Archives

Our archives are a repository of original thinking that chronicles two decades of research, analysis, and policy innovation. This collection brings together articles written by SFG’s founders and research analysts between 2005 and 2025, preserving the ideas, and insights that shaped our intellectual journey. These writings reflect the evolution of our thinking as we engaged with some of the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.

The archive offers a rich body of material for researchers, policymakers, students, journalists, and anyone interested in understanding complex global issues through a long-term strategic lens. The articles explore a wide spectrum of subjects, including peace and conflict, water diplomacy, international relations, technology, environmental sustainability, governance, security, and the changing dynamics of regional and global cooperation. They also place regional developments within broader international and geopolitical contexts.

Many of these articles anticipated trends and policy challenges that later became central to international discourse. Others document the development of concepts and frameworks that informed SFG’s subsequent research, dialogues, and publications. Together, they provide not only historical context but also enduring perspectives that continue to resonate in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond serving as a research resource, this archive offers a window into the intellectual history of SFG. It traces how our ideas evolved over time, how new policy concepts emerged through sustained inquiry, and how our engagement expanded from regional concerns to global challenges. Readers can follow the progression of our work across changing geopolitical landscapes and appreciate our evidence-based approaches to peace, security, and international cooperation.

Whether you are revisiting landmark analyses, exploring the origins of key policy ideas, or discovering our work for the first time, we hope these archives provide valuable insights, stimulate informed debate, and inspire fresh thinking about the future.

Stepping Back: Technology and the State

  • By Anumita Raj
In the last ten years, the interaction between human beings and technology has veered off the path of familiarity, and increasingly into the unknown. As virtual societies replace physical ones, computers control every aspect of human movement from traffic lights to flights and all human activity can be logged and catalogued into a cyber-database, the inexorable march towards ceding all control to technology is already underway. Given this fact, securing the safety of the state, as well securing the interactions between governments has now firmly entrenched itself entirely in technology. This reliance on technology can be looked at from two separate angles, from the point of view of inter-state interactions, and from the point of view of state security.
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Pakistan’s Spin Doctors

  • By Rohit Honawar
Democratic societies across the world pride themselves on the existence of a free press, with Pakistan being no different. The country's civil society has historically looked towards the media as an institution or symbol, representative of their democratic values and ideals. Yet the relationship has not been so simple.
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Engaging the Muslim World A Book Review

  • By Gitanjali Bakshi
One of the pivotal factors driving global politics in the post 9/11 world has been the growing rift between the West and Islamic countries. This new wave of geo-political conflict, coined by Samuel Huntington as the Clash of Civilizations, has gripped the minds and interest of political analysts and aficionados around the world and has made topics like Iraq and Islamic fundamentalism part of common discourse. What are some of the main issues that stand at the center of West-Islam relations today?
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India and Afghanistan: The Way Forward

  • By Anumita Raj
India''s historic ties with Afghanistan are now under a scanner as a whole litany of pressures, some old and some new, some external and some internal, have come into play in the politics of the region. India's involvement in the country has begun to be moulded by aspects other than its own interests in the country, and the interests of the Afghan people. In the near future, due to the increasing attacks in Indian targets in Afghanistan, India will, in essence, be forced to shape its policy in the country more as a reaction to external events, rather than as a way to achieve its own ends.
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Pakistan’s Power Struggle The Real Movers and Shakers

  • By Joyanto Mukherjee
The first quarter of 2010 has already seen the situation in Pakistan take several turns. The recent Pakistani Delegation visit to the US which saw COAS General Kayani lead the delegation, the statements by Pakistan with regards to Afghanistan and its call for an active role in the country and the recent U-turn by PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif with regards to the 18TH Amendment have been a few highlights over the past three months. Other developments over the same period have now effectively highlighted the major players in the struggle for power, those who will determine the overall future of the country.
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Can a World Driven by Scientists and Engineers, Bereft of Philosophers and Good Politicians, Achieve Progress?

  • By Sundeep Waslekar
Sundeep Waslekar comments on engineers and scientists, such as the founders of Internet, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and E-Bay, driving progress in the 21st century.
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