Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari arrives in Iran today to sign a series of economic agreements, including one that finalizes the Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline. At the end of January, the two sides agreed to set up a joint construction company to build the portion of the pipeline that will be on Pakistani soil. Iran is […]
Last week, tens of thousands of protestors descended into the heart of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, demanding that the federal government make sweeping electoral reforms and then give way to an army and judiciary-endorsed caretaker government that would oversee general elections. The protestors were dedicated, braving the cold, and, at times, rain, for four nights. They were disciplined, […]
Pakistan appeared to be treading toward an uncertain political terrain on Tuesday as arrest orders were issued for a sitting prime minister in a corruption case and a populist cleric called for the government’s resignation leading tens of thousands of protesters into the federal capital. During the early hours of Tuesday, the Pakistani-Canadian chief of the Tehrik-i-Minhajul Quran (TMQ), […]
In late December, on the fifth anniversary of his mother’s assassination and with his family’s mausoleum in view, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari stood before a massive crowd at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, a village in Sindh province, and was anointed as the last great hope for Pakistan’s most prominent political dynasty. Bilawal’s father, Asif Ali Zardari — […]
As the war in Afghanistan winds down, with the withdrawal of American combat troops scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014, there’s a modest ratcheting up of movement towards a reconciliation with the Taliban. Though many analysts are skeptical a deal can be reached within the limited amount of time before the withdrawal, and though […]
To say that corruption is endemic across Pakistan is neither new nor an understatement. But last week, a statement by President Asif Ali Zardari’s handpicked head of the main anti-corruption body stunned even those Pakistanis who have become relatively immune to graft. According to an estimate by the so-called National Accountability Bureau (NAB), led by […]
When Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari ventured out in the past week to personally visit two localities across the populous Punjab province, his journey was immediately surrounded by unanswered questions. Since his unexpected political rise to becoming Pakistan’s head of state in 2008, following the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, Zardari has adopted an […]
Despite the revulsion that Asif Zardari invokes among his detractors, even his most bitter critics are often forced to acknowledge with admiration, if also intense frustration, how Pakistan’s unlikely president has for all intents and purposes outsmarted all his opponents and ridden out all the storms to take the PPP-led coalition to almost the finish […]
looking beyond borders 