Goodbye, Nawaz

Attack the court, blame the boys, curse fate and the stars, it doesn’t really matter. Nawaz is gone and he isn’t coming back. There’s no precedent for unwinding a Supreme Court judgement during a democratic spell and there won’t be. Nawaz is gone. Read Here – Dawn Nawaz Vacates PM House, Departs For Murree Pakistan, […]

Rate this:

Advancing CPEC By Stealth

The corridor is only minimally about transit trade. The power plants, too, are little more than the “early harvest projects”, on commercial terms, designed to jump-start the economy before the real game begins. The real game of CPEC is about granting access to Chinese enterprises to Pakistan’s domestic markets, raw materials and the agrarian economy. […]

Rate this:

Pakistan Can’t Afford China’s ‘Friendship’

Pakistani and Chinese officials boast that CPEC will help address Pakistan’s electricity generation problem, bolster its road and rail networks, and shore up the economy through the construction of special economic zones. But these benefits are highly unlikely to materialise. The project is more inclined to leave Pakistan burdened with unserviceable debt while further exposing […]

Rate this:

Foreign Policy Straitjacket

Anyway you spin it, what happened at the Riyadh summit was troubling if not outright outrageous and the explanation offered for what looked like a snub to Pakistan, or its elected civilian leader, would normally be unacceptable. Read Here – Dawn

Rate this:

The Spy Who Fell From The Sky

The famous Soviet spy arrested by the United States in 1957, Rudolf Abel, was known as ‘the spy who never broke’, but his trial was still public. Here is Jadhav, confessing eagerly and still being tried and convicted secretly. Even Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani who was involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, was tried […]

Rate this:

Pakistan’s CPEC Master Plan Revealed

The plan envisages a deep and broad-based penetration of most sectors of Pakistan’s economy as well as its society by Chinese enterprises and culture. Its scope has no precedent in Pakistan’s history in terms of how far it opens up the domestic economy to participation by foreign enterprises. In some areas the plan seeks to […]

Rate this:

China Repeats West’s Mistakes In Pakistan

For the Chinese, these are uncharted waters. They will have to balance gains to the ruling elites in Islamabad and Lahore with those to the locals in Balochistan, who are more than capable of violently disrupting work on the corridor. If China fails to do so, Pakistan will end up more unstable, not less. Read […]

Rate this:

How A Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against The United States

The entire episode — and bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad later that spring — extinguished any lingering productive relations between the United States and Pakistan. Leon Panetta’s relationship with General Pasha, the I.S.I. chief, was poisoned, and the already small number of Obama officials pushing for better relations between Washington and Islamabad dwindled even further. […]

Rate this:

Pakistan’s Radicalisation Problem Begins At School

Pakistan’s religio-nationalism started under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1972-77) and got a major impetus under General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation drive through the 1980s. This drive was also located in nurturing public acceptance of jihad as state policy in Afghanistan and later in India. Sadly, we have indoctrinated at least one or two generations with the idea that […]

Rate this: