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Praveen Swami

Praveen Swami

Indian Express

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Deepening insecurity has led the world into a mindless arms race. Don’t forget past wars

Where arms races begin, wars often follow. Leaders of the US, Russia, and China could do worse than read the story of the tragic fall of Athens.

yesterday 10

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Praveen Swami

29 Maoists killed in Kanker ambush—What India must do to prevent their replacement

The Maoist insurgency has been wiped out from Telangana and seems in terminal decline across India. But in the Adivasi territories of Dandakaryana, it...

21.04.2024 20

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Praveen Swami

BJP isn’t fielding candidates in Kashmir—Partition continues to haunt its politics

Lieutenant-colonel Khan’s marginality to today’s Hindu-nationalist pantheon helps us understand a larger story unfolding in Jammu and Kashmir: The...

17.04.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

BJP isn’t fielding candidates in J&K—Partition continues to haunt Kashmir’s politics

Lieutenant-colonel Khan’s marginality to today’s Hindu-nationalist pantheon helps us understand a larger story unfolding in Jammu and Kashmir: The...

17.04.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Story of Israel-Iran friendship shows the latest conflict is neither inevitable nor permanent

The story teaches us what happens when ideology and hubris overtake calm, rational decision-making based on national interests.

15.04.2024 20

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Praveen Swami

India, Sri Lanka paid heavy price for Katchatheevu claims. Tiny island not worth obsessing over

India’s strategic interests don’t lie in securing control of a tiny island. Instead, the real challenge India faces is containing China’s...

03.04.2024 7

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Praveen Swami

Who led Islamic State terrorists to Moscow? Hitler, Stalin, CIA all helped pave the road

After Islamic State-linked terrorists slaughtered over a hundred people at Moscow’s Crocus Theatre last week, Putin alleged that the West had pulled...

31.03.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Moscow attack should raise alarm in India. Central Asian Jihadi networks inspire crime here

The strike in Moscow has allowed IS to position itself as the inheritor of the transnational jihadist movement once represented by organisations like...

24.03.2024 30

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Praveen Swami

MV Ruen hijacking had unmissable message—naval patrolling is a costly band-aid, not solution

Like it has done on the high seas, India needs to show leadership on dry land, too, and push the world into committing to the military and economic...

20.03.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Intelligence services can become enemies of India’s law. Bring judicial, legislative oversight

Police in Telangana arrested police officer Dugyala Praneeth Kumar, who is suspected of having carried out espionage against opposition leaders during...

17.03.2024 50

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Praveen Swami

Agni 5 a technological feat for India. But is it also a sign of a dangerous nuclear arms race?

Little reason exists to think MIRVs will give China—or India—the strategic security they crave.

13.03.2024 40

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Praveen Swami

Modi’s New Kashmir promise means nothing unless J&K gets the same rights as rest of India

Successful peacebuilding in Kashmir requires restoring legitimacy to its political institutions through timely elections and reinstating genuine...

10.03.2024 5

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Praveen Swami

India must legalise contract soldiers recruited to fight foreign wars. Agniveers are coming

Successive governments have been squeamish at the prospect of Indian citizens serving foreign wars. It's time to stop pretending the problem doesn’t...

06.03.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Animal cruelty needs more than tough laws, aggressive policing. Colonial-era battles show why

The more-than-century-old story of policing how humans treat animals—sometimes bizarre, sometimes tragic—shows complex questions of class and...

03.03.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Nawaz Sharif’s PM tenure shows Pakistani politicians can never solve country’s core problems

Nawaz Sharif encouraged corruption, undermined democratic institutions, and collaborated with Islamists.

29.02.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Myanmar Generals’ nuclear dreams are Asian crime bosses’ hope to defend their last citadel

The case is entwined with the story of centuries-old criminal clans in Southeast Asia, who forged empires in the crucible of the colonial era using...

25.02.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Putin’s neo-Gulags are tools of political terror. Navalny death reveals Russia’s tyrannical past

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic Circle prison that earlier housed prisoners of 301st Gulag, who were condemned to work on...

21.02.2024 20

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Praveen Swami

Why Trump’s threat to NATO can force Europe to rethink its nuclear defence

The world that emerges from the Second Cold War will have little resemblance to the one we inherited from its first iteration.

14.02.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Should India talk to the new Pakistan govt? Imperfect peace is better than a crisis

PM Modi is skilled at communicating by not picking up the phone. Even as panic grew in Pakistan during the Balakot crisis, he declined a midnight call...

12.02.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Herero-Nama killings in Namibia set template for genocide—Germany can’t forget horrific history

Namibia’s demand that Western colonisers refrain from dishing out moral homilies on genocide and settler colonialism is far from unreasonable.

04.02.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Before US elections, Iraq is forcing America to answer—which ‘forever war’ is worth fighting

Both Tehran and Washington wish to avoid war, but both sides will find it difficult to avoid slow-walking into a confrontation with dangerous...

02.02.2024 6

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Praveen Swami

India targeting jihadists in Pakistan is valid but it can trigger LOC military escalation

The so-called collateral costs of targeted killing aren't the sole argument for more accountability. The potential misuse of executive authority for...

28.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

The forgotten story of how jihad plans failed in Ayodhya

Abdul Karim ‘Tunda’ hoped to unleash fire and blood across India, but lacked both the means and the men to do it.

24.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Beijing is making inroads, Delhi is building fences. India shouldn’t give up on Myanmar

The real question for India is why it has allowed politics to mire strategically important states like Manipur in ethnic conflict, sabotaging its...

21.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Iran’s dramatic airstrikes on Pakistan have brought Middle East proxy war too close to home

As Pakistan faces multiple internal crises, from its economy to terrorist violence, it now has to contend with a battle with its volatile western...

17.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is crucial. Future wars need legal sanctions

The Second World War did not bring about a genocide taboo. The last century saw the efflorescence of such massacres.

14.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Maldives is headed into dangerous waters. Its jihadist currents are a bigger threat than India

The capture of power by Islamists through democratic means will have profound consequences for New Delhi’s ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

10.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Iran’s terror bombings show Middle East is on edge. We don’t have infinite time for dialogue

Last week’s bombings, which claimed nearly a hundred lives, targeted mourners gathered to commemorate the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in...

07.01.2024 20

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Praveen Swami

Red Sea attacks a rent-seeking gesture not war cry. Bombing Yemen won’t fix the crisis

For the moment, Israel's conflict in Gaza provides enough legitimacy to deploy substantial peacekeeping forces through the Red Sea, but the model is...

03.01.2024 10

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Praveen Swami

Govt right to hold soldiers accountable for J&K civilian killings—focus on security system too

Local Gujjar residents had played a critical role in military operations against the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Pir Panjal mountains before 2003, setting...

27.12.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

Indian govt hasn’t had much luck in killing Dawood Ibrahim—but media is doing much better

When Modi stood on the cusp of being elected PM, he vowed to hunt down Dawood. That hasn’t been delivered on—but media seems determined to...

24.12.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

US must prepare for a long battle with Houthi rebels. Remember Iraq-Iran Tanker War in 1980s?

Houthi missile attack in the Red Sea holds out an important lesson for the West: Efforts to keep the Israel-Palestine crisis contained to Gaza are...

20.12.2023 9

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Praveen Swami

Myanmar crisis has put India in a difficult situation. Can it balance competing interests?

Ever since the Myanmar military regained control of the State in 2021, India—like China and other nations in Southeast Asia—has seen its power as...

13.12.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

As Gaza war rages on, Machiavelli would’ve warned Netanyahu. Enemies can learn from warfare

Machiavelli might have also counselled the Israeli PM not to be too eager in his grasp of total victory. Triumph, he might have said, can be almost as...

10.12.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

Gains from covert killing come with a big price tag. India can learn from Chile

The long shadow cast by Orlando Letelier’s murder illuminates how easily the ties between allies can be derailed by misjudgement—and how hard it...

06.12.2023 20

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Praveen Swami

Israel is repeating mistakes of 1982 Lebanon war in Gaza. It might get revenge but not peace

Israel has learned few lessons from its campaign in Lebanon. War in Gaza has no strategic end.

19.11.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

Most important agreement Xi & Biden can make—keep AI out of nuclear warmaking decisions

An agreement to keep AI out of nuclear weapons control systems will be a solid step forward, even if months of discussions are needed to agree on how...

15.11.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

Pakistan’s solution for terrorism is to expel Afghan refugees – but it’ll only get worse

The seeds of war sowed by the ISI in 1973 have yielded a long, bitter harvest, which now threatens to overrun Pakistan itself.

12.11.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

Israel’s border defence defeat should make India think how it manages LOC in Kashmir

India is testing a smart fence in Kashmir, using sensors from Magal that developed the systems in Gaza and US. But what does Israel experience tell us...

01.11.2023 20

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Praveen Swami

Gaza’s Islamist wave can fuel jihadism in India—Don’t forget the ‘Silk Letter Movement’

Elegantly written on yellow silk, sewn into the waistcoat of a new convert to Islam, Shaikh Abdul Haq, the words were to be carried across the Khyber...

29.10.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

The only true law of war is savagery. Gaza isn’t facing anything different

There’s no reason to believe that any other kind of war in Gaza might have been more humane. The idea that war can be civilised by law has...

25.10.2023 4

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Praveen Swami

Pakistani fundamentalists are rejecting Darwin’s theory. Nawaz Sharif must choose secularism

Islamist pop preachers like Tahir-ul-Qadri and Zakir Naik popularised this anti-science posture—largely relying on pseudoscientific arguments—and...

22.10.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

Allahabad High Court’s Nithari judgment shows Indian criminal justice’s rotted beyond repair

The Nithari killings is just the latest in a long series of high-profile cases that demand thorough reinvestigation to establish what went wrong.

18.10.2023 6

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Praveen Swami

The next front in the Israel-Hamas war will be Europe

Antisemitic incidents have quadrupled in the United Kingdom, and Germany has banned the pro-Hamas organisation Samidoun,

15.10.2023 6

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Praveen Swami

Hamas isn’t just a blood cult. More than tanks, Israel needs political imagination to crush it

Hamas has battled Palestinian nationalism, allied itself with Israeli intelligence, and capitalised on regional geopolitics. It's skilled at not just...

11.10.2023 5

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Praveen Swami

Israel-Gaza crisis holds brutal lessons in how not to fight terrorism & insurgencies

There’s little doubt the tactically skilled IDF will succeed in crushing Hamas incursions in the next few days. Like the 1973 war, the crisis holds...

08.10.2023 20

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Praveen Swami

Islamic State rising in Balochistan. Pakistan doesn’t have the resources to win this fight

The Taliban were once pushed back into Afghanistan by the Army. For a time, the Generals congratulated themselves, imagining their Taliban clients...

04.10.2023 8

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Praveen Swami

India hitting enemies on global scale, govt winning applause. But there’s cost being paid too

From RAW assets convicted of espionage in Germany, to former naval officers facing trial for spying on Qatar, India’s efforts to expand its global...

01.10.2023 30

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Praveen Swami

5 Eyes hold the secrets behind Trudeau’s charges. India must worry about its vulnerabilities

For all the talk of cyber-espionage by China or Russia, the Five Eyes are the largest intelligence-gathering organisation in the world, with the...

24.09.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

No signs of a looming pro-Khalistan insurgency. India needn’t fear the ghost of BKI’s Parmar

In 1984, Parmar succeeded in turning his low-grade marketing campaign into a movement due to political missteps in Punjab, which empowered...

20.09.2023 10

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Praveen Swami

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