Recent Developments in Afghanistan: ICWA Reflections

Contents: Foreword. Introduction. 1. Is there a Taliban 2.0? Reflecting on the Past to Understand the Present/Anwesha Ghosh. 2. Taliban Takeover Afghanistan: What’s Next?/Anwesha Ghosh. 3. The Taliban in ‘Power’: Twenty Years of US Involvement in Afghanistan/Stuti Banerjee. 4. Russia’s Poised Strategic Ambivalence in Afghanistan/Vivek Mishra. 5. Swift Changes in Afghanistan and Central Asia’s Response/Athar Zafar. 6. China’s Domestic Debate and Strategic Objectives vis-a-vis Recent Developments in Afghanistan/Sanjeev Kumar. 7. The Iranian Approach to the Taliban: Understanding Changes and Continuities/Deepika Saraswat. 8. Taliban 2.0 and the Arab World: Past and Present/Fazzur Rahman Siddiqui. 9. Qatar’s emergence as a key player in Afghanistan/Anwesha Ghosh. 10. Europe’s Afghanistan Conundrum/Ankita Dutta. 11. Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan: Anxieties in Africa/Sankalp Gurjar. 12. Southeast Asia and the Return of Taliban in Afghanistan/Temjenmeren Ao. 13. Latin America and Afghanistan/Stuti Banerjee. 14. The Race to Fill the Strategic Vacuum in Afghanistan Portends Instability/Vivek Mishra. 15. G20 pledges aid to avert humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan/Anwesha Ghosh. Index.

The Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi has been following the recent developments in Afghanistan closely and have been reflecting upon them through its various research publications. This edited volume, comprising research papers by the Research Faculty of ICWA, focuses on the recent crisis in Afghanistan, its fallout and the responses of the regional countries on the same. Discussions in this issue attempt to bring together fifteen research papers of ICWA on the developments in Afghanistan between July and November 2021.