In a nation long plagued by military coups, the question of who will replace Pakistan‘s all-powerful army chief has taken on new urgency this year as the country tries to shake off the legacy of decades of military dictatorship. Read Here – Reuters
Fresh off one overhyped “achievement”– forcing a restart of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have scant chance of success–Secretary of State John Kerry is apparently eager to achieve any empty triumph, namely a “reset” of relations with Pakistan. Read Here – Commentary
Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan‘s new prime minister, has already made clear that, unlike his predecessors, he won’t tacitly endorse the United States’ current counterterrorism operations. That leaves Washington with one option: finding some way to cooperate with Islamabad on drone strikes without diminishing their effectiveness. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
Whichever party takes power in Islamabad will almost certainly have to cobble together a coalition to rule. The new government will inherit a looming foreign-exchange crisis, hours-long blackouts that have provoked street riots, and overlapping insurgencies and sectarian wars that have claimed thousands of lives. Though army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has resisted the temptation to […]
If Pakistan‘s May 11 parliamentary elections unfold according to recent national opinion surveys, two-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif will once again take power in Islamabad. Deposed in a 1999 coup led by General Pervez Musharraf, Sharif fled for nearly a decade of Saudi-sponsored exile. Today, however, it is Musharraf who lives under house arrest just outside Islamabad […]
Pakistan’s moment of political truth is fast approaching. On May 11, some 40-50 million voters will elect a new national assembly. The outcome, preceded by a spike in extremist violence, is likely to reverberate far and wide. Read Here – Project Syndicate
For General Musharraf, who once held all the reins of power in Pakistan, it seems a spectacle of humiliation and miscalculation, or as the BBC calls it “high drama and farce.” The Islamabad judges that Musharraf sought to muzzle and dismiss in 2007 now appear to have muzzled him – ultimately thwarting his aim to run for high […]
Pakistan‘s Punjab province selects well known journalist Najam Sethi as caretaker chief minister, as the country prepares for a fresh round of elections. Read Here – The Dawn
If Pakistan’s former president, General Pervez Musharraf, returns to the country tomorrow — as he has promised, ending five years of exile — many Pakistanis will find it hard to reject him simply for his undemocratic past. Musharraf’s planned return may remain surrounded by uncertainty till the last moment, given that he has previously promised […]
Instead of continuing their endless battling, the United States and Pakistan should acknowledge that their interests simply do not converge enough to make them strong partners. Giving up the fiction of an alliance would free up Washington to explore new ways of achieving its goals in South Asia. And it would allow Islamabad to finally […]
looking beyond borders 