South Asia

The Diplomat speaks with Pakistani commentator Ahmed Quraishi about the country’s current military offensive in Waziristan, relations with the US and what America should do to improve its image in Pakistan.

Parents in India desperate for sons have been taking advantage of advances in medical technology and liberal abortion laws to ensure they don’t have daughters. Shreyasi Singh looks at the reasons behind the dramatic distortions in the country’s sex ratio.

The Diplomat’s Pakistan correspondent, Mustafa Qadri, meets refugees from the conflict in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and finds anger, trepidation and hope as they return home after this summer’s counter-Taliban military offensive.

The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May brought an end to Sri Lanka’s civil war. But the conflict also shed light on a bitter geopolitical struggle taking place against the backdrop of the declining influence of the West and the emerging influence of India and China. Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe explores the implications of Sri Lanka’s evolving foreign policy.

The Baloch homeland, which straddles the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, is a forgotten battleground in one of the world's hotspots. Karlos Zurutuza meets the insurgents fighting for this divided region.

Bangladesh has endured a turbulent past, and faces a far from settled future, argues Tanveer Ahmed.

Mustafa Qadri investigates one of the main NATO supply routes from Karachi to Chaman on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

The cliff-perched fortresses that dot Bhutan’s mountainous perimeter serve as a testimony to a longstanding effort to keep out foreigners.

It is a decades-old scene common to every hamlet, town and city in India – a dusty playground at midday, chock full of schoolchildren armed with cricket bats and rubber balls, sweating bullets, but playing earnestly, despite the searing heat.

When 10 gunmen terrorised central Mumbai for three days last November, effectively holding an emerging great power to ransom, elements from within Pakistan were immediately suspected.

Because it is in their interest to do so. India is the world’s fastest-growing democracy, with a population of 1.1 billion.

Much of the credit for the macro-stability that India currently enjoys must go to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who, as finance minister in 1991