Rediff.com is reporting that Sumit Ganguly will soon take over as head of the South Asia Bureau in the National Intelligence Council:

Sumit Ganguly, who currently holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilisations will soon be appointed the first National Intelligence Officer of the newly-formed South Asia Bureau in the National Intelligence Council, an appendage of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Ganguly, also a professor of political science and director of the Indian Studies Program at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the first Indian-American to serve in the NIC.

The NIC is the intelligence community’s centre for mid-term and long-term strategic thinking.

Its National Intelligence Estimates on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence (the head of the CIA) are the most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues.

Yes, intelligence estimates are quite useful (when the analysis isn’t pre-ordained at least). Well good.  It makes sense to have someone of South Asian heritage actually head this new branch.

His most recent work, published by Columbia University Press and Oxford University Press (New Delhi), is entitled Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947. He also recently published The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999). His research and writing have been supported by grants from the Asia Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace. He has also been a guest scholar and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. and a visiting fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York) and the International Institute of Strategic Studies (London). Professor Ganguly serves on the editorial boards of Asian Affairs, Asian Survey, Current History and the Journal of Strategic Studies. He is also the editor of a new journal, The India Review, published by Frank Cass and Company. [Link]

Earlier, Rediff did an interview with Ganguly about his book, in which it further probed him on his views about the conflict in Kashmir.  These views will almost certainly influence U.S. policy in the region:

Q: Do you endorse India’s position of ‘no talks until concrete results are seen?’

A: Yes, I do. That said, India, for its own reasons, should move with much greater imagination, dexterity and skill in terms of winning back the hearts and minds of its deeply disaffected Kashmiri Muslim population. Merely harping on “cross-border terrorism” makes India’s decision-makers look foolish and disingenuous in the eyes of scholars and serious policy-makers alike.