India-Central Asia NSAs to protect Afghanistan from terror groups
Led by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, the India-Central Asia NSAs focused on Afghanistan and protect the region from terrorist groups, terror recruitment, financing and propaganda through new and emerging technologies including cyber attacks.
The first India-Central Asia meeting of NSAs, hosted by Indian NSA Ajit Doval.
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The first India-Central Asia meeting of NSAs/secretaries of security councils, hosted by Indian NSA Ajit Doval, was held with a focus on evolving a common framework to deal with challenges of terrorism in the region, including Afghanistan, and ways to bolster overall security cooperation in sync with a decision taken at the first India-Central Asia summit in January.
The NSAs of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are attending the conclave while Turkmenistan is being represented by its ambassador to India.
The NSAs agreed that the expansion of terrorist propaganda, recruitment and fundraising efforts have serious security implications for the region and, therefore, a collective and coordinated response is essential. The misuse of new and emerging technologies, arms and drugs trafficking, using terrorist proxies for cross-border terrorism, abuse of cyberspace to spread disinformation and unmanned aerial systems present new challenges in counterterrorism efforts and call for collective action.
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They also emphasised the important role that Chabahar Port played during the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and its immense potential in enhancing trade and connectivity, as well as the logistics infrastructure of the Central Asian countries in the delivery of humanitarian goods to the Afghan people by international organisations.
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They also emphasised the important role that Chabahar Port played during the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and its immense potential in enhancing trade and connectivity, as well as the logistics infrastructure of the Central Asian countries in the delivery of humanitarian goods to the Afghan people by international organisations.
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The top security officials supported India’s proposal to include the Chabahar port within the framework of INSTC.
“Noted the current deteriorating humanitarian situation and the need to jointly act to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan…Condemned in the strongest terms all forms and manifestations of terrorism and underscored the need to work collectively to fight this menace. Agreed that the expansion of terrorist propaganda, recruitment and fundraising efforts have serious security implications for the region and, therefore, a collective and coordinated response is essential,” the NSAs said in a joint statement.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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