3 min readNew DelhiMar 15, 2026 04:03 AM IST
The geopolitics, power dynamics within Pakistan, and the use of terror proxies in the region could result in “a few potential Black Swan events… in the coming months or years”, according to a new book on geopolitical tensions in South Asia by retired IPS officer Anju Gupta.
The book, ‘Glocal Terror in South Asia: Tracing the Roots in Geopolitics and the Tragedy of Afghanistan’, was launched in Delhi on Friday. The “potential black swan events in the region” that the book lists include the possibility that “Pakistan may walk back to democratic rule … The army may still retain its primacy in certain matters but may turn to elected civilian rulers to defuse tensions internally…,” Gupta writes. Another potential black swan event that the book mentions is that “…the regime in Pakistan could go to any extent to remove the Taliban from power, even if it marks a new phase of prolonged civil war or anarchy in Afghanistan”.
Speaking at the launch, Gupta, a 1990-batch IPS officer who retired when she was a DGP-rank officer in UP, said, “The security situation is normally assessed in terms of non-state actors or rogue elements, or gangsters… or their supporters, including state actors. But that is a very limiting part. What I’ve experienced over the years or what I’ve seen is that it is the geopolitics or geopolitical wranglings that have contributed to the creation of security threats in our region and sustenance of those security threats.”
At the launch, Gupta was in conversation with the former Intelligence Bureau director and 1980-batch IPS officer Rajeev Jain, and media communication professional Ambreen Khan. “We know that 9/11 was planned in our region, and India was also very affected as a result of what happened in our region. But the strings … were being pulled by outside players. This is something I think has come out very strongly in this book … how geopolitics creates monsters and sustains them and we keep looking at only the monsters. We don’t look at the things that shape all this,” Gupta said.
Responding to a question on the US and Afghanistan, Gupta said: “America is and will continue to be the most important dominant player in Afghanistan … Afghanistan is very fragile … the US remains the single most important player in Afghanistan, even today, after withdrawal.”
