From the outside, looking in, Nepal has seemingly abundant water resources. Authors and poets have written eloquently about the bounty of the country's true natural resource: its water. The small mountainous country has well over 6000 rivers. All of the major rivers originate in the Himalayas and are snow-fed. The country's overall water availability is pegged at well over 230 BCM. From the outside, the really definitive statistic is that of the per capita water availability, which in 2003 was estimated to be 9122 m3 per capita and in 2025 is projected to be 5500 m3 per capita. When compared with other countries in the region, India, China and Pakistan, Nepa's water statistics lead people to believe that the country's water security is healthy and will remain so for the next several years.

In the past few months, the Commonwealth Games to be held in New Delhi have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. There have been reports that the construction will not be completed on time. This, coupled with the scuffle between the office bearers of the Commonwealth Games and the Indian delegation and then their media-friendly patch up, has given a lot of publicity to the event.

In an important speech in early December, US President Barack Obama laid out plans for the pullout of US troops from Afghanistan in 2011. This would mean an end to 10-year long operations in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda. Obama also mentioned in this speech that Somalia would be the next battleground against Al Qaeda. Does this mean that the allies intend to focus next on Somalia in the war on terror? If it does, then the question to be asked is, is Somalia capable of withstanding a US-led invasion against Al Qaeda-related terrorists?

In the weeks leading up to Barack Obama's decision to send another 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, he took care to ensure that several different expert opinions on the matter were heard. From military experts who explained the pros and cons of different options to him, to General McChrystal who vigorously and vociferously defended his plan, from the Vice President, Joe Biden, who is an expert on foreign policy, to domestic advisors like Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel whose job it was to give him an idea of how lawmakers in the Congress and the Senate would react. While he has been accused of dithering and being indecisive, the fact is that Obama had to choose between the least of several difficult options, each as bad as the other. There are simply no good or easy decisions to be made on the war in Afghanistan. None of the options he was presented with came with simple consequences. 8 years in, this war is still no closer to being over than it was on 12th September, 2001.

It has been suggested by many analysts that after the initial efforts in Afghanistan, put forward by Operation Enduring Freedom, US focus on the Middle East, particularly Iraq, detracted from efforts to fight the Taliban and the insurgency along the Af-Pak border. As a result the Taliban was able to re-group and strengthen its foothold not just in Afghanistan but in the tribal administered areas of Pakistan as well. Several years later, the issues in Iraq still remain largely unsettled and even forebode a treacherous path ahead for US foreign policy.

President Obama's decision to deploy an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan has, for the most part, been welcomed by the Afghan government and the regional stakeholders India and Pakistan. The Taliban, whose presence several analysts believe will be required at the negotiating table for a long-term peaceful solution to the Afghan crisis, have rebuffed the new strategy bluntly stating that there will be an increase in American casualties and more opportunities to attack US assets. On the surface, Obama's decision, coupled with the pledge to strengthen governance and provide non-military aid/development is being widely held as a prerequisite towards regional stability. Despite objections by the Afghani people, more boots on the ground will ultimately increase the physical possibility of securing vast areas of the country, which have otherwise seen a spread of the Taliban's influence.