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Abstract

The India-Pakistan-Afghanistan triangle has found itself, since the attacks of 9/11 and the launching by Washington of the 'long war against terrorism', at the heart of the new world disorder. The changing and contradictory relationship between India and Pakistan, the ambiguous relations which link the latter to today’s Afghanistan, as well as the apparently very friendly relations between New Delhi and Kabul: all of these elements form the background over which different factors of instability are intertwined, whether these relate to religious fundamentalist movements, desperate economic difficulties or the trafficking of much coveted opium and heroine. The increasing weight of the United States in Central Asia and in the Middle East, in particular since the intervention in Iraq, add to the instability or at least to the political tensions which riddle a region in which Iran, Russia and China have not given up on their desire to exert their influence as well.

Gilbert Etienne is a Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies and at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in Geneva.