Sphere of Influence is a military-politico thriller on India’s intervention into Central Asia.
The near successful attempt on the President of Tajikistan and the civil was that starts immediately thereafter threatens to cut the country into half. Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badkhshan province goes into open rebellion, the rebels supported by power hungry bureaucrats in China.
While their President is operated upon in the Indian Military Hospital in Dushanbe, the interim Tajik government reaches out to the EU and the US for help. But a resurgent Russia will allow no one but itself to send additional troops.
All does not go well however, and the Russian backed air assault to take the critical town of Khorugh fails.
The interim government desperately reaches out to anyone who can help and a traditionally isolationist India decides to support in the face of worsening weather and ominous moves by other nations.
As the GBAO looks lost for the winter, it is up to a heavily outnumbered company of a Mechanized battalion of the Indian Army to hold a critical pass on the M 41 highway, the only link into Khorugh, till reinforcements arrive.
