During the past decade, there have been notable shifts in Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine, away from minimum deterrence to second strike capability and towards expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal to include both strategic and tactical weapons. Islamabad has described these developments as “consolidating Pakistan’s deterrence capability at all levels of the threat spectrum.” Read Here – […]
As we debate whether the two parties can ever come together and get things done, here’s something President Obama could probably do by himself that would be a signal accomplishment of his presidency: End the war on terror. Or, more realistically, start planning and preparing the country for phasing it out. For 11 years, the […]
THE bomb was hidden on a motorcycle parked outside a milk shop in the narrow lanes of Abbas Town, a middle-class, mainly Shia district of Karachi. Ali Mudassar remembers sitting across the road from the milk-seller on the evening of November 18th, chatting to friends. The force of the explosion hurled him backwards into the […]
Anyone seeking to understand Afghanistan in general, the flaws in the United States’ effort there, or life on the ground as a political advisor in the midst of a counterinsurgency, should read The Valley‘s Edge by Daniel Green. The book is a detailed, first-hand account of how a team of U.S. soldiers and civilians, focused on improving […]
Many years ago, Pakistan analyst Khaled Ahmed identified some nations as not having a foreign policy. Export-oriented economies, according to his thesis, chose not to have a clearly defined foreign policy. On issues of controversy, they lay low rather than commit to a side. Ahmed named Singapore and South Korea as his examples. For them, […]
Early in 2012, a small group of US congressmen looking for alternatives to the Obama administration’s AfPak policy made recommendations for two changes in the region. The first, that instead of fantasizing about incorporating the Taliban into the Afghan political system the United States ought to rearm the Northern Alliance, had been discussed previously. The […]
The conventional wisdom holds that India and Pakistan, which remain locked in conflict over everything from the disputed territory of Kashmir to the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, while pointing dozens of nuclear-armed missiles at each other, are not going to cut a permanent peace deal anytime soon. This year, however, the perennially feuding neighbors finally […]
The first sign of officialdom you see when you drive from the Kabul airport parking lot is a government billboard looming above a traffic jam. It’s the size of a highway billboard in the United States, but closer to the ground, so that you can make out every nuance of the faces on it. Those […]
IT IS hard to feel particularly sorry at the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, in Pune, India, early on November 21st. He was the sole surviving gunman from a 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, in which Pakistani infiltrators killed at least 166 people during a prolonged and traumatising rampage in the city. The assault on ordinary residents […]
looking beyond borders 