
The slump of interest in South Asia in the West is a positive development, because it makes clearer which countries are the real partners of Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. Also, if left to themselves these three countries will get a chance to build their relations without external pressure.
Pakistan is not an important Russian trading partner in South Asia. However, with Eurasian integration involving Central Asia and traditional Russian-Indian economic ties revived, there is no sense for Pakistan to remain in a limbo.

There have been many events in Asia in 2013. But some of them stand to impact the most the global policy and security in 2014.

India would be able to make an important contribution to the resolution of the Syrian crisis.
The nomination of Mullah Fazlullah as the new head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) does not seem to dramatically change prospects for an agreement between the TTP and Islamabad. Yet if signed, this agreement will not be able to stop violence in the tribal area of Pakistan and neighbor regions.

There is no need to invent a special day like the National Unity Day for strengthening national identity, because one day in a year cannot change people's vision of their nation. This is an everyday job for the citizens at all levels of Russian society.

The impact of Pakistan on the situation in Afghanistan is seriously overestimated. Current problems and future risks will not allow Pakistan even to think about the decisive influence in Afghanistan.

Last weekend, two districts of Moscow became a battlefield between the police and the people described as nationalists by mass media or as hooligans by the authorities. Moscow has been a place of pogroms many times, but this time the authorities were more efficient than in previous cases.

After 1998 nuclear tests, India and Pakistan experienced several crises, including the 1999, 2002, and 2008 events. They have already agreed on some confidence-building measures, though unverified. Do India and Pakistan need a more dangerous crisis to start arms control talks and negotiations on verification mechanisms?

Terrorism is hardly to be found in a traditional religious society, consisting of people who are brought up and educated there, who know this tradition, its texts and practices, and whose life is religiously integral rather than separated into religious and profane parts.