Global eye | A world in flux

The period between 2005 and 2015 was marked by unsettled power, porous borders and nervous democracies. Terrorism globalised, states weakened from within and leadership across continents was tested by crises.The decade opened with a jolt. The London bombings of July 2005 shattered the assumption that the West’s great capitals were insulated from the violence long familiar to South Asia and the Middle East. The attacks exposed how global jihad had embedded itself within migrant societies and how the ‘war on terror’ was losing coherence even as its threat expanded.South Asia’s western flank darkened. Pakistan, already wobbling under military dominance and fatigue, seemed a state in slow retreat from itself. Fear ruled: suicide bombers, sectarian killers and militant groups acted with ambiguous sanction. PM Nawaz Sharif’s return signalled unresolved tension between elected authority and entrenched power. By decade’s end, Pakistan was seen less as a hostile neighbour than as a collapsing, unstable one.Afghanistan and Pakistan merged into a single strategic nightmare. Western interventions promised reconstruction but delivered prolonged war, as insurgencies adapted faster than armies. The term ‘Af-Pak’ captured the problem bluntly: one conflict, unsolvable by treating symptoms on one side alone. Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad in 2011 brought dramatic closure but left strategic ambiguity, raising more questions than it answered..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Beyond South Asia, power was also being renegotiated. The election of Barack Obama, the first Black president of the US, in 2008 was read worldwide as a generational shift. But by his second term, hope had given way to realism, and the world adjusted to an America more cautious, less interventionist and increasingly inward-looking.The decade ended in uncertainty, with governments, institutions and societies unprepared for the new reality it had created.- EndsPublished By: Yashwardhan SinghPublished On: Jan 3, 2026

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Global eye | A world in flux

A turbulent decade saw global terror, weakened states and shifting power, testing leaders, democracies and societies amid uncertainty

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