The United States moved into Afghanistan in 2001, chasing out Osama bin Laden as well as the Taliban from power. Twenty years later, it pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to Kabul! The Afghanistan government, too, safely vanished hours before the Taliban entered the city. What was the trajectory of this bizarre turn of events? Did the US achieve the original goals of its operation in Afghanistan? Why did it take twenty years to end the war on terror here when it could finish this in Iraq in about eight years? Did the Taliban play a role in helping the US achieve its goals? How is Taliban 2.0 different from Taliban 1.0?

Apart from such vexing questions, Glocal Terror in South Asia: Tracing the Roots in Geopolitics and the Tragedy of Afghanistan explores the ‘silent’ upgradation of a local Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union with the mobilization of Arabs into the theatre. The ensuing geopolitics created the conditions for the rise of a global jihad from the Af-Pak region. Osama bin Laden founded Al Qaeda in Peshawar and its allies sprang up across South Asia and far beyond, sometimes even with the support of state actors. The destiny of Afghanistan and South Asia changed forever. And fault lines within South Asia deepened further.

The story, though, is not over yet since the region and the larger world have now entered a phase of greater insecurity and instability. In Glocal Terror in South Asia, Anju Gupta, a well-known commentator on security matters, analyses the course of events from the late 1970s onwards that led us to this point, and predicts potential black swan events that the region, and the world, should pay heed to.