For many decades now, civilian politicians have been little more than pawns on the chessboard of Pakistan’s politics. Their purpose has been to take the fall for the massive failures brought on by the misguided strategies of the ‘king’ calling the shots. Their manoeuvrability in the game has been the most constrained out of all […]
“We wanted a clear message from Obama that the U.S. will continue to support democracy in Afghanistan,” Fawzia Koofi, a lawmaker and human-rights activist, said this month. “It’s the only alternative to Talibanization.” Her honesty revealed the plain truth, without official pieties and doublespeak: The U.S. is quitting Afghanistan, and the morning after it does, the Taliban […]
Even by Pakistan‘s standards, it has been an exceptionally busy week. Terrorist attacks targeting the Hazara Shia community in Quetta killed over 100, leading to widespread protests and the subsequent sacking of Baluchistan‘s elected assembly and the imposition of Governor law. Tensions flared up on the border with India with troops from both sides being […]
President Obama’s pick to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is making some in New Delhi’s diplomatic, military, and intelligence communities nervous that Washington will soon tilt to Islamabad, India’s decades-old rival and tormentor. Last week in New Delhi, a former ambassador to the US complained to me about America’s support for Pakistan—on three […]
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), […]
“I’d kill for a drink of water,” could be a military call-to-arms soon, as the planet’s most essential commodity is swallowed, evaporated, polluted, and utilized at unsustainable levels. Earth contains a finite, unchanging amount of H2O. Usage has escalated dangerously, due to human population explosion (1.65 billion – 9 billion from 1900-2025) and the myriad […]
A shy boy with filthy hands and a shabby tunic approached the great man, bowed and tried to kiss his hand. Gen. Matiullah Khan was seated like a sultan on a cushion in his hojra, his airy receiving room. He barely looked at the boy. He nodded to an aide, who withdrew a thick wad of Pakistani […]
As the 2014 date for the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan approaches, the country faces two starkly different futures. One is a return to the civil war conditions of the 1990s that brought disaster and disunity. In this scenario Afghanistan is abandoned by the international community before falling prey to the machinations of […]
When a 70-year-old Indian grandmother decided she wanted to spend the rest of her days living with her sons in the disputed province of Kashmir, she probably had no idea that she was about to spark a potentially catastrophic clash between two of the world’s most implacable nuclear foes. For it now appears that an […]
Diplomatic historians may mark the 1962 war as the beginning of India’s slow ascent to great power status and a force to be reckoned with in 21st century Asian power politics. Yet, to this day, India’s foreign policy is – more than most other emerging titans – constrained by a quest for internal security and […]
looking beyond borders 