HONG KONG: South Asia was the home to some of the world’s earliest known civilizations and religions. It hosts diverse cultures and several world wonders. Its enormous wealth and strategic location make it a hub of geopolitics. Perhaps, all this make it a never-ending confrontation ground for international powers.
“The Gilgit Game” which is also the title of a book by John Keay, has been named such because of the politics surrounding the Hindu Kush region, an 800-kilometer-long mountain range that stretches through Afghanistan, from its center to northern Pakistan and into Tajikistan. The mountain range was once a part of the “Great Game” between Britain and Russia as quoted by travel journalist Tim Hannigan.
With the same old game but new players, South Asia has once again become a battleground of the new intensifying Cold War between America and China. Some strategists and critics view the China-India standoff as the beginning of the Cold War but others like Indian scholar Sajid Farid Shapoo call it “The Myth of a New Cold War.”
Can the South Asian states put a stop to it? Or will they continue harboring fear-mongers and so-called self-declared experts that stimulate war discourse?
YouTubers and mainstream Indian and Pakistani media channels continue to push a war agenda. I wonder why Indians and Pakistani governments are tolerating few TV anchors and self-proclaimed analysts who see war as imminent. What does the international media think? – Agencies
