perceived opponents.

Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, tribal communities, and members of Islamic sects that Islamists consider heretical are being attacked with impunity. Women dressed “immodestly” face public shaming and assault. A culture of Taliban-style moral policing is rapidly taking root. The situation has gotten so bad that even the pro-regime Bangladesh Nationalist Party, long the Awami League’s arch-rival, has decried the erosion of basic freedoms, the “madness that erupted in the name of religion,” and the “terrifying violence” on the streets.

A collapsing economy will only exacerbate these problems. GDP growth has tumbled, foreign debt has ballooned, and inflation has soared to a 12-year high. With investor confidence plummeting, the stock market has fallen to its lowest level in almost five years. Job losses and declining living standards create fertile ground for continued radicalization and social unrest.

Bangladesh once embodied the promise of secular democracy in a Muslim-majority country. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, it was making impressive progress on economic development and social stability. But now it risks slipping into the kind of military-sanctioned dysfunction that has long plagued Pakistan, the country it fought so hard to break away from.

The consequences will reverberate across the region. India, which borders Bangladesh on three sides and is home to millions of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants, will be hit particularly hard. Under Hasina, Bangladesh was one of India’s closest partners, especially on counterterrorism and regional connectivity. Her departure thus dealt a blow to India’s strategic interests. India’s government is now scrambling to manage the fallout, such as by stepping up border security to prevent infiltration by extremists.

Whereas India immediately recognized the risks posed by Hasina’s overthrow, the United States endorsed the regime change. But if Bangladesh continues on its current trajectory, it will significantly complicate US-led efforts to ensure a free, open, prosperous, and stable Indo-Pacific. Some have warned that Bangladesh could become another global flashpoint that draws in even faraway countries.

If the international community is serious about defending democratic values, religious freedom, and regional stability, it can no longer turn a blind eye to Bangladesh’s downward spiral.

Lessons from India-Pakistan war: Were China’s arms overrated?

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Chellaney

China’s exported arsenal faced a real-world test in South Asia and may have fallen short

A Chinese J-10B fighter jet is put on display at the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, China, in October 2016. The short May conflict between India and Pakistan became a live trial for Chinese arms, exposing vulnerabilities in its fighter aircraft and air defense systems. | BLOOMBERG

By Brahma Chellaney
The Japan Times

The brief military conflict between India and Pakistan from May 7 to May 10 marked a turning point in South Asian security dynamics.

This was not a conventional border conflict, but a high-tech showdown featuring drones, cruise and ballistic missiles and long-range air defenses. While India and Pakistan were the primary belligerents, a third power — China — played a pivotal, if indirect, role.

Beijing’s involvement via the supply of advanced weapon systems and real-time satellite reconnaissance data to Pakistan turned the engagement into a revealing trial run for Chinese arms in a live combat setting.

This conflict offered the first real-world glimpse into how China’s premier military technologies perform under fire. The implications extend far beyond South Asia — to Taiwan, the East and South China Seas and global arms markets. The operational lessons drawn from this brief war matter not just for India and Pakistan, but for military planners from Tokyo to Washington.

Scrutinizing Chinese systems

Pakistan relied heavily on Chinese military hardware. Most notably, it deployed the J-10C “Vigorous Dragon” fighter jets armed with PL-15E air-to-air missiles and HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missile systems with a 200-kilometer engagement envelope. These platforms were tested in actual combat for the first time. Chinese satellite reconnaissance reportedly supported Pakistani targeting, with Beijing even re-tasking satellites to enhance coverage over Indian military zones.

Yet despite the apparent sophistication of Pakistan’s imported arsenal, the results were far from decisive. The J-10Cs launched multiple PL-15E missiles at Indian targets, but there is no independent verification of successful hits. India’s integrated air defenses withstood the onslaught, gaining air superiority.

Indeed, by the conflict’s end, Indian airstrikes had crippled major Pakistani air bases — including Nur Khan and Bholari — without suffering any confirmed retaliatory damage. Nur Khan, near Pakistan’s nuclear command and army headquarters, was particularly symbolic. Its targeting by Indian cruise missiles signaled a calibrated message: Even high-value, well-defended assets are not beyond reach.

Disproportionate impact

While both sides employed drones and missiles, the quality of strikes proved more decisive than the quantity. Pakistan reportedly launched 300 to 400 drones in a single night, yet satellite imagery showed little damage on Indian soil. India, by contrast, relied on precision standoff weapons — especially the supersonic BrahMos cruise missile, codeveloped with Russia — which successfully hit high-value targets in Pakistan with minimal risk to Indian military personnel.

The BrahMos missile, already exported by India, emerged as the standout performer of the conflict. It demonstrated both survivability and pinpoint accuracy in a contested airspace, validating India’s investment in standoff precision platforms. These are designed to destroy critical infrastructure without needing to cross the enemy’s border.

India’s shift toward such systems reflects a broader strategic change: moving from reactive defense to a more assertive doctrine that punishes Pakistan’s transborder terrorism with calibrated strikes. This could have far-reaching implications for deterrence on the Indian subcontinent.

Global strategic significance

There are three major reasons why this short conflict merits serious international attention.

First, it offers a preview of what a future Chinese military operation might look like. Beijing has made no secret of its ambitions toward Taiwan and any effort to seize or blockade the self-governing island would likely rely on systems similar to those used by Pakistan. That makes the observed performance of the J-10C, PL-15E and HQ-9 systems particularly relevant to U.S. and allied military planners.

Second, in the South China Sea, China has grown increasingly aggressive, harassing Philippine and Vietnamese vessels with ramming, water cannons and even bladed weapons. If China were to escalate in this region, the same air and missile systems could come into play. The India-Pakistan conflict thus provides critical insight into their combat performance and vulnerabilities.

Third, in the Himalayas, India and China remain locked in a military standoff that was triggered in 2020 by Chinese encroachments on Indian borderlands. Despite diplomatic moves to ease tensions, both countries continue to mass troops and weaponry along their disputed frontier. The combat data generated from the conflict with Pakistan offers India an invaluable edge in anticipating Chinese capabilities and countermeasures.

Propaganda vs. reality

Predictably, the information war ran parallel to the actual conflict. Pakistan claimed to have shot down at least five Indian fighter jets on the first day. However, no wreckage has been presented and satellite imagery has not corroborated the claim. The Indian military dismissed the allegation, stating that all its pilots returned safely.

On the Indian side, Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai stated that some Pakistani aircraft were downed over Pakistan’s own territory. This claim, while more plausible given the precision of India’s strikes, similarly lacks independent verification.

What is evident, however, is the absence of traditional dogfights between rival warplanes. All air combat appears to have occurred beyond visual range, with neither side’s fighter jets crossing international borders. This reflects the international evolution in the nature of air warfare, emphasizing sensors, missiles and electronic warfare over maneuverability and pilot skill.

Electronic warfare and drones

Both sides deployed drones extensively, but with varying degrees of effectiveness. India primarily used small drones for ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), whereas Pakistan fielded swarms of drones for both reconnaissance and attack. However, Pakistan’s boast of neutralizing 85% of Indian drones seems overstated. Conversely, India’s robust electronic warfare systems, along with its multilayered air defenses, effectively intercepted or deflected most Pakistani projectiles, including a ballistic missile aimed at New Delhi.

Interestingly, China’s CM-401 missile — a hypersonic anti-ship missile launched in this conflict from upgraded JF-17 jets — was reportedly used by Pakistan against land targets. Yet there was no visible or confirmed impact, raising questions about the missile’s versatility outside its intended maritime role.

The geopolitical signaling

The tide of battle turned decisively after the explosions from the May 10 Indian strike on Nur Khan airbase triggered American alarm, especially given that Pakistani nuclear assets are located near this airbase. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio intervened, urging Pakistan’s military leadership to de-escalate. Within hours, Pakistan’s director-general of military operations contacted his Indian counterpart to propose an immediate ceasefire, which India accepted.

This sequence underscores two points. First, Indian strikes achieved their objective of imposing costs without triggering an all-out war. Second, India effectively pierced the perceived immunity conferred by Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent — an umbrella under which Pakistan has long sponsored cross-border terrorism with relative impunity.

Final takeaways

For China, the conflict served as a valuable though sobering test of its exported weaponry. While some systems functioned adequately, others like the HQ-9 air defense system showed critical vulnerabilities when deployed without integrated support. Beijing will likely revise and upgrade these platforms based on the feedback from its client-state.

For India, the conflict validated its investment in precision strike capabilities and highlighted the importance of indigenous platforms like the BrahMos. It also signaled a new doctrinal posture — proactive, punitive and technologically assertive.

For the world, this short conflict provided a rare, real-world laboratory to observe how modern missile and drone warfare unfolds between technologically matched rivals. In an era of strategic ambiguity and hybrid threats, those lessons are not just instructive; they are indispensable.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Trump just undermined America’s strategic partnership with India

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Chellaney

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

Trump just undermined America’s strategic partnership with India

On May 7, India launched a calibrated military campaign against Pakistan in response to a brutal terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir. Islamist gunmen had deliberately targeted Hindu tourists, exemplifying the persistent cross-border terrorism that India has long endured.

Yet few anticipated that the decisive external actor to intervene, President Trump, would seek not to de-escalate tensions impartially, but to tilt the scales in favor of the state sponsor of terror.

Pakistan’s military has enabled terrorist groups to operate from its soil for decades. Its terrorist proxies have carried out attacks in India with the support — tacit or overt — of the Pakistani army, which has ruled the country directly or indirectly since its founding in 1947.

But this time, when India hit back with precision and restraint, it wasn’t Pakistan that reversed the tide of battle. It was Washington.

The Trump administration stepped in at a pivotal moment, using coercive leverage to compel India to cease its operation prematurely. In doing so, Trump not only spared Pakistan the consequences of its actions but also damaged the foundation of U.S.-India strategic trust.

Trump has publicly boasted about his role. From Riyadh to Doha during his Middle East tour, he declared he had “brokered a historic ceasefire” between India and Pakistan. But behind that triumphant spin lies a less savory truth: the U.S. intervention was not about peace — it was about shielding a longtime “major non-NATO ally” from the fallout of its proxy warfare.

The Indian campaign lasted just three days, one of the shortest modern military operations, yet it achieved notable success. Indian forces degraded Pakistan’s air defenses and struck key air bases. In a display of technological prowess, both nations relied heavily on drones and precision missiles. But while Pakistan launched more projectiles, it failed to inflict meaningful damage on any Indian military installation.

India’s turning point came on the morning of May 10, when its military hit major Pakistani air bases, including Nur Khan — located near the army headquarters, the prime minister’s office and Pakistan’s nuclear command. At this point, India had seized the battlefield initiative.

Yet, just hours later, a ceasefire was accepted — under direct U.S. pressure, with Trump announcing it even before India or Pakistan. The ceasefire took effect at 17:00 Indian Standard Time that same day.

Trump later revealed that he had threatened trade sanctions to halt India’s advance. “If you don’t stop, we are not going to do any trade,” he said during a White House press conference. He reiterated in Saudi Arabia, “I used trade to a large extent to do it.”

If true, the U.S. leveraged economic blackmail — not diplomacy — to protect a state that exports terrorism. That raises a chilling question: If Washington can use trade threats to dictate India’s conduct in a military crisis, what’s to stop it from weaponizing defense supply chains during the next one?

India has steadily increased purchases of U.S. military hardware. But this episode confirmed India’s greatest fear: in a real conflict, these systems could become liabilities if Washington turns off the tap. No country’s national security should hinge on platforms dependent on another power’s political whims.

Two days into India’s military campaign, the International Monetary Fund — under strong American influence — approved a $2.4 billion bailout for Pakistan, offering a financial lifeline to a country teetering on the brink of default. The timing of the bailout was telling, rewarding the most persistent terror sponsor in South Asia even as its proxies triggered a military crisis.

The bailout signaled to the world that you can export jihadist terror and still enjoy Western protection — if you’re geopolitically useful enough.

In fact, Trump has shown an unsettling willingness to engage with actors whom most nations deem beyond the pale. On May 14, he met with Syria’s self-declared president Ahmad al Sharaa — better known as Abu Mohammad al Jolani, a U.S.- and U.N.-designated terrorist and a former leader of Syria’s al Qaeda affiliate.

Meanwhile, Trump has turned his sights toward Kashmir as a geopolitical bargaining chip. While remaining conspicuously silent on Pakistan’s role in exporting terrorism, he has proposed to mediate the Kashmir dispute, saying that both India and Pakistan are “great nations” that need help resolving it.

Such false equivalence — between the target of terror and its perpetrator — has justifiably infuriated both the Indian government and public. New Delhi has firmly rejected Trump’s mediation offers, underscoring that there can be no talks under the shadow of terror.

Kashmir is one of the world’s most complex territorial disputes. India controls 45 percent of the former princely state, Pakistan 35 percent and China the remaining 20 percent. Yet Trump, despite failing to resolve conflicts in Ukraine or Gaza, believes he can now “work to see if a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir.”

In reality, Trump is playing into the hands of Pakistan, which has long weaponized the Kashmir issue to justify its “war of a thousand cuts” through terrorist proxies against India.

Even after bailing out Pakistan, Trump doubled down. On May 15, he rebuked Apple CEO Tim Cook for manufacturing iPhones in India, telling him, “I don’t want you building in India.” According to Trump, a chastened Cook promised to increase production in the U.S.

This pattern of behavior highlights the jarring truth that Trump’s America is not a reliable strategic partner for India. Paradoxically, India should be thankful for this wake-up call.

The U.S. likes to portray itself as India’s natural partner in the Indo-Pacific, a region that will determine the next world order. But trust in any partnership is forged during a crisis.

Trump may have forced India to pause its military campaign — but, in doing so, he accelerated the unraveling of trust between the world’s two largest democracies. That rupture, unless healed quickly, will not be easy to mend.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Testing the limits of India’s water diplomacy

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Chellaney

2025-03-17 Indus

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) between India and Pakistan has long been hailed as a rare success in transboundary water sharing. It has stood as a beacon of cooperation between two hostile neighbors.

Under the treaty, upstream India reserved for Pakistan more than 80% of the Indus Basin waters — a remarkable act of generosity, driven by the hope of promoting subcontinental peace. Sixty-five years on, the IWT remains the world’s most munificent water-sharing arrangement.

Yet over the decades, the geopolitical reality has changed. Pakistan’s powerful military establishment — including its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency — has continued to nurture jihadist groups for use in low-intensity asymmetric warfare against India and other neighbors.

Another grim reminder came on April 22, when Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists singled out and killed 26 civilians at a Kashmir resort — the deadliest attack on Indians since the 2008 Mumbai carnage. The outrage triggered by the massacre led Prime Minister Narendra Modi to announce India would place the IWT “in abeyance” until Pakistan credibly and irreversibly ends its support for cross-border terrorism.

The message is clear: India’s water generosity has been repaid not with gratitude but with blood.

The killings followed a provocative Islamist speech by Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, who declared that Muslims are “different from Hindus in every possible way.” His rhetoric outraged India’s secular polity, which includes a 200-million-strong Muslim population.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have emboldened its reliance on terrorism, shielding its military and its proxies from full retaliation. But when Pakistan harbors and facilitates terrorists striking across its borders, it flagrantly violates the principle of peaceful coexistence — the very basis on which the IWT was built.

Treaties are created not on paper alone but on trust. And trust is precisely what Pakistan has shattered, time and again, through its unwavering commitment to transborder terrorism.

International law is unequivocal: When a treaty’s fundamental conditions collapse, or one party persistently violates it, the other party has the right to suspend or withdraw. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which codifies customary international law, permits suspension or withdrawal in cases of material breach or fundamental change of circumstances. Pakistan’s conduct meets both tests.

Yet India has not formally suspended or withdrawn from the IWT. By placing it “in abeyance” — a term neither defined in international law nor spelled out by India — New Delhi is signaling frustration without yet burning diplomatic bridges. It amounts to a strategic warning: Change your behavior or risk the treaty’s collapse.

India’s patience has been extraordinary. Despite enduring repeated Pakistan-backed terror attacks — including on Modi’s watch — India continued to honor the treaty. Modi, once an advocate of peace, even made an unannounced 2015 visit to Pakistan to court reconciliation. That overture was met with cross-border terrorist strikes orchestrated by Pakistan’s military.

After a major terrorist attack in 2016, Modi warned Pakistan that “blood and water cannot flow together.” Since then, India has signaled its growing exasperation by, among other steps, suspending some meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission and formally seeking negotiations to amend the IWT.

In Asia, India stands virtually alone in its commitment to water-sharing treaties. China, despite controlling the water-rich Tibetan Plateau — the source of most of Asia’s major rivers — refuses to negotiate a water-sharing treaty with any downstream neighbor. By contrast, India has water-sharing treaties with both its downriver neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Despite Bangladesh’s descent into jihadist violence after last year’s regime change, India recently agreed to negotiate a renewal of the 1996 Ganges water-sharing treaty, which guarantees Bangladesh quantified dry-season flows — a first in international water law. But, in contrast to the 30-year Ganges treaty, the IWT is of indefinite duration.

Clearly, the open-ended framework of the IWT — based on unconditional trust — has failed. What was once a symbol of cooperation has been weaponized for hostility, with India left to bear the burdens of the treaty, without getting any tangible benefits in return.

Importantly, India’s latest legal move does not threaten disruption of river flows to Pakistan. India lacks the hydrological infrastructure to curb downstream flows. Its storage capacity on the Indus system’s three largest rivers, reserved for Pakistan, is a mere 0.3 million acre-feet (0.37 megaliters) — negligible compared to Pakistan’s annual receipt of 168 million acre-feet of water.

Unlike Pakistan, which has used terrorism as a weapon against Indian civilians, India has committed to ensuring that any actions it takes will be responsible and measured, with full consideration of the downstream impact on water availability for Pakistan’s population.

Looking ahead, India should push for a new, conditional water-sharing framework — one that links cooperation to peace and verifiable good behavior. Any future treaty must respect the sovereignty, security and well-being of both sides.

This will be a necessary recalibration — a recognition that the old framework is no longer tenable. Peace cannot flow from terrorism and hate.

As the Indus-system rivers flow from the Himalayas into the plains, so too must diplomacy flow from the reality on the ground. The reality is that there can be no cooperation without credibility, and no treaty without trust.

Stagecraft and Statecraft

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