June 2026
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Pink boots
An open thread of quick reactions to World Cup matches: Germany and the Netherlands out, Brazil and Morocco through, pink boots, tiki-taka versus kick-and-run football, and the number of African-descended…
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Geography Is Not Power
India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty believing the upstream power holds the tap. It does not. From the Indus to the Nile, the country at the top of the river…
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Who did the Brits conquer India from?
Did the British take India from the Muslims or from the Hindus? The question cannot be answered, because it was never true. The empire they inherited had already fallen apart,…
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Precedent #1: No Warmongering
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South Asian Peace in Stockholm
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Pakistan, the Successor State to Islamistan
Pakistan is usually read as drifting ever deeper into theocracy. We argue the reverse: its elite has quietly secularised, keeping Islam as the national language while shedding it as the…
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High-Intensity Precedent
The site runs on attention, and when we get busy it slows. So a principle and three rules: original posts that stand on their own, reposts gathered into single running…
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Open Thread: AfPak – Cocktail 2
A brief note passing on an amusing reader comment about propping up Afghanistan as China does Pakistan, with a plan to watch something in a few hours.
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The origin and variation of ethnic violence in South Asia
A summary of Ajay Verghese’s The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India, on why communal and caste violence varies so much across South Asia.
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Is Pakistan primitive?
An intolerant minority sets the menu for everyone, in a comment thread and in a country. For two months we moderated so carefully against Islamophobia that we let the confinement…
