The Great Game for Gilgit-Baltistan

From ancient crossroads to modern rivalry, the struggle for Gilgit-Baltistan reveals the enduring geopolitical forces shaping South and Central Asia. Nestled among some of the world’s highest mountains, Gilgit-Baltistan is a contested region between India and Pakistan that has stood at the crossroads of civilisations, cultures and empires for millennia. Its strategic location, linking South and Central Asia with China, has given it a significance far beyond its size. Its turbulent history is also etched into the landscape, preserved in the remarkable petroglyphs and rock art scattered across its mountains and valleys. The Great Game for Gilgit-Baltistan traces the region’s political history while exploring its rich civilisational legacy and enduring strategic significance. From ancient imperial ambitions to the nineteenth-century rivalry between the British and Russian Empires, Gilgit-Baltistan has repeatedly found itself at the centre of contests for power and influence. Today, it occupies a key position in the growing competition between the United States and China, particularly as the host of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Bringing together historical accounts and strategic insights, Asma Khan Lone unpacks these evolving power dynamics, their reverberations across the region and beyond, and Gilgit-Baltistan’s place within the wider geopolitical order. The first book to place Gilgit-Baltistan, not Kashmir, at the centre of South Asia's power strugglesLinks nineteenth-century imperial rivalry directly to today's US-China contest over the Belt and RoadGrounded in the region's petroglyphs and rock art, not just geopolitics