South Asia and Beyond

India-Sri Lanka-Maldives Cooperating Closely To Tackle Terror: Gopal Baglay

Nitin A. Gokhale
May 31, 2020
1 minute read

NEW DELHI: The Easter Sunday terror attacks in Sri Lanka last year are a grim reminder of the kind of challenges India and its neighbourhood faces, says Gopal Baglay, India’s High Commissioner To Sri Lanka. In an exclusive interview to StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale, Baglay says India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are closely cooperating to tackle the menace of terrorism. Baglay, who took charge earlier this month, says the leadership in both the countries attaches a very high level of importance to the bilateral relationship. There are no outstanding political issues to settle, so my job is to build on the pre-existing synergies and strengthen ties through constructive engagement, he says.

Nitin A. Gokhale

Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters. At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties. An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences. Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau. He tweets at @nitingokhale