Pakistan & Afghanistan Security

Provides real-time monitoring and longitudinal analysis of the Af-Pak border regions. This hub focuses on cross-border militant movements, the evolution of the TTP and ISKP, and the security implications of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border dynamics.

Pakistan: Security Challenges and the Hard State Dilemma

Pakistan’s security situation has long evolved as a consequence of the complex intersection of multiple factors, including geopolitical dilemmas, internal dissension, and history. The recently suggested notion of Pakistan being a hard state—one that prioritises security over other aspects of governance and socio-economic development—is being widely debated in drawing rooms, a select few editorials and op-eds, and YouTube vlogs.

View the Report

26 February 2019 – India’s Balakot air strike

Ajay Basaria, India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan in 2019, claimed how India’s coercive diplomacy in the wake of India’s Balakot attack forced Pakistan to return Wing Commander Abhinandan whose MiG 21 was shot down by the PAF during Operation Swift Retort.

View the Report

The TTP is an Internal Problem for Pakistan

Let’s assume that Pakistan agrees with the Taliban that the TTP is an internal matter for Pakistan. Following that understanding, Pakistan has the right to strike ANY TTP camp, wherever it may be, including inside Afghanistan’s borders.

View the Report

Operation Azm-e-Istehkam (“Resolve for Stability”)

For many days, CommandEleven has held back on providing an analysis of the proposed operation, its targets and the potential pitfalls it will face because we know how Pakistan operates, and how quickly public statements are backtracked from grand operations to minor grunts of force.

View the Report

Selecting an Army Chief

Ours is not the only country in which the military has guns, but is certainly amongst those where the political power continues to flow through their barrel. If that’s what led some of our selectors go down the ladder to find an army chief who would spare their throne, it always backfired: not necessarily because of a bad choice

View the Report

Hypocrisy at its Best

The continued cliche of the famous “Strategic Depth” used to beat Pakistan with was a ridiculous concept, thrown up by a brigadier at the National Defense University (NDU), then known as the NDC, was purely an academic discussion, never a State Policy.

View the Report

Challenges and Opportunities

Since the Chinese seem to have the Indians in a bind in Ladakh, it might be good idea to find out how they intended to play it out. In view of our higher than Himalaya ties, it should not be too difficult a proposition. In fact we should assume that the two countries had synchronised their plans.

View the Report

US Failures in Afghanistan

Let’s recall our memories of a speech of a senior Pak Army official that he delivered as the chief guest at a military educational institution in Rawalpindi on India’s Republic Day in 2014, asserting that India poses no greater threat to Pakistan but extremism/terrorism does.

View the Report