Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes a six-day trip through the Asia-Pacific, reports suggest another round of U.S.-Iran talks could take place in Pakistan, and a prison riot in Sri Lanka leads to a government investigation.
Modi’s Asia-Pacific Tour
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a six-day trip through the Asia-Pacific this week. He arrived in Indonesia on Monday and Australia on Wednesday and will conclude his travel in New Zealand. The high-level engagements come on the heels of a summit that Modi hosted in New Delhi last week for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
India seems to be reasserting its commitment to engaging closely with the region at a moment of uncertainty. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which includes Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, hasn’t held a leaders’ summit for nearly two years. Under U.S. President Donald Trump, Washington’s approach to the Indo-Pacific is especially unclear.
However, Modi’s diplomacy can also be read as an effort to pursue broader Indian strategic objectives—including bolstering its influence—in a region that has long been a top policy priority, especially given China’s rapidly deepening footprint there.
Australia and Japan are among India’s closest partners in the Asia-Pacific. Modi’s engagements with the two countries are, among other things, an opportunity to strengthen cooperation in efforts to counter China. New Delhi has taken steps to ease tensions with Beijing since a deadly border clash in 2020, but China remains India’s biggest strategic threat.
Current U.S.-India tensions mean that continued support from Washington to counter Beijing is not guaranteed—including intelligence sharing, which has helped India repel Chinese border provocations in the past. This makes New Delhi’s partnerships with the other two Quad members crucial.
India’s relationship with Indonesia, historically driven by commercial cooperation, isn’t as deep. But it is growing, especially after the two sides announced a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2018. On Tuesday, Modi inked a deal to sell Indian missiles to Indonesia, solidifying New Delhi’s emerging status as a net security provider in the Indo-Pacific. (India has already sold missile packages to the Philippines and Vietnam.)
India is also keen to deepen its partnership with Indonesia because it is a key global south player. Leading the global south bloc is a foreign-policy priority for New Delhi—and something that Beijing seeks, too. Finally, New Zealand is a more modest Indian partner, but it’s a big part of India’s broader efforts to strengthen influence in the Pacific islands, which are driven by factors including competition with China and critical minerals.
In the Asia-Pacific, India faces similar challenges as it does closer to home. It has friends, but it must pursue these partnerships cautiously in a neighborhood with a rival lurking.
But India also has opportunities to its east that it doesn’t enjoy in its backyard. One is that, apart from China, India is generally well liked in the Asia-Pacific. There is support for engagement with New Delhi from governments and publics alike—a contrast to South Asia, which has seen anti-India sentimentrise and new administrations take office that are keen to work more closely with Beijing.
Further, South Asia’s economies are generally weak, and the region is commercially disconnected. But elsewhere in Asia, there are trade and investment possibilities with a range of growing and dynamic economies. These include Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—India’s top partners in Southeast Asia, along with Singapore.
As an emerging global power, India is looking to expand its links to regions around the world, even as it aims to maintain its influence closer to home. East and Southeast Asia are becoming more strategically significant spaces for New Delhi. That makes Modi’s outreach in the region this week consequential.
What We’re Following
Possible Iran talks in Pakistan? Pakistani media report that a round of technical talks between the United States and Iran could happen in Pakistan in the coming days, and the Saudi outlet Al Arabiyasaid the negotiations would happen on Saturday. Islamabad hosted the first direct talks between senior U.S. and Iranian officials in decades in April.
However, there has been no confirmation—or any comment—from Washington or Tehran about these new talks. Furthermore, on Wednesday, Trump declared the U.S. cease-fire with Iran “over” after escalating violence in the Strait of Hormuz and fresh U.S. strikes on Iran. In a statement, Pakistan’s foreign office called on all sides to “exercise restraint.”
It wouldn’t be surprising if Pakistan eventually hosted another round of U.S.-Iran talks. Islamabad signaled its interest in continuing to play a mediation role after the United States inked its memorandum of understanding with Iran last month. According to Iranian state media, Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi visited Tehran a few weeks ago, after the deal was signed.
Pakistan stepped back from these efforts in the days before the MOU was signed, with actors such as Qatar taking on a greater role. But Islamabad has a strong incentive to stay in the game, both because of its involvement in facilitating peace efforts and because its geographical proximity to the conflict makes it vulnerable.
Prison riot in Sri Lanka. At least 28 people were killed and 100 more injured during a riot in a prison near Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, on Sunday and Monday. According to police, a clash between two rival drug gangs triggered the violence, and some prisoners grabbed guards’ guns during the chaos, likely contributing to the high death toll. (At least eight prison guards were killed.)
Some of the injuries during the riot were caused by a roof collapse after a group of female prisoners in an adjoining unit climbed onto the roof to demand their release. Order was restored on Monday, though the Sri Lanka Air Force continued to monitor the prison with drones and a helicopter.
Sri Lanka said it will appoint a team led by a retired Supreme Court justice to investigate the riot. One area of focus may be overcrowded conditions: According to government data, the country’s prisons hold about 40,000 prisoners, or four times their capacity.
HIV outbreak in Pakistan. Officials in Pakistan’s Sindh province said this week that they are investigating a hospital in the province’s southeast where at least 78 children contracted HIV in recent months. A petitioner before the Sindh High Court alleged that the hospital reused contaminated syringes.
The families of the children had accused the provincial government of refusing to act earlier on, prompting them to take the issue to the High Court, which gave authorities two weeks to explain what led to the outbreak.
Pakistan has been experiencing one of the biggest surges in HIV cases in South Asia for some time. In the first nine months of 2024, the country reported nearly 10,000 new HIV infections. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), new infections in the country increased by 200 percent between 2010 and 2024. An estimated 350,000 Pakistanis are living with HIV today.
WHO attributes the outbreak in Pakistan to poor blood management and injection practices, insufficient HIV testing during prenatal care, and limited access to HIV services.
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Under the Radar
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Kyrgyzstan on Monday for a four-day visit. On Tuesday, Zardari and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Sadyr Japarov, released a detailed joint statement pledging cooperation in a range of spaces, from business and energy to healthcare and connectivity. The statement also expresses a desire for a new strategic partnership.
Kyrgyzstan, which has relatively modest ties with Pakistan, may seem like an unusual place for the ceremonial president to spend four days. But in fact, the visit by Zardari—a long-standing political player and husband of the late Benazir Bhutto—is a significant one.
Pakistan has sought to deepen its engagement in Central Asia, a rare neighboring region where India’s footprint is relatively modest. That is in part because India lacks direct land access to resource-rich Central Asia, as Pakistan refuses to grant it transit rights.
Islamabad’s outreach to the region has emphasized trade and connectivity links, including a new cross-border railroad project that would link Pakistan to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.