Vappala Balachandran Author and Columnist On July 17, Bruce Riedel, formerly of the CIA and now at Brookings, warned that the power vacuum in Afghanistan after the US troop withdrawal will adversely affect India by spawning terrorism. Similarly, The New York Times (July 15) reported Chinese fears of insecurity in the region after the killing of nine Chinese workers in a ‘Belt & Road’ hydroelectric project in Dasu, Pakistan’s Northwest, due to a suspected explosion. Riedel had issued a similar warning on April 27, 2021, by reminding President Joe Biden of what President Barack Obama had said in his memoir A Promised Land: “The Riedel report made one thing clear: Unless Pakistan stopped sheltering the Taliban, our efforts at long-term stability in Afghanistan were bound to fail.”