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What does BRICS declaration mean for Pakistan?...........(Daily Times Sep 06,2017)

The section on International Peace and Security (from point 35 to 52) of the 60-point declaration released at end of the BRICS summit held over the weekend in China has evoked mixed reactions in and outside Pakistan..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s sources of resilience......................................(Daily Times Sep 05,2017)

In a recent article Battered, But Still Afloat, British author Anatol Lieven speaks about the resilience of the Pakistani society. While reviewing various strands of the society, Lieven lists the extended family and the Army as the two.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Chinese Commitment and Expectations..............(Daily Times August 27,2017)

Despite the exit of Nawaz Sharif, officials and intelligentsia in China remain confident and exuberant about some early harvest projects - energy, transportation and logistics - nearing close to completion in 2018................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan's image problem is our own doing...........(Daily Times August 18,2017)

Pakistani officials often hold external factors responsible for the country's negative image abroad. They pay little attention to their own conduct that in many cases is the cause of such perceptions..........................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Sharif Is Not Erdogan....................................................(Friday Times August 18,2017)

Of late a number of Pakistani politicians and experts—either motivated, confused, ignorant or blind believers in personalities—drew comparisons between Turkey and Pakistan, stretching them as far as to equate ousted..................[ Read Full Story ]

What is holding Pakistan back?.................................(Jeo News August 14,2017)

With the July disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office, however controversial, and the initiation of four criminal cases against him and the family for fraud, forgery and concealment of assets nearly two weeks................[ Read Full Story ]

Whole-of-government approach needed.................(Daily Times August 14,2017)

Recent interviews of President Trump’s National Security Adviser HR McMaster sound like alarm bells for Pakistan. While talking of an Afghanistan strategy packaged in a regional collaboration context, McMaster resonated a White House ..............[ Read Full Story ]

Neo-normal in Pakistan: lie, cheat, and forge with no remorse.................(Daily Times August 01,2017)

For our great neighbour China, the neo-Normal has been a staggering 7%+ GDP growth for nearly a decade. In fact, the term neo-normal had made its way into the economic dictionary simply because of the mind-boggling speed.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Panama leaks lesson: judiciary is the bulwark against elites...................(Daily Times July 21,2017)

The circumstances surrounding and events accompanying the Panama Papers remind me of two meetings I had with former premier Benazir Bhutto in March/April 1999 shortly before Ms Bhutto flew out into exile............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Panamagate: Time to Face Up The Reality?....................(Daily Times July 12,2017)
If the Joint Investigation Team’s (JIT) finding about two declarations submitted by Maryam Nawaz is correct, she will be facing criminal prosecution on account of forgery.

For many, this finding has affirmed apprehensions regarding our ruling elite’s propensity to lie, cheat and obfuscate facts..........................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Afghanistan: Beset by Geo-Politics...............................(Daily Times June 21,2017)
The Trump administration plans to beef up its nearly 9000 troops with another 4,000 with the stated objective of training and assisting the Afghan security forces on the way to peace and reconciliation. This addition comes in extremely.................[ Read Full Story ]

Will Nawaz submit ‘tampered documents’ before JIT today?...............(Daily Times June 09,2017)
Abig question surrounding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s appearance today before the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is whether he will draw on documents that have been tampered with?............................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Mr Ghani’s anger..............................................................(Friday Times June 09,2017)
Political temperatures spiked to unprecedented levels with a May 31 terrorist attack in Kabul that has left about 150 people dead. Afghan President Ashraf  Ghani gave out this figure in his inaugural speech to the delegates from 23 nations at the Kabul Process Summit on June 6.................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Ghani’s outburst and Pakistan’s options.........................(Daily Times June 08,2017)
Asharaf Ghani’s charged Pakistan-focused speech before the Kabul Process Summit on June 6 in the presence of a Pakistani delegation left quite a few foreign delegates wondering as to what the embattled president was up to....................[ Read Full Story ]

Clouds of third Afghan war?...........................................(Daily Times June 01,2017)
No words are enough to condemn the dastardly truck bombing in Kabul that took at least 80 lives and left hundreds wounded, some of them fatally....................[ Read Full Story ]

Keeping politics out of business.................................(Daily Times May 29,2017)
After 22 days, Pakistan reopened the Friendship Gate at Chaman border crossing on May 27 on “humanitarian grounds” coinciding with the Ramazan in Afghanistan. At least 12, including two FC personnel, five children and.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-Afghan Relations: Detente?..................................(Daily Times May 21,2017)
Afghanistan’s Khaama Press news agency on Saturday quoted President Ashraf Ghani as saying that “Pakistan is in isolation but an isolated Pakistan is not in favour of Afghanistan.” The country must be encouraged to..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Who Are You Calling a colony?........................................(Friday TimesMay 19,2017)
Some 29 countries, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund participated in the Belt and Road Forum (B&RF) for International Cooperation, including senior leaders and officials from the US, Japan and South Korea..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Multilateralism: Hostage to geo-politics...........................(Daily Times May 08,2017)
At a May 2015 global forum in Beijing, former President Hamid Karzai had talked of high time to "recommit ourselves to peaceful conflict resolution, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of individual countries and non-interference...........[ Read Full Story ]

For smooth One-Belt, China takes Af-Pak diplomacy up a notch.........(Friday Times May 05,2017)
China is running full-steam ahead with multi-tier diplomacy to create a synergy of thought and action among regional countries as part of its intense focus on the realization of its ambitious One-Belt, One-Road (OBOR) initiatives.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Why Not Publish The JIT Report?.....................................(Daily Times May 02,2017)
Government’s actions based on the JIT report on Dawn Leaks (dismissals of two technocrats) has unfortunately resuscitated the latent fault lines in Pakistan’s political landscape...........................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Social Media Not the Forum To Resolve Civ-Mil Tension.........................(Daily Times April 30,2017)
Pakistan’s state institutions have yet to learn the art of strategic communication. Confessional video statement of the once-dreaded TTP spokesperson, Ehsanullah Ehsan, that rang on the national media outlets for days.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Panama and our Morality Crisis.......................................(Daily Times April 23,2017)
Pakistan’s ruling elite is not known for drawing moral lessons from its experiences. The elite know that its money and muscle can help it find its way through the system with the help of highly-paid barristers on its side................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Mashal and Impending Challenges ..................................(Daily Times April 17,2017)
The lynching of the 23 year old Mashal Khan by a raging and reckless mob at the Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan , triggered an outpour of condemnation and protests, including protestations and warnings by the ruling elites.....................[ Read Full Story ]

Fixing The Leaky Tax System............................(Express Tribune April 12,2017)
Criticism is growing over the government failure to stem terror financing. Apart from freezing or blocking a few thousand bank accounts with insignificant amounts of cash, the campaign to control financing of militant and terrorists..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Be Ready For More Acrimony from India.....................(Daily Times April 11,2017)
The conviction to death of Kulbhushan Jadhav through a Field General Court Martial came as a surprise to the majority of Pakistanis. But not unexpected though as he, according to officials, was an extremely................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-Afghan Relations Are Moving Towards Rapprochement.......(Daily Times April 08,2017)
Ahead of the multi-nation Moscow peace initiative centred on Afghanistan, behind-the-scenes activity between Islamabad and Kabul seems to be picking up. The mid-March London meeting between Sartaj Aziz and Hanif Atmar........................[ Read Full Story ]

Messy Officialdom in Interior Ministry................(Expressn Tribune March 22,2017)
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is often a cauldron of outrage when responding to criticism of his ministry and allied departments. He believes detractors are being unfair to him. He has for sure a point there. But the point.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Open Borders: What next?........................................(Daily Times March 21,2017)
Behind the scenes diplomatic efforts, particularly by the United Kingdom, as well as intense lobbying by business community and civil society has finally yielded fruit................................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Bordering on insanity..........................................(Friday Times March 17,2017)
Top businessmen from Afghanistan and Pakistan went into a huddle this past week to raise a collective voice about the consequences of closing the border on Feb 17. The consensus that emerged from the meeting,.................................[ Read Full Story ]

Dangers of Populism......................................(Expressn Tribune March 15,2017)
Prime Minister Narendra Modia and team are basking in glory and confidence following the stunning success in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and three other states. Nobody could foresee the BJP grabbing a whopping 310 seats out of the 403 in the 220 million strong UP......................................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Victims of Narratives........................................(Expressn Tribune March 09,2017)
The narratives in Kabul and Islamabad refuse to change; Afghan officials insist Tehreek-e- Taliban Afghanistan (TTA) militants remain ensconced in Pakistani havens in Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta and elsewhere..................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Common interests, common enemy................................(Friday Times Feb 24,2017)
Can both Pakistan and Afghanistan step back from their positions and find a middle ground on which to get back to formal talks on issues that they both face? This proposition may seem like a distant possibility........................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-Afghan stand-off: the way forward..................(Expressn Tribune Feb 21,2017)
The unilateral border closure by Pakistan on February 15 once again exposed the current extremely brittle and acrimonious nature of its current relations with Afghanistan. Slogans such as “Death to Pakistan, Down with Pakistan,” not only resonated at rallies in Kabul and Jalalabad but also made super-leads of the newspapers ............[ Read Full Story ]

Aberrations and terrorism.......................................(Expressn Tribune Feb 15,2017)
Nearly 70 years into existence, Pakistan remains stymied with various aberrations such as Fata, the judicial interventions in social affairs of the citizens, and the state’s indirect support — both political and financial to organisations......................[ Read Full Story ]

A NATO rethink on Afghanistan?......................................(Friday Times Feb 10,2017)
Is a US-led NATO rethink on Afghanistan and Pakistan underway? Has the Indian policy of “isolating” Pakistan outlived its temporal utility following some immature moves by the Indian prime minister and the Afghan president?..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Economic Hitmen...............................................(Expressn Tribune Feb 07,2017)
Explaining his rise to the top echelons of the US multinationals , John Perkins, the author of the best-seller Confessions of An Economic Hitman, talks  of how corrupt rulers of smaller developing nations are ensnared in an inextricable................[ Read Full Story ]

A Lot to Talk About!............................................(Expressn Tribune Feb 01,2017)
The latest show-cause notice to the Bol News TV by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) says the show Live with Dr Shahid Masood discussed sensitive information “recklessly and carelessly” Only a....................[ Read Full Story ]

Coal energy: at what cost?...................................(Expressn Tribune Jan 18,2017)
Minister of Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal recently informed the parliamentary committee on CPEC that Thar coal would be used for electricity for the next 400 years and that two transmission lines were being installed at .....................[ Read Full Story ]

May the force be with you...................................(Expressn Tribune Jan 13,2017)
Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province has seen a remarkable turnaround in the fight against terrorist and extremist groups in the last couple of years. This province’s geographical location has indeed been a....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Crisis of Conscience...............................................(Expressn Tribune Jan 05,2017)
Events since April last year, when the Panama Papers caused ripples across the world, and the ensuing debates in Pakistan, leave little doubt that this finds itself in throes of a crisis of conscience, spearheaded by the......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Geo-Politics and Afghanistan.....................................(Expressn Tribune Dec 29 ,2016)
A new regional dynamism on peace and conflict led by Russia and China has emerged. With the presence of armed groups and the emergence of new terrorists bands such as Daesh there, Afghanistan remains at the.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Bringing up the bodies.....................................................(Friday Times Dec 23 ,2016)
ometimes it takes a judge to hunt down a suicide bomber in Pakistan. It was only when Justice Qazi Faez Isa forced the police to forensically enhance photographs of terrorists, print them in newspapers and offer.......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Bringing up the bodies.....................................................(Friday Times Dec 23 ,2016)
ometimes it takes a judge to hunt down a suicide bomber in Pakistan. It was only when Justice Qazi Faez Isa forced the police to forensically enhance photographs of terrorists, print them in newspapers and offer.......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Police and Political Commitment.............................(Express Tribune Dec 21 ,2016)
In a controversial move, the Sindh government has the police chief A D Khwaja home following his apparent refusal to play second fiddle to it as well as admission of failure in “good governance” within his department.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Russia, Daesh and Afghanistan..................................(Express Tribune Dec 14 ,2016)
Statements by the Russian ambassador in Kabul, Alexander Mantytskiy, over the weekend caused quite an uproar in the Afghan capital, first by holding a press conference on Thursday, and then by appearing before ...................................[ Read Full Story ]

The Sharif exit.........................................................(Express Tribune Nov 23 ,2016)
No body knows what transpired behind the scenes until November 21, when the ISPR officially gave away General Raheel Sharif’s address to a gathering of Army and Rangers personnel as a “farewell call.”This ended the suspense..............[ Read Full Story ]

Sharbat case: from across border........................(Express Tribune Nov 15 ,2016)
For most Afghans Sharbat Gula symbolises the sufferings and hardships that this nation has gone through ever since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.  The CIA-ISI-led insurgency then made global headlines then................[ Read Full Story ]

Sharbat Gula: Lessons for Pakistan.........................(Express Tribune Nov 10 ,2016)
For nearly 15 days, the world media rang with the ‘injustice’ that Pakistan was meting out to the National Geographic famed ‘Afghan Girl’ Sharbat Gula. Most of media pounced upon the news of her arrest, the subsequent imprisonment for...................[ Read Full Story ]

At least we aren’t Turkey..................................(Express Tribune Nov 04 ,2016)
Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan gleefully greeted Imran Khan’s decision to shelve his Nov 2 ‘lockdown’ plans of Islamabad with a “no winners or losers today” declaration. “Today Pakistan has won… Pakistan’s win is in peace, democracy,................[ Read Full Story ]

Time To Change Your Proxy Settings.......................(Friday Times Oct 28 ,2016)
Abysmally shameful is the only way to describe the acrimonious exchange of words among political leaders following the Quetta attack on Monday in which 61 cadets were killed at the police training centre. As condemnations....................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-Afghan relations and reprisals..........................(Express Tribune Oct 26 ,2016)
“Gradual squeeze” is the new phrase Pakistani officials are invoking when responding to questions on what they are doing to blunt the Taliban ability to plan and organise operations inside Afghanistan. Taliban leaders are being told to move families and businesses elsewhere and refrain......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Quetta college carnage: It's nothing else but tit for tat...............(Express Tribune Oct 25 ,2016)
Regardless of how you look at it, central to terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan are known instruments of destabilisation and instability i.e. TTP, IS/Daesh, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They are the handy pawns in the proxy war that is currently underway in the region.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Gwadar, CPEC and Questions.....................................(Express Tribune Oct 19 ,2016)
The extremely cautious and calculated Chinese approach -meticulous planning and patient/quiet execution represents a sharp contrast to the way Pakistani politics and bureaucracy works. Chinese officials and friends privately often complain of the propensity among Pakistanis of unnecessary........................[ Read Full Story ]

Handling the Crouching Monster.................................(Express Tribune Oct 12 ,2016)
A US-Afghan raid in the east Afghan province of Paktika has put down another terrorist wanted by Pakistan — Qari Ajmal — the mastermind of the March 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. The Lashkar-e-Jhangi (LeJ) had taken refuge in Paktika following the assassination on November 1 , 2013 .........[ Read Full Story ]

What is important?................................................(Express Tribune Oct 05 ,2016)
We were at a counter-radicalisation workshop in Washington (September 29) when the news of the Indian “surgical strike” struck us all — a few subject specialists drawn from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and of course the United States. Some reacted with surprise, others with a sense of shock and fear..................[ Read Full Story ]

Modi’s War Hysteria...................................................(Friday Times Sep 30 ,2016)
After drumming up war hysteria for several days, India’s top brass has taken the route of de-escalation, manifest in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words on September 24 at a BJP meeting: “People of Pakistan should question..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Daesh, Haqqanis and Sanctuaries.........................(Express Tribune, Sep 28 ,2016)
Abandoning a project in which the United States and its partners have invested 15 years, billions upon billions of dollars, and thousands of lives with no acceptable outcome in sight is harrowing. Although the United States’ engagement ..........[ Read Full Story ]

Daesh, Haqqanis and Sanctuaries.........................(Express Tribune, Sep 28 ,2016)
Abandoning a project in which the United States and its partners have invested 15 years, billions upon billions of dollars, and thousands of lives with no acceptable outcome in sight is harrowing. Although the United States’ engagement ..........[ Read Full Story ]

Surgical Strikes Post-Uri?...............................(Express Tribune, Sep 21 ,2016)
Within hours of the Uri attack, many Indians began drumming up the idea of surgical strikes into Pakistan. This chorus takes one back to the outrage that the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks had caused across India.....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Armed but Not Dangerous...........................................(Friday Times, Sep 07 ,2016)
The imminent retirement—as of now—of Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif continues to attract speculation. The rumour mill and alarmist analysts are still talking about whether the general will bow out quietly or..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Instruments of Terror.........................................(Express Tribune, Sep 07 ,2016)
The equation is quite even as far as allegations and suspicions go. Pakistan is at pains to convince the world that the intermittent violence it experiences is inflicted by groups, which can be termed instruments of terrorism and instability..............[ Read Full Story ]

Police, Crime and Terrorism................................(Express Tribune, Aug 31,2016)
On August 4, the chief of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Police, Nasir Khan Durrani, walked a few dozen steps to the venue of an event being held on Youm-e-Shuhada (Police Martyrs’ Day) in Peshawar. The reason — special security arrangements that required all vehicles to park at a decent distance from the venue................................[ Read Full Story ]

Kashmir: morality and Indian denial.......................(Express Tribune, Aug 24,2016)
The Maharaja of Kashmir imposed a 12 day curfew between 24 September-5 October in 1931. Two years earlier, the then Prime Minister of Kashmir Sir Albion Banerjee, a non- Kashmiri (non-Muslim) had resigned following disagreement with Maharaja of Kashmir and did not wish to be part of the system.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Balochistan is no Kashmir............................................(Friday Times, Aug 19,2016)
The August 8 attack in Quetta kicked up a storm over the “effectiveness” of Pakistan’s anti-terror National Action Plan. It also refocused attention on the possible Indian hand in it, as suggested by provincial and federal ministers......................[ Read Full Story ]

Afghans should be treated with dignity......................(Express Tribune, Aug 17,2016)
“Welcome to this gathering in nice weather but heated environment.” This is how Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the embattled Afghan Chief Executive, welcomed his supporters in Kabul on Monday. With this he encapsulated the heightened...............[ Read Full Story ]

Mistrust and misinformation......................................(Friday Times, Aug 12,2016)
The latest casualty of the deadly India-Afghanistan-Pakistan contest in the region were nearly five dozen innocent non-combatants at Quetta on August 8. Only two weeks ago, on July 23, at least 80 innocent people fell victim to.......................[ Read Full Story ]

Mistrust and misinformation......................................(Friday Times, Aug 12,2016)
The latest casualty of the deadly India-Afghanistan-Pakistan contest in the region were nearly five dozen innocent non-combatants at Quetta on August 8. Only two weeks ago, on July 23, at least 80 innocent people fell victim to.......................[ Read Full Story ]

Quetta Blast & a Confused Chorus...........................(Express Tribune, Aug 10,2016)
A chorus of confused responses followed the Quetta carnage on August 8, that left over 70 dead and dozens maimed. The top civil and military leadership called it an attempt by the “enemies of the country” to sabotage the ongoing........................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-Afghan ties: can CPEC be a CBM?.....................(Express Tribune, Aug 03,2016)
Negatives continue to dominate the Pakistan-Afghanistan conversation. The Afghan government remains unhappy with Pakistan over the Haqqani network. On August 1, it officially “regretted” the installation of a new gate at Torkham,.......[ Read Full Story ]

Kashmir: The Legal and Political Challenges for Pakistan..............(Friday Times, July 29,2016)
Kashmiris in 12 constituencies in various parts of Pakistan voted on July 21 to elect the state Legislative Assembly (LA). The Kashmir chapter of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) swept the polls by bagging 32 of the 41 directly.......[ Read Full Story ]

Open letter to interior minister.................................(Express Tribune, July 27,2016)
We keep hearing about the National Action Plan (NAP) as the antidote for terrorism, crime and poor law enforcement. We also realise the remarkable successes of Operation Zarb-e-Azb and the space it has created for civilian law......................[ Read Full Story ]

Pie in the Kabul sky.................................................(Friday Times, July 22,2016)
It is ping-pong season in Afghanistan. Within 48 hours of an assertion on the status of hostilities by US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford, Taliban delivered a snub through coordinated attacks in several districts in..................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan is Not Isolated............................................(Express Tribune, July 20,2016)
Some recent events and statements originating in Washington, Warsaw (NATO summit) and Kabul, seemed to have created a triumphant, though largely misplaced impression that both India and Afghanistan have managed to encircle..............[ Read Full Story ]

Terror Visits Dhaka.......................................................(Friday Times, July 15,2016)
The terrorist attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery café in the diplomatic quarters of Dhaka on July 1 and 2 triggered a chain reaction............................................[ Read Full Story ]

The Iraq Inquiry and Geopolitics................................(Express Tribune July 13,2016)
If we ever needed a damning indictment of ugly geo-politically motivated military interventions, Sir John Chilcot delivered it on July 6 — The Iraq inquiry. It also triggered a string of apologies that reveal hypocrisy and self-preserving expedience of some of Tony Blair’s former colleagues. “We have concluded that..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Lingering ghosts of the past........................................(Express Tribune July 06,2016)
This month nine years ago, the world watched in awe as the Lal Masjid brigade terrorised Islamabad citizens and shopkeepers, including Chinese business owners, before being smoked to death on July 10. This day is a grim reminder of how.........[ Read Full Story ]

Modi’s misjudgment.......................................................(Friday Times July 01,2016)
In a rare interview with Times Now, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was hard to decide who to speak to about peace in Islamabad.................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s chance.......................................................(Express Tribune June 30,2016)
Battle lines in the Asia Pivot have probably never been more pronounced. The Obama Administration went out of its way to in its bid to get India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) confirmed. China and several other.................[ Read Full Story ]

You can’t cook a narrative........................................(Friday Times June 24,2016)
Two incidents compelled me to write this column: the directive by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to two private TV channels to air apologies for promoting controversial and sectarian views during their...............[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan NAP(ing)!..................................................(Express Tribune June 22,2016)
A consultation that a national counter-terrorism outfit held to prepare for a conference on policy recommendations to the government exemplified the crisis of intellectual poverty, conceptual confusion and bankruptcy of political vision........................[ Read Full Story ]

Playing the Victim.......................................................(Friday Times June 17,2016)
A Pakistan Army major and an Afghan soldier lost their lives during overnight clashes at the Torkham border that began late on May 12. At least 22 others were wounded on both sides, ten of them civilians. Pakistan had closed the days............[ Read Full Story ]

Orlando Shooting & US Media Narrative...................(Express Tribune June 15,2016)
Omar Mateen was still killing and holding on to hostages inside the gay nightclub in Orlanda. Outside, the US media, the Republican presidential presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio were screaming.......[ Read Full Story ]

Why Are Afghans Wary of Pakistan?...........................(Friday Times June 10,2016)
“My dear friend,” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a tweet addressed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 4. “Welcome to your second home. We are delighted to have you in Afghanistan.”.................................................[ Read Full Story ]

What Democracy?..............................................(Express Tribune June 08,2016)
Those coming into power on the back of poor peoples’ votes appear to loathe democratic conduct. They liken self-preservation and personal interests to democracy and equate any opposition  to an attack on democracy when questioned...........[ Read Full Story ]

‘Allies or Antagonists...................................................(The News May 29,2016)
Is the relationship strained and chequered because of the frustrations in Afghanistan, or is it a façade for something else?.....................................................[ Read Full Story ]

‘A Clear Signal’.................................................................(Friday Times May 27,2016)
“Our job is to help Afghanistan secure its own country, not to have our men and women in uniform engage in that fight for them,” told reporters in Vietnam on May 23. “On the other hand, where we have a high-profile leader who has been consistently part of operations and plans to potentially harm US personnel, ....................[ Read Full Story ]

Reforming the Justice System.............................(Express Tribune May 18,2016)
As the hapless nation agonises over the worst squabbles among the ruling elite over the Panama Papers, it also wonders which institution to look up to for relief from issues arising out of bad governance or deficient rule of law. In these...........[ Read Full Story ]

Peace Process: Hostage to Haqqanis........................(Express Tribune May 11,2016)
Going by the current official and private narratives out of Kabul, it is obvious that the bilateral relationship as well as the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) process are now practically hostage to the Afghan government’s...................[ Read Full Story ]

What’s in it for China?.............................................(Friday Times May 06,2016)
“China is reportedly upset over the slow progress made in awarding the $2-billion commercial contract that includes laying a gas pipeline and setting up a LNG terminal in Gwadar,” according to a newspaper report on May 3....................[ Read Full Story ]

A complete encirclement?....................................(Express Tribune May 04,2016)
Pakistan’s encirclement by the Indo-Afghan alliance is nearly complete. The Afghan Army Chief General Qadam Shah Shaheem said on April 30 that if other options don’t yield any positive results in bringing Pakistani incursions to a halt...................[ Read Full Story ]

Corruption, terrorism and accountability...................(Friday Times April 29,2016)
The two Sharifs at the top appear to be at loggerheads over the relationship between corruption, terrorism and accountability..............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Reforms need courage........................................(Express Tribunes, April 27,2016)
Spread over 74 square kilometres, the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has endured conflict, disorder and deterioration like no other Pakistani province ever since the former Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in December 1979. The presence of Afghan mujahideens’ command......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Countering extremist mindset............................(Express Tribunes, April 20,2016)
In April 2016, extremists won — twice — in the federal capital; first, all the hooligans — supporters of a person whose execution was endorsed by the highest court — went away scot free. They breached agreements, violated law,..............[ Read Full Story ]

CPEC: paradoxical approaches...............................(Express Tribunes, April 13,2016)
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an inescapable part of the conversation, whenever officials, private businessmen or intelligentsia from both countries meet — regardless where................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Lessons from Sri Lanka – II...................................(Friday Times, April 08,2016)
Rehabilitation, reform and reintegration of ex-combatants, and the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) constitute the four important “R” challenges for post-conflict strategies. If handled in a politically injudicious way, they can ..........[ Read Full Story ]

Any judicial reforms in sight?..............................(Express Tribunes, April 06,2016)
Pakistanis are great talkers. Charmers. Populists. High on complaints and diagnosis. Low on solutions — pro-active and reactive actions for course correction. The chorus of pontifications and lofty rhetoric from top positions grows ever louder....[ Read Full Story ]

Black Sunday — any lessons?.........................(Express Tribunes, March 30,2016)
Parliamentarian Shazia Marri’s recent experience at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul shows how Pakistan and Afghanistan have a heavy baggage of historical acrimony and mutual suspicion to deal with......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Lessons From Sri Lanka – I......................................(Friday Times, March 25,2016)
The calm that prevails in Jaffna – the capitol of the northern province of Srilanka – masks a simmering resentment with the central government, unease with the presence and highhanded tactics of nearly 150,000 troops, and ..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Tamil rebellion: lessons for Pakistan....................(Express Tribune, March 23,2016)
Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern province, represents a grim reminder of the war that Tamil separatists imposed on the country since 1983, until the elimination of their iconic rebel leader Prabhakaran in May 2009. The central................[ Read Full Story ]

The Leaking Taxation Regime.............................(Express Tribune, March 19,2016)
A few small examples illustrate the extent of the brutal tax evasion taking place in Pakistan. These can be likened to vultures out to secure their interests at the cost of the rest. A national daily reports that the number of doctors...................[ Read Full Story ]

Intelligence Cooperation: A Game Changer?.............(Express Tribune, March 09,2016)
Maha Shivratri is one of the biggest Hindu festivals that is celebrated with great fervour in India. It fell on March 7 this year but not without a bit of anxiety for many; both New Delhi, and parts of the state of Gujarat were placed .....................[ Read Full Story ]

Historical baggage at Kabul airport.......................(Friday Times, March 04,2016)
Parliamentarian Shazia Marri’s recent experience at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul shows how Pakistan and Afghanistan have a heavy baggage of historical acrimony and mutual suspicion to deal with...................................[ Read Full Story ]

Clouds Over The Peace Process.........................(Express Tribune, March 02,2016)
Sunny Kabul is abuzz with diplomatic activity. One the one hand, the National Unity Government (NUG) is striving hard to get the reconciliation process going with lots of behind-the-scenes contacts between various stakeholders.............[ Read Full Story ]

Travels At The Expense of The National Exchequer...(Express Tribunes,Feb 23,2016)
This is the story of a government official — in his own words — who has served various governments in different capacities: staff officer, diplomat, federal secretary, since times immemorial. A recent report presented before the...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Great guns.....................................................................(Friday Times,Feb 19,2016)
On February 12, the US announced it will go ahead with the sale of eight F16 fighter jets to Pakistan. The $699-million deal also includes radar and electronic warfare equipment...........................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

K-P’s Curriculum: Khan’s Real Fight.....................(Express Tribunes, Feb 04,2016)
Imran Khan and company are getting ready to stage street protests again. The electoral fraud saga refuses to fade from Khan’s narrative. “I will continue fighting the forces of status quo,” he insists. While he draws derision from his.................[ Read Full Story ]

Why The World Does Not Believe Us............................(Friday Times,Jan 29,2016)
The public outrage over yet another “security lapse” makes complete sense. It marked the fourth consecutive terror strike within a week leaving almost 50 innocents people dead. These incidents of violence shocked everyone......................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan taking off?............................................(Express Tribunes,Jan 28,2016)
In recent public appearances, including in an article, the Minister for Planning, Ahsan Iqbal, has likened Pakistan to an aircraft and spelt out the basic conditions for a successful take-off: “An aircraft can land with one..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Quadrilateral Coordination Group: Roadmap to Reconciliation............(Friday Times,Jan 22,2016)
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the US met in Kabul on January 18 for the 2nd Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) meeting to devise a roadmap for peace in Afghanistan. The meeting can be seen as a step forward, because its primary objective was to build on the work done in the first meeting at................[ Read Full Story ]

The Mystery of Radicalisation...................................(Express Tribune ,Jan 20,2016)
Intelligentsia in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries has miserably failed in offering genuine diagnoses and recipes for contemporary issues, such as religious radicalisation and terrorism mostly perpetrated by Muslims.................[ Read Full Story ]

On the Edge...................................................................(Friday Times, Jan 08,2016)
The Pathankot air base saga and a nearly simultaneous attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif has turned out to be the real “existential” challenge to the India-Pakistan relations, resurrected recently from the ruins of acrimony and hostility...[ Read Full Story ]

Challenges facing the counter-terror drive................(Express Tribune, Jan 06,2016)
Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the National Internal Security Policy and the National Action Plan (NAP) are all symbols of Pakistan’s struggle to wrest back the space that the state had lost to non-state actors. Of these, the NAP most probably...................[ Read Full Story ]

The NAP, Idps and Refugees.....................................(Express Tribune, Dec 29,2015)
The National Action Plan (NAP) promises administrative and development reforms in Fata, with immediate focus on repatriation of IDPs and formulation of a comprehensive policy to deal with the issue of Afghan refugees, beginning with their............[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s Persistent Security Challenges..............(East Asia Forum, Dec 23,2015)
On 2 December 2015, Pakistan executed four militants involved in the 16 December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. The hour-long siege of the school had resulted in the deaths of 151 persons, including 125 childre .............[ Read Full Story ]

A Nation of Talkers...................................................(Express Tribune, Dec 18,2015)
Minutes after watching BBC and CNN updating the world about the progress of the climate summit in Paris where nearly 200 nations adopted a global pact to fight climate change, I set off for the office. The moment I stepped out, .............[ Read Full Story ]

Is Pakistan Safer?.......................................................(Friday Times, Dec 18,2015)
One year later, it seems that the dastardly attack on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar finally provided the trigger that the country had badly needed all these years to forcefully take on all those who had been challenging the writ of.......[ Read Full Story ]

Takeaways from Islamabad.........................................(Friday Times, Dec 11,2015)
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was in Islamabad on December 9 to discuss the revival of peace talks in the ‘Heart of Asia Conference’, when Taliban gunmen wearing uniforms stormed the Kandahar airport. At least 37 people were killed..........[ Read Full Story ]

A Perilous State of Denial................................(Express Tribune, Dec 09,2015)
The Heart of Asia Conference is about Afghanistan’s multiple pressing political and economic problems. That is why leaders from over two dozen countries gathered in Islamabad to help one another understand the possible....................[ Read Full Story ]

Police, Devolution and Terrorism..............................(Express Tribune, Dec 02,2015)
Around the middle of November, I initiated an email correspondence with two differententities. One was addressed to the chief of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) police. The other directed at the current head of an institution..................[ Read Full Story ]

What Ails Afghanistan?..................................................(Friday Times, Nov 27,2015)
The 10th meeting of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Economic Commission (JEC) on November 23 ended in an expected drab draw. Kabul once again sought access to New Delhi for its trucks via the Wagah-Attari border crossing....................[ Read Full Story ]

Fuss Over Good Governance.....................................(Express Tribune, Nov 25,2015)
The Pakistani media has been awash with heated debates over the ‘unconstitutionality’ of the concerns on good governance that General Raheel Sharif conveyed during the November 10 Corps Commanders’ conference....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Detoxification of Pak-Afghan Narratives.............(Express Tribune, Nov 18,2015)
Whenever Afghans, Indians and Pakistanis meet, most of them usually trade stereotypes about one another. They regurgitate cliched narratives and often get bogged down in unpleasant exchanges rooted in history. During.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Bihar Elections — Mind your Own Business, Pakistan.............(Express Tribune, Nov 13,2015)
Bihar has spoken. A thumping rejection of the Modi doctrine. Should Pakistanis rejoice? Not really. Let the non- BJP Indians relish what seems to be a combination of Nitish Kumar’s good work, the enraged Muslim population...........................[ Read Full Story ]

Reasons to Ponder...................................................(Express Tribune, Nov 04,2015)
Finally, Pemra has asked private radio and TV channels to refrain from covering banned groups, including Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and its charity extension, Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FiF). The Pemra directive issued on November 2 covers....[ Read Full Story ]

Time to Move on Khan!...............................................(Express Tribune, Oct 28,2015)
Can Imran Khan’s charisma survive the cacophony that has almost exclusively centered around the 2013 general election results? Or will the goodwill for his mission i.e., ensuring transparent elections, rule of law, meritocracy.......................[ Read Full Story ]

‘The Pakistanization of Turkey’...................................(Friday Times, Oct 23,2015)
On November 1, millions of Turk voters will take part in a snap election to decide who will govern them, after the general polls on June 7 failed to produc..’......[ Read Full Story ]

October rage in India: surprising?...........................(Express Tribune Oct 21,2015)
A string of events in recent weeks — mostly involving Shiv Sena and RSS activists — shook not only outsiders but also a large number of Indians. Invariably, many have begun questioning whether this attack on the ‘unwanted citizens’......[ Read Full Story ]

Israeli narrative, Palestinian helplessness.................(Express Tribune Oct 13,2015)
“We cannot compromise the goal of an independent homeland for the followers of Zion. Nor can we talk as long as the Palestinians remained divided.” This argument by a veteran Israeli jurist suggests that between March 2006..................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistanisation of Turkey.........................................(Express Tribune, Oct 08,2015)
Will the Syrian crisis and two million refugees have the same impact on Turkey as the Afghan jihad and the refugee exodus from Afghanistan had on Pakistan? This question has started doing the rounds among Turk intellectuals......................[ Read Full Story ]

Education or Organised Extortion?..............................(Express Tribune, Oct 01,2015)
The recent legal action by the regional office of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against Dr Ihsan Ali, vice-chancellor (VC) of Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, has sent shock waves across academic circles in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).....[ Read Full Story ]

Politics, militancy and crime...........................................(Friday Times, Sep 25,2015)
Law enforcement agencies picked up more than 60 suspects, including about 30 Afghan nationals, in a number of raids in Islamabad on September 18. They seized weapons and ammunition from the dreaded stronghold of.......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Finding the middle ground......................................(Express Tribune, Sep 22,2015)
By directly telephoning Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to condemn theterrorist attack on the Badhaber Air Base, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani broke the ice that had formed following the spate of attacks in early August in Kabul. The mood in the...........[ Read Full Story ]

Counter-terror response: a mixed bag......................(Express Tribune, Sep 15,2015)
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar appears to be working overtime to get a handle on what certainly is a complicated task, implementation of theNational Action Plan (NAP). Many ambiguities and confusions that had, for long, surrounded.............[ Read Full Story ]

Change on the Balochistan horizon?.................................(Friday Times, Sep 11 ,2015)
Firstly, Dr Allah Nazar, the mercurial chief of the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) – one of the four major separatist groups in the province – has reportedly been killed in an operation in the Awaran district of Balochistan. “The operation was.....[ Read Full Story ]

Modi in a muddle.............................................................(Friday Times, Sep 04 ,2015)
The emotional outbursts following the canceled meeting between the Indian and Pakistani national security advisers have given way to a more rational assessment of what went wrong...............................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Counterterror in K-P and FATA: A turnaround?........(Express Tribune, Sep 02 ,2015)
Flanked by tribal areas from three sides, the Peshawar region experienced death, destruction and trauma between 2009 and 2013. During this turbulent period, terrorists, militants and criminals piled misery on the city as state security.........[ Read Full Story ]

Education, extremism and the elite......................(Express Tribune, Aug 26 ,2015)
Why shouldn’t young minds turn towards extremist ideologies — I’m not talking of terrorism — if they are marginalised, their basic rights grossly violated, or if they are under-paid or unemployed? What role are many private educational...[ Read Full Story ]

Counter-terrorism lessons............................................(Friday Times, Aug 21 ,2015)
With most of the officially acknowledged 57 proscribed jihadi organizations headquartered in Punjab, the province stands out as the ideological center, social sanctuary and a viral recruitment ground for extremist ...............[ Read Full Story ]

Terrorism, money laundering and NGOs.....................(Express Tribune, Aug 13 ,2015)
The issue of registration of local and foreign NGOs and the case of modelAyaan Ali in recent weeks have brought terror-funding and money laundering into the public discourse. Ms Ali has been given bail due to the competence of...........[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan in a quandary – again...................................(Friday Times, Aug 07 ,2015)
“Imtiaz, you are a very good guy, I agree with your thoughts, but why don’t you grow a beard?” asked the burly, tall Afghan. The venue was the dull café at Kabul’s scarred Inter-Continental, only a few days after the Indian aircraft hijacking drama had ended in Kandahar on December 31, 1999................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The Myth of Shining India..........................................(Express Tribune, Aug 05 ,2015)
To illustrate how differently India and Pakistan carve and peddle their narratives, former ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram recently quoted an excerpt from a review by Pankaj Mishra, a noted Indian author................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Of judicial commissions & democratic evolutions......(Express Tribune, July 29 ,2015)
Major Western democracies — despite many socio-political shortcomings, not alien to human society at large — stand out for continued democratic exercise and incessant accountability. Legal and institutional oversight of......................[ Read Full Story ]

Will narratives change?................................................(Friday Times, July 24 ,2015)
The July 12 suicide car bombing near a military base in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost killed 20 people and drew instant flak from all those critical of President Ashraf Ghani’s reconciliation moves. The lethal attack provided an............[ Read Full Story ]

Terrorism, governance and the police....................(Express Tribune, June 24 ,2015)
Would the Pakistani military and the paramilitary forces be performing the policing and anti-corruption function had the police and affiliated institutions been autonomous? Would the police be more professional and effective had the...........[ Read Full Story ]

Success lies in the rule of law.................................(Express Tribune, June 17 ,2015)
The recent demolition of an illegally constructed seminary in an Islamabad graveyard, on the orders of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comes as a..............[ Read Full Story ]

An open letter to important men...............................(Express Tribune, June 10 ,2015)
Dear Sharifs, Your predecessors often fell short on their oath of duty. They mostly used the public vote and positions of power to pursue personal or...........[ Read Full Story ]

China, US and Pakistan....................................................(Friday Times, June 05 ,2015)
Pakistan finds itself at the centre of two conflicting visions – one resonating in Washington, and the other emanating out of Beijing. The former accompanied by usual cynical skepticism, the latter loaded with resolve to................[ Read Full Story ]

Money laundering and the West........................(Express Tribune, June 03 ,2015)
The European Union (EU) and Switzerland signed a tax transparency agreement late last month that will put an end to Swiss banking secrecy for EU residents. The two sides will start sharing data on residents’ financial accounts from.................[ Read Full Story ]

‘Outrageous’ intelligence deal..................................(Express Tribune, May 27 ,2015)
In a bizarre though expected display of their contemptuous opposition to Pakistan, a large number of Afghans took umbrage to the recentMemorandum of Understanding (MoU) on counter-terror and security cooperation between the........[ Read Full Story ]

Farce of nation-building.........................................(Express Tribune, May 20 ,2015)
The last few weeks have seen an unusual surge in Taliban operations in at least 10 Afghan provinces. The embattled provinces are all over the country — north, south, west and east — raising questions as to whether the Afghan government....[ Read Full Story ]

Walk the talk..............................................................(Express Tribune, May 13 ,2015)
At the recently held third Think Tank Roundtable Conference onInteraction and Confidence-Building in Asia (CICA) in Shanghai, issues such as China-US relations, Afghanistan, non-traditional security threats and a new.................[ Read Full Story ]

Paradigm shift...........................................................(Friday Times, May 08 ,2015)
A lot of analysis on the current day Pakistan, particularly by American, Indian and Afghan commentators, continues to be rooted in the past. Much of the argument is a one-way ostracization of Pakistan based on the baggage which......................[ Read Full Story ]

The law, the poor & the rich...............................(Express Tribune, May 06 ,2015)
Ayaan’s case is a classic example of how collusion of legal experts on both sides of the fence can blatantly obfuscate crime and delay trials. Taking advantage of the dated criminal procedure code (CrPC), lawyers camouflage their delaying......[ Read Full Story ]

Hate speech & intolerance.................................(Express Tribune, April 29 ,2015)
As the debate over illegal immigrant workers who were heading towards Europe via sea, rages on, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has drawn global attention towards intolerance and racism that is unfolding.........[ Read Full Story ]

Cybercrime, security and rights............................(Express Tribune, April 25 ,2015)
Pakistani politicians, their advisers and bureaucrats are masters of creating deception. Their propensity to inflict crises and shoot themselves in the foot in self-defence also knows no limits. Their latest feat is the...............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Equal citizens..............................................................(Friday Times, April 17 ,2015)
During the recent debate on the Yemen situation in parliament, Senator Aitzaz Ahsan made a rare observation followed by a recommendation – stop using the word “minorities” for non-Muslim Pakistanis, and start treating everybody....[ Read Full Story ]

Politicians against discrimination.........................(Express Tribune, April 17 ,2015)
During the recent joint parliamentary debate on the Yemen situation,Senator Aitzaz Ahsan made a rare observation followed by a recommendation: stop using the word ‘minorities’ for non-Muslim Pakistanis.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Game changer..............................................................(Friday Times, April 10 ,2015)
The entire Middle East, from Israel to Yemen and from Iraq and Iran, finds itself in an unprecedented turmoil. Aided by Egyptian and Jordanian pilots, the Saudi-led jets are pounding targets in Yemen. Iraqi forces are battling the IS militias.....[ Read Full Story ]

VIP security and citizens......................................(Express Tribune, April 08 ,2015)
In a country touted as a functional democracy, it took a three-day deadline and a last-minute warning to many political VIPs to remove dozens, if not hundreds, of roadblocks placed in front of or around their residences in Karachi................[ Read Full Story ]

‘Beijing is a friend of the entire Pakistan’.....................(Friday Times, April 03 ,2015)
China is on the move. Its economy continues to grow at 7 percent. This translates into over a trillion dollars worth of GDP. Despite the growth, inflation in China remains under three percent...................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Fighting terror & calamity...................................(Express Tribune, April 01 ,2015)
What is the most effective way of fighting irregular forces of terrorism and extremism or even reacting to calamities? Is it proactive mediation and reliance on the tools of soft power i.e., good and merit-based governance as a long-term..........[ Read Full Story ]

Tentacles of terror....................................................(Friday Times, March 27 ,2015)
Are Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif set to undo many of the unpleasant policies of their predecessors? Is the ostensible civil-military consensus behind the March 11 raid on MQM headquarters...............[ Read Full Story ]

A stern warning.........................................................(Friday Times, March 20 ,2015)
The senseless lynching of two terror suspects in Lahore, manhandling of policemen, and the destruction of infrastructure that followed the twin suicide bomb attack on two nearby churches in Lahore reflects the pent-up frustration that most Pakistani citizens reel from. The only difference between these acts and similar..........[ Read Full Story ]

A crippling fear......................................................(Friday Times, March 13 ,2015)
The story of the two-year-old Hanifa from Balochistan’s Pashtun-dominated Killa Abdulla district is shocking and disturbing. A year ago, her father Abdus Salam turned back polio vaccine workers from his doorstep. In February this year...................[ Read Full Story ]

Senate: ideals and practice............................(Express Tribune, March 11 ,2015)
The brazen trading of votes and money surrounding the recent round of Senate electionsdeserves a dispassionate debate. It has not only exposed the ruling elite’s selfish propensity to buy a seat in the Upper House but also kicked up........[ Read Full Story ]

Change of heart?......................................................(Friday Times, March 06 ,2015)
As expected, Indian Foreign Secretary Subramanyam Jaishankar and his host Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary discussed “all issues, including India’s alleged involvement in Balochistan and Fata, the investigation of Samjhota Express .........[ Read Full Story ]

Mafias and the ruling elite.....................................(Express Tribune, March 05 ,2015)
In Pakistan, the term ‘ruling elite’ is nearly synonymous with impunity in words and actions. Our elite do not pay taxes but blatantly flaunt their wealth to appear kind-hearted. They advocate the rule of law but themselves flout.........[ Read Full Story ]

Good intentions...........................................................(Friday Times, Feb 27 ,2015)
Our governments – past or present – possess a remarkable propensity to embarrass us every now and then with their reckless statements. Often, they open their mouth on critical issues to the total disregard of possible consequences for.....[ Read Full Story ]

In the right direction................................................(Express Tribune, Feb 26 ,2015)
As of now, Pakistan-Afghan relations are currently undergoing an unprecedented transformation, manifest in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s latest phone call to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Ghani not only thanked Sharif for sending .....[ Read Full Story ]

Drones, Pakistan & international law......................(Express Tribune, Feb 18 ,2015)
The American CIA’s actions involving the use of drones are a contravention of the due process of law but this modern weapon remains the preferred choice of the American security establishment. The element of justice is missing .............[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s apathetic rulers........................................(Express Tribune, Feb 11 ,2015)
It may be unfair to characterise Pakistan as melting and burning from within. Dubbing it a dysfunctional state may also be an overstatement. But the current governance and the security mess are certainly direct consequences of..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Sorry state of bar & bench........................................(Express Tribune, Feb 04 ,2015)
Instead of tardy governance, Pakistan’s current crises most probably stem from hypocrisy and selfishness at all levels. We often blame the politicians and the military as the major source ofsociopolitical degeneration and economic decline...............[ Read Full Story ]

The two Sharifs..............................................................(Friday Times, Jan 16 ,2015)
Amid the crippling petrol, gas and power crisis, the dithering civilians are thumping their chests to be the real representatives of the suffering people, with little long-term relief for the latter in sight. The omnipresent military establishment is........[ Read Full Story ]

Peshawar in peril...........................................................(Friday Times, Jan 16 ,2015)
The lingering Mufti Mahmood Flyover – designed to connect Peshawar Cantonment with central Peshawar – is a typical example of the tardy and expensive governance that Pakistan as a whole reels from. Former chief minister........................[ Read Full Story ]

Dealing with Afghan refugees...................................(Express Tribune,, Jan 14 ,2015)
In Paris on January 11, some 40 heads of states and governments stood among tens of thousands as a mark of solidarity with the journalists and staff of Charlie Hebdo. In Peshawar, on January 12, it was only the Army Chief,..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Rights and wrongs.........................................................(Friday Times, Jan 09 ,2015)
As the parliament and the GHQ celebrate the passage of the 21st Amendment, they face pressing questions as to whether they will demonstrate a similar resolve in enforcing the rule of law............................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Peshawar — terrorism and crippled governance....(Express Tribune, Jan 07 ,2015)
Peshawar epitomises the socio-political decline and degeneration of governance structures because of Pakistan’s involvement in two wars next door since December 1979. This turned the city into a favourite destination for the.......[ Read Full Story ]

Bangladesh Blues............................................................(Friday Times, Jan 02 ,2015)
Visiting Dhaka in the middle of December can be emotionally quite a heavy and heart-wrenching experience for a Pakistani; the air resonates with the beats of Bangladesh’s national anthem. Commemorative ceremonies and special radio/tv transmissions mark the Victory Day (Dec 16) and there are media debates on the................[ Read Full Story ]

So what is Pakistan’s narrative?............................(Express Tribune,, Dec 31 ,2014)
Following the Peshawar tragedy, a lot of talk has centred on narratives. The civilian-military leadership’s response to the Peshawar tragedy radiates consensus, confidence and commitment to rid the country of forces of terrorism and.........[ Read Full Story ]

A shake-up call.................................................................(Friday Times, Dec 26 ,2014)
Has the December 16 Peshawar carnage finally induced a triangular fight against Al-Qaeda-linked or inspired groups? A string of meetings between the Pakistani, Afghan and American security officials, it seems, has reduced mistrust, bolstered multi-lateral confidence and possibly provided the much-needed fillip for............[ Read Full Story ]

Chain of terrorism.................................................(Friday Times, Dec 19 ,2014)
A Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) revenge strike was expected since the army launched the Operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan on June 15. As the army focused increasingly on Waziristan and the Khyber region and exuded............[ Read Full Story ]

Bringing back Balochistan..............................................(Friday Times, Dec 12 ,2014)
Balochistan appears to be caught up in a perennial state of crisis. The lingering Baloch separatist insurgency, organized crime patronized by powerful political elites, the pre-dominance of the security establishment astronomical levels of...........[ Read Full Story ]

Tackling Balochistan’s challenges.............................(Express Tribune, Dec 10 ,2014)
Power politics — led by the notorious Baloch ruling elite — again appears to have gripped the restive province of Balochistan. At a time when the Chief Minister’s Policy Reform Unit has come out with an excellent documentation on the province’s.......[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan Steel Mills is running on the blood and sweat of the country’s poor...............(Friday Times Dec 05 ,2014)
Most of Pakistan’s state-owned corporations are in the red, and profusely bleeding. Even the Privatization Commission and Pakistan Cricket Board are living off the blood and sweat of poor Pakistanis. In 2013-14 alone, the federal ..............[ Read Full Story ]

What does Imran Khan want?............................(Express Tribune, Dec 03 ,2014)
What does Imran Khan want — is it just power or a revolution? This question kept resonating at a recent conference in the UK. Most vocal among the enquirers were at least five foreign diplomats who are familiar with Pakistan because...[ Read Full Story ]

Afghanistan — under gloom and optimism..............(Express Tribune, Nov 26 ,2014)
A recent international experts’ conference on Afghanistan’s future, hosted by the Ditchely Foundation provided interesting and conflicting insights into regional and extra-regional nations’ concerns about the unfolding events in Afghanistan as........[ Read Full Story ]

Tearing apart Pakistan Steel....................................(Express Tribune, Nov 19 ,2014)
The mouth-watering Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) is again up for sale. Mouth-watering because for potential investors with inside knowledge, it contains much more than what the doctored balance sheets say...........................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Monetising rights...............................................................(The News, Nov 17 ,2014)
The drought in the land of the Bhuttos has claimed the lives of 275 children in 11 months, according to an official list prepared by the district administration. The blasphemy law – as enacted by the crooked General Ziaul Haq in 1979 ...........................[ Read Full Story ]

A political way out......................................................(Friday Times, Nov 14 ,2014)
Pakistan went up in arms with the release of Pentagon’s six-monthly report which restated the not-so-new US narrative on Pakistan, underscoring the “proxies” being used across the western and eastern borders of the country.......................[ Read Full Story ]

Polio, politics, polemics & personal profit................(Express Tribune, Oct 29 ,2014)
For decades, Pakistan made headlines in the global media for catch phrases such as jihad, terrorism and militancy. The latest branding opportunity for the impoverished nation has been provided by a fast resurgent polio virus. For.................[ Read Full Story ]

Challenges for the Afghan government.................(Friday Times,, Oct 24 ,2014)
The unity government in Kabul is gradually moving into action on various fronts. But the most formidable challenge it faces is how to push the national reconciliation process because both Dr Ashraf Ghani and Dr Abdullah Abdullah.................[ Read Full Story ]

Back to blame game.................................................(Friday Times,, Oct 17 ,2014)
Pakistan and India are back to their mutual blame-game – accusing each other of “unprovoked firing” across the 190km working boundary separating Jammu in India from Sialkot and other Pakistan towns. But the entire issue is worth.........[ Read Full Story ]

Leaking public health sector................................(Express Tribune,, Oct 16 ,2014)
In Pakistan’s leaking healthcare system, citizens find themselves at the mercy of insensitive and commercially driven medical professionals. Incompetence, official apathy and brute commercialism continue to drive the private and.................[ Read Full Story ]

How far will China go?..............................................(Friday Times, Oct 03 ,2014)
Pakistan constitutes one of China’s core interests in regional engagement. Beijing therefore remains committed as well as willing to share ideas on governance in line with “constructive engagement with communities of common destinies”, ...[ Read Full Story ]

Taxpayers’ money & media publicity of fraud........(Express Tribune, Oct 01 ,2014)
People, companies, and agencies need to be held seriously accountable for stupid decisions, dereliction of duty, corrupt behaviour, and subpar performance. Otherwise, we simply foster the expectation that additional waste, fraud, and abuse will be..............[ Read Full Story ]

What next in Afghanistan?.......................................(Friday Times, Sep 26 ,2014)
After weeks of sparring over results, Afghan presidential candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah finally demonstrated the kind of pragmatism that the war-wounded country needs for reconciliation and security. That marks...................[ Read Full Story ]

VIPs and rule of law.................................................(Express Tribune, Sep 24 ,2014)
The controversy arising out of the passengers’ protest against the late arrival of two legislatorsonboard an Islamabad-bound PIA flight from Karachi and the ensuing contradictory positions, the stance the national airlines official...........[ Read Full Story ]

Existential threat.........................................................(Friday Times, Sep 19 ,2014)
What are the biggest threats to Pakistan’s existence? Sectarian violence, target killing, intolerance, organized crime or a combination of all of them? What are the key existential challenges to Pakistan? Clean drinking water....................................[ Read Full Story ]

What next?..................................................................(Friday Times, Sep 05 ,2014)
Will September 2 be remembered as a day when the elected Parliament gathered around its leader Nawaz Sharif in a loud and clear message of support for him and rejection of non-constitutional assaults on the system, led by Imran Khan and......[ Read Full Story ]

Political parties and democracy?............................(Express Tribune,, Sep 03 ,2014)
“Political parties make strong demands for the conduct of free and fair elections to legislative bodies, but choose to ignore the application of the same principles when it comes to the functioning of their own party organs.”............................[ Read Full Story ]

Now or never.............................................................(Friday Times,,, August 29 ,2014)
It is now or never, say the proponents of the protests led by Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri, voicing support for their leaders’ demand that Nawaz Sharif step down. They believe that the British era elitist model of governance that only..........[ Read Full Story ]

Equal citizens?..............................................................(The News,, August 25 ,2014)
In recent months Pakistan has witnessed an unusual surge in violence against religious minorities who have faced violence across the country. Not only have Pakistani Christians, Ahmadis, Sikhs, and Hindus suffered at the hands of unknown............[ Read Full Story ]

Double jeopardy.......................................................(Friday Times,, August 22 ,2014)
Regardless of the outcome of the so-called marches on Islamabad in the name of “revolution and “real independence,” they reflect a gradual build up accruing from a litany of mistakes that the government in Punjab and in Islamabad.................[ Read Full Story ]

A sorry tale of friendship..........................................(Friday Times,, August 15 ,2014)
This is a sad tale of a conference at Islamabad’s Pakistan-China Friendship Centre on August 5, organized jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the....[ Read Full Story ]

Law and order.........................................................(Friday Times,, August 08 ,2014)
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is abuzz with the debate as to whether the provincial police is poised to become a model law enforcement agency under Nasir Durrani, the inspector general. Durrani claims that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police.............[ Read Full Story ]

Geopolitics, Libya and Palestine...........................(Express Tribune,, August 01 ,2014)
Mass evacuations of foreign nationals from the embattled cities of Libya, including Tripoli and Benghazi, continues. The mass exodus was triggered by Ansar al-Sharia’s claim of control on Benghazi late last week. The group....................................[ Read Full Story ]

From tactics to strategy............................................(Friday Times,, August 01 ,2014)
Pakistani leaders told the visiting US Special Representative James Dobbins on July 21 that the army is going after all militants in North Waziristan, without any distinction, and the operation will continue the objectives are met..............................[ Read Full Story ]

What ails our wings.............................................................(The News, July 25 ,2014)
Pakistani airports and the national airline stand out as a microcosm of the political ineptitude, administrative incompetence and social apathy that one comes across all over the country. As the first entry and last exit point,..................................[ Read Full Story ]

The battle for hearts and minds......................................(Friday Times, July 25 ,2014)
For the first time in Pakistan’s history, three major stakeholders – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Pakistan Army find themselves caught in an unprecedented point-scoring.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Benazir trial & the criminal justice system................(Express Tribune, July 23 ,2014)
“Basically, our criminal justice system is responsible for the delay in the trial in this case.” This comment by Sardar Mohammad Latif Khan Khosa, the PPP secretary-general and a senior counsel in the Benazir Bhutto murder case,.................................[ Read Full Story ]

A new Afghan policy.......................................................(Friday Times, July 18 ,2014)
In June 2014, a Pakistani delegation consisting of a senior foreign office official and veteran Pashtun leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai met President Hamid Karzai. The objective was to take the Afghan leader on board for...........................[ Read Full Story ]

Policing Sindh....................................................................(The News , July 18 ,2014)
The removal early July of the Sindh police chief Iqbal Mehmood after a mere three-months in office makes a perfect case study for the need to revamp the police force across Pakistan and liberate it from political-bureaucratic clutches...................[ Read Full Story ]

The media in Balochistan........................................(Express Tribune, July 16 ,2014)
Balochistan continues to bleed and remains in the clutches of retrogressive tribalism, brutal multidimensional state and non-state militarism. It is also stymied by the curse of cronyism, rampant crime, and a damning collusion among the ............[ Read Full Story ]

Is this the end of the strategic depth doctrine?............(Friday Times, July 11 ,2014)
The alarming unraveling of circumstances in and around Iraq – the declaration of the caliphate by the new goliath of jihadists – al Baghdadi – and shocking fissures that Pakistan is experiencing internally underscore a stark, bitter reality:.....[ Read Full Story ]

Terror, crime and the tardy justice system..............(Express Tribune, July 02 ,2014)
A big question hangs around the perceived impact of the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance (PPO) 2014. Will it make Pakistan safer and accelerate the disposal of cases at various courts? A massive pendency of more than 2.5 million in lower...............[ Read Full Story ]

Airports and Aviation Authority...................................(Weekly Pulse, June 30 ,2014)
Pakistani airports and the national airline PIA certainly represent a microcosm of the political ineptitude, administrative incompetence, and social apathy that one comes across all over. As the first entry and last exit point,...........................[ Read Full Story ]

There will be consequences.................................(The Friday Times, June 27 ,2014)
What distinguishes Dr Tahirul Qadri from the militants operating out of the mountainous Waziristan region if viewed against the backdrop of the violence and lawlessness accompanying Qadri’s arrival on June 24th? Not...................................[ Read Full Story ]

What happens in Syria...........................................(The Friday Times, June 20 ,2014)
Pakistan’s turn-around early this year on Syria and its faltering relations with Iran epitomize the ambivalence that has accompanied its foreign policy for decades. Geo-political compulsions aside, our foreign policy has either remained.......[ Read Full Story ]

Uzbeks in Waziristan...............................................(The Friday Times, June 13 ,2014)
“Tahir Jan is dead.” A rumour about Tahir Yuldashev, amid a siege by the Pakistan Army and the FC, triggered a massive rebellion in the village of Kaloosha, South Waziristan in March 2004. What followed within hours was a bloody trail for............[ Read Full Story ]

What's behind Karachi airport attack?........................................(CNN, June 09 ,2014)
It was the Pakistani Taliban's biggest strike on state security apparatus -- in terms of human casualties -- and is a reminder of the massive security challenge that comes from affiliates of al Qaeda holed up in the mountainous...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Shadowboxing?......................................................(The Friday Times, June 06 ,2014)
At a traditional tribal Jirga in Miranshah on May 25 – presumably at the instance of Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the Haqqanis – a scion of the Waziristan’s fabled Faqeer of Ippi was also present. His name is Sher Mohammad...........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Beyond veiled exchanges..................................................(The News June 01 ,2014)
A video released last year by the media wing of Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), Islami Awazi (Voice of Islam), Abuzar al-Burmi, flanked by a German and a Chinese militant, called on the “mujahideen” to shift their focus on Chinese.................[ Read Full Story ]

A tightrope walk to Delhi.......................................(The Friday Times May 30 ,2014) The optics in New Delhi were fantastic. Nawaz Sharif’s maiden meeting with Narendra Modi drew worldwide attention. Cameras, microphones and eyes were fixed on their body language too, particularly when Modi vehemently shook...........[ Read Full Story ]

Managing Modi..........................................................(The Friday Times May 23 ,2014)
Narendera Modi’s phenomenal success nearly stunned almost all political pundits even including his rivals such as Lalu Prasad Yadev and Deve Gowda – who vowed to change their names or leave Karnataka if Modi won. This has also....................[ Read Full Story ]

Dire consequences..................................................(The Friday Times May 14 ,2014)
Pakistan became a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) multilateral treaty in April 2008.  It commits its signatories to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights..........[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s multiple crises.................................(The Express Tribune, May 14 ,2014)
An international conference at Oxford University on May 10 looked at the possible opportunities that may arise out of the multiple crises that Pakistan currently faces. During proceedings and presentations, the 27 speakers ...................[ Read Full Story ]

Rid FATA of the FCR.............................................(The Express Tribune, May 07 ,2014)
The 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) governing the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) remains an aberration in the age of cyberspace. It is a set of laws that was essentially a replication of the British-era magistracy system,..............[ Read Full Story ]

The Afghan challenge.......................................(The Express Tribune,, April 30 ,2014)
On April 26, the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced the preliminary results of the April 5 presidential elections, with Dr Abdullah Abdullah in the lead with 44.9 per cent of the votes, followed by..................................[ Read Full Story ]

Towards a pragmatic judiciary........................(The Express Tribune,, April23 ,2014)
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Tassaduq Hussain Jillani seems to be gradually diluting what critics have often derided and dismissed as the ‘overbearing influence’ of his predecessor Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. In several recent speeches,.......[ Read Full Story ]

A new Afghanistan?..............................................(The Friday Times,, April18 ,2014)
he vote count in Afghanistan is still on. Initial official but partial results by its Independent Election Commission (IEC) appear to put Dr Abdullah Abdullah ahead of Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, with Zalmay Rassoul, the Karzai favourite, .........................[ Read Full Story ]

Vandalising Islamabad and the rule of law...............(The Express Tribune,, April16 ,2014)
This can happen only in Pakistan: the prime minister rides through a bone-jarring road that leads up to a hill within Zone 5 — the designated area for a National Park in Islamabad’s master plan. Within hours, the beautiful locality...............[ Read Full Story ]

Faith, accountability and rule of law...............(The Express Tribune,, April 09 ,2014)
Addressing the launch ceremony of a new think tank on April 4, which was attended by religio-political leaders and activists, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan touched upon an issue that he considers is responsible for the social.............[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan-bashing and the Awami League.......(The Express Tribune,, April 02 ,2014)
Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, formerly the Zia/ Dacca International Airport perhaps, epitomises the long Sufi tradition that Bangladesh boasts of. Bengali Muslims owe this to the great saint Khwaja Enayetpuri, whose..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Analysis: Putting talks in context...................................(Daily Dawn, March 27 ,2014)
The government and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan sat down on Wednesday to find a mutually agreed way to peace. This first, direct contact is nothing short of the first major step towards legitimising a group that is proscribed by.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan Day in Dhaka....................................(The Express Tribune,, March 26 ,2014)
On March 23 in Dhaka, I woke up to a copy of the Daily Star. What greeted me inside, as I flipped the paper, was the Pakistan Day supplement with a bland full page adorned with portraits of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, President..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

What China wants...............................................(The Friday Times,, March 21 ,2014)
During his rare visit to Kabul in February, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized categorically that ”the peace and stability of Afghanistan has an impact on the security of western China, and more importantly, it affects the tranquility and development of the entire region”. Most observers interpreted it as an ..............................[ Read Full Story ]

A bureaucratic cocktail......................................(The Friday Times,, March 14 ,2014)
In a country that has looked more like a rudderless ship than a functional state, the National Internal Security Policy (NISP) marks the first major response to the multitude of challenges that Pakistan faces today. It provides some guiding.............[ Read Full Story ]

Don’t write off Karzai....................................(The Express Tribune,, March 12 ,2014)
Ever since Afghan President Hamid Karzai became vocal in his criticism of the US role in the last decade and publicly made signing of the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) conditional, American officials and media began peddling the...............[ Read Full Story ]

Before the next attack.........................................(The Friday Times,, March 07 ,2014)
Within hours of the Islamabad court carnage on March 3, chief justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani vowed to take the culprits to task. The next day, he ordered the installation of security cameras at all court premises....................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Dealing with paradoxes.............................(The Express Tribune,, February 26 ,2014)
Is Pakistan becoming a deeply political nation with a thirst for extremism or is it just the largely vision-less political parties whose lacklustre and self-serving approaches are giving way to radicalisation? Should the West invest in .........................[ Read Full Story ]

Cauldron of proxy wars..............................(The Express Tribune,, February 18 ,2014)
In an interview with The Guardian, Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, seems to have hit the nail on the head when talking about the roadblocks to trade between India and Pakistan...........................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The paradoxes of negotiating with Taliban......(The Friday Times,, February 14 ,2014)
Writing in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History in their 2011 article titled “The Paradoxes of Negotiating with Terrorist and Insurgent Organizations”, Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Bart Schuurman maintain that such..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Enforcing the rule of law...........................(The Express Tribune, February 12 ,2014)
During a hearing on January 23, senior judge of the Supreme Court Justice Jawwad S Khawaja asked that if the anti-corruption institutions fall into slumber, should the courts close their eyes too? Australia has mentioned in its law that.................[ Read Full Story ]

Maybe it’s time we change our ways.............(The Friday Times, February 07 ,2014)
A number of Pakistanis took offence to the 2013 global survey conducted by the Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup released recently. The poll placed Pakistan second behind the United States in terms of the threat it poses............[ Read Full Story ]

Playing with fire...............................................(The Friday Times, February 07 ,2014)
“We are as eager to enforce Sharia as the prime minister is for peace talks,” Ehsanulla Ehsan, a former spokesperson for the TTP, told a Peshawar-based journalist hours after the outfit tossed up its nominees for talks with the government.........[ Read Full Story ]

Prosecution and the rule of law..................(The Express Tribune, February 05 ,2014)
The UN secretary general in a 2004 report, The rule of law and transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict societies, defined rule of law as “a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, ............................[ Read Full Story ]

Peshawar’s governance paralysis....................(The Friday Times, January 24 ,2014)
Peshawar, the once fabled capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), symbolises the decline that major Pakistani towns and cities have endured in the last.............[ Read Full Story ]

Paralysis of the state.........................................(The Friday Times, January 24 ,2014)
The latest wave of violence in Pakistan betrays the pattern that we have seen since December 2007, and needs to be looked at in a different way...............[ Read Full Story ]

Confused state...............................................................(The News, January 23 ,2014)
At least 40 deaths within five days in three incidents – about ten in an apparent suicide blast in the busy RA Bazaar of Rawalpindi on January 19, and a remotely-operated time-device embedded in a van carrying Frontier Corps soldiers,...................[ Read Full Story ]

Counter-Terror Policy and Prosecution: Time to plug loopholes..............(Weekly Pulse, January 20 ,2014)
Two days after the assassination (January 9) of Chaudhry Aslam, the Karachi police registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Chief Mullah Fazlullah and Spokesperson Shahidullah Shahid. .......................[ Read Full Story ]

Burden of proof.................................................(The Friday Times, January 17 ,2014)
Two days after the assassination of Chaudhry Aslam, Karachi police registered a case against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah and spokesman Shahidullah Shahid. The latter’s claim of responsibility, it seems,...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Caught in the middle...........................................(The Friday Times, January 10 ,2014)
The two most pressing challenges that Pakistan faces in 2014 relate to worsening security and an unstable economy, reeling from more than a decade of insecurity................................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Gulf of mistrust............................................................(The News, January 01 ,2014)
Mutual suspicions, acrimony, allegations, and brinkmanship marked the Pakistan-Afghan relations during 2013. Pakistan “released” Mulla Baradar and some three dozen Taliban prisoners................................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Tools of trade...............................................(The Friday Times, December 20 ,2013)
The Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP Plus) that the European Parliament recently granted to Pakistan for three years underscores an unusual level of goodwill for the conflict-hit country...........................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Don’t squander EU goodwill................................(Weekly Pulse, December 20 ,2013)
The Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP Plus) that the European Parliament recently granted to Pakistan for three years underscores an unusual level of goodwill for the conflict-hit country............................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The lost years?.................................................(The Friday Times, December 13 ,2013)
Unusual circumstances evoke unusual responses. This is what began playing out once Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry declined to sing General Musharraf’s song on March 9, 2007. This marked an epochal moment for Pakistan’s thus..................[ Read Full Story ]

The new army chief’s challenges....................(The Friday Times, December 06 ,2013)
The new army chief Gen Raheel Sharif has been called ‘professional’, ‘laid back’, ‘quiet’, ‘politically safe’ and ‘low profile’. Most observers, politicians and ex-servicemen tend to believe, or argue that his professional credentials...............................[ Read Full Story ]

A wake-up call................................................(The Friday Times, November 29 ,2013)
The PTI-led protest against drone strikes and the headless opposition to the movement of NATO cargo out of Afghanistan ahead of the December 2014 pullout deadline may have serious consequences for Pakistan..........................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Mourning a murderer....................................(The Friday Times, November 08 ,2013)
“It is surprising that he would be so missed in death when he was so despised in life,” a British friend based in New York said about Hakimullah Mehsud............[ Read Full Story ]

Speaking of sovereignty..................................(The Friday Times, November 01 ,2013)
When UN rapporteur on human rights and countering extremism Ben Emmerson visited Pakistan in March this year, the government of President Asif Ali Zardari asked him to stay away from media attention......................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Right step, wrong direction..............................(The Friday Times, October 25 ,2013)
It has never happened before. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif began his Washington visit with a courtesy call on the US Secretary of State John Kerry at the State Department – a shocking visual for most Pakistanis indeed...............................................[ Read Full Story ]

The unusual reign of Gen Kayani.......................(The Friday Times, October 18 ,2013)
However controversial his reign as the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Kayani owed his elevation and particularly his second tenure to an overwhelming desire that former Obama adviser Bruce Riedel made an indirect reference to..................[ Read Full Story ]

Proxy wars of Balochistan..................................(The Friday Times, October 11 ,2013)
The notion of foreign support for Baloch insurgents rests on a slippery slope. If a country accuses others of aiding separatism (India’s position on Pakistani support for Kashmiri separatists, or Pakistan’s allegation of Indian backing for the...............[ Read Full Story ]

Thought and action.............................................(The Friday Times, October 04 ,2013)
The Peshawar bloodbath must be seen in the context of two narratives – one coming from TTP’s Omar Studio Productions, and the other essentially from Pakistan’s TV and Radio. One is forceful and aggressive, revolving around........................[ Read Full Story ]

Lets Clear Confusion First..................................(Weekly Pulse, September 30 ,2013)
No words are enough to condemn the Sept 22 deadly twin suicide bombings at a Church in Peshawar. Neither is the case ambiguous any more; the nature of these strikes betrays a proxy war mounted on Pakistan to bleed and detsabilize.....[ Read Full Story ]

Geopolitical faultlines....................................(The Friday Times, September 27 ,2013)
There are three types of faultlines in South Asia - the fractures resulting from the movement of tectonic plates (as shown by the September 24 earthquake), the geopolitical differences that have kept Islamabad and New Delhi..........[ Read Full Story ]

Analysis: Diagnosis first, dialogue later....(The Express Tribune, September 24 ,2013)
The September 22 deadly twin suicide bombings at a church in Peshawar left no ambiguity about it – the nature of these strikes manifests a campaign targeting innocent Pakistani citizens, irrespective of faith, caste or creed, as well as...........[ Read Full Story ]

Double talk...................................................(The Friday Times, September 13 ,2013)
The All Parties Conference (APC) backing for initiating a dialogue with 'all stakeholders' and a crackdown against groups shy of peace talks can at best be called a growing confluence of civil and military views on the strategy for........................[ Read Full Story ]

An open letter to the interior minister.................(The Friday Times, August 23 ,2013)
Dear Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan,
The shameful but scary Sikandar Saga that played out near the Red Zone of the capital on August 15 exposed the intellectual paralysis and the institutional inefficiency that is glaringly evident as the hallmark of our security apparatus..................[ Read Full Story ]

Back to brinkmanship..........................................(The Friday Times, August 16 ,2013)
We are back to gauche brinkmanship. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for "a new beginning" in relations with India on August 13. No way, came the brash snub from New Delhi within a couple of hours. "India will not hold talks with..................[ Read Full Story ]

KP-FATA continue to bleed.........................................(Weekly Pulse, August 05 ,2013)
The daring jail break in Dera Ismail Khan on July 29 came as a yet another rude shock, as much as the April 2012 attack on the Bannu jail left many wondering as to whether the entire security apparatus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA is at...........[ Read Full Story ]

Breaking the walls..............................................(The Friday Times, August 02 ,2013)
The brazen Taliban attack on a jail in Dera Ismail Khan on July 29 to free their comrades has raised important questions about the preparedness of our security apparatus for a war that involves relentless attacks on key state institutions...............[ Read Full Story ]

Balochistan’s Relentless Power politics!........................(Weekly Pulse, July 29 ,2013)
Chief Minister Malik Baloch is a democratic nationalist. Despite enormous craving for taking Balochistan out of its current mess, the doctor-turned politician seems helpless – at least as of now – in the face of daunting challenges rooted..............[ Read Full Story ]

By proxy....................................................................(The Friday Times, July 26 ,2013)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai reacted with an extremely measured and conditional response to Pakistan's invitation for a visit to Islamabad. That was not unexpected.............................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Lessons from Abbottabad..........................................(The Friday Times, July 19 ,2013)
Osama Bin Laden's escape from the Tora Bora mountains in Eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 to his last refuge in Abbottabad raised many questions. Some of them have been answered by the Abbottabad Commission,...........................[ Read Full Story ]

No respite..................................................................(The Friday Times, July 12 ,2013)
A comparison of terrorism statistics for the months of May and June shows violent attacks will continue regardless of who governs the country...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Terrorist do not favour any party...................................(Weekly Pulse, July 12 ,2013)
A comparison of statistics for the months of May and June makes it abundantly clear that violence under various covers continues to take lives – regardless of who governs the country. The number of deaths off violence during the month...............[ Read Full Story ]

Who massacred Pakistan's interests at Nanga Parbat?..............(Weekly Pulse, July 05 ,2013)
“We will absorb what you have done to us, but you will not be able to absorb what we might do to you.” These words that Vivek Katju, the chief Indian negotiator for the release of the hostages told me outside the Kandahar airport...............[ Read Full Story ]

Competitors of the state..........................................(The Friday Times, July 05 ,2013)
Dr Malik Baloch took charge as the chief minister of Balochistan on June 9. He was greeted with four dead bodies, apparently tortured, killed and dumped on the roadside. Then on 14th June, heavily armed militants bombed a bus carrying .......[ Read Full Story ]

Strategic blunder....................................................(The Friday Times, June 28 ,2013)
Pakistan denied its purported contacts with and influence over key Taliban leaders for years. Civil and military officials would reject out of hand any link whatsoever with any Taliban leaders. They also expressed ignorance of the.........................[ Read Full Story ]

The drone dilemma...................................................(The Friday Times, June 14 ,2013)
Following the June 7 drone strike on Al Qaeda targets in the mountainous Shawal area of Waziristan, Pakistan summoned Ambassador Richard Hoagland, the deputy head of the US mission, to protest this violation of its sovereignty...........................[ Read Full Story ]

Lessons from Turkey.............................................(The Friday Times, June 14 ,2013)
Two distinguished scholars from Turkey, Dr Nuri Tinaz and Dr Ali Murat Yel, identified insufficient quality education as Pakistan's biggest problem - something responsible, in their view, for the confusion that surrounds the..................................[ Read Full Story ]

Sharif’s Five “E-Challenges”..........................................(Weekly Pulse, June 07 ,2013)
Balochistan represents a microcosm of Pakistan’s politics of expedience. For decades, expedience ruled the roost and thus ruined the socio-political fabric of that unfortunate province, practically hostage to Nawabs, Mirs and Sardars,..................[ Read Full Story ]

Tightrope walk ahead for Nawaz Sharif......................(Foreign Policy, June 05 ,2013)
On Wednesday, Nawaz Sharif made history by becoming a three-time prime minister of the embattled nation of Pakistan. His thumping 244-vote......................[ Read Full Story ]

Deal or no deal?........................................................(The Friday Times, May 31 ,2013)
April 19, 2009 marked a watershed in the Pakistani military establishment's unrealistic view of Islamist militant groups. The then general officer commanding, Major General Ejaz Awan, and his troops had convinced the aging.......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Talks at what cost?...................................................(The Friday Times, May 24 ,2013)
The post-election Pakistan is echoing with slogans of change, reconciliation and the need for talks (including with the Taliban). Nawaz Sharif says there is no harm in talking to the Taliban. So does Imran Khan. Dialogue of course is the.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Breaking new grounds.............................................(The Friday Times, May 24 ,2013)
Mehreen Faruqi, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, broke new grounds when the Australian Greens party appointed her to the Upper House in the New South Wales. Faruqi, a Muslim academic, will replace Cate Faehrmann, who will resign.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Analysis: Indo-Pak relations and the curse of 24/7 TV.....(The Express Tribune May 23 ,2013)
War lobbies in both India and Pakistan continuously focus on the issues that prevent reconciliation, and the media happily stokes differences.........................[ Read Full Story ]

A swing to the right.................................................(The Friday Times, May 17 ,2013)
On May 11, Pakistan spoke again, this time predominantly for centrist, right-of-the-center, and religio-political parties. The turnout was unprecedented - over 60....[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s RIGHT Swing?.................................................(Weekly pulse, May 17 ,2013)
Election May 2013 marked another huge step forward in Pakistan’sdemocratic transition. The Punjab spoke out for Sharifs, Sindh for Bhuttos and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for Imran Khan. Balochistan once again ended up politically and ..........................[ Read Full Story ]

No stepping backwards............................................(The Friday Times, May 10 ,2013)
We chose Kangaroo for the coat of arms of Australia because it symbolizes forward movement only, a caretaker at the Healesville Sanctuary outside Melbourne told us with a discernible sense of pride while walking past a......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Clear Messaging is what Pakistan Needs.....................(Weekly pulse, May 10 ,2013)
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s loaded speech that he delivered on the occasion of the 'Yaum-e-Shuhada' (Martyrs Day) ceremony at GHQ on April 30th came to the context of an unusual surge in violence and mounting speculation on the...................[ Read Full Story ]

Betting on the bat......................................................(The Friday Times, May 03 ,2013)
Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) bank account has received a monthly average of Rs 100 million in private donations since mid-January. In the beginning of April, it had Rs 140 million. The balance decreased to Rs 50 million because of heavy withdrawals, but rose back to Rs 70 million by the end of the month. .....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Multiculturalism and women in Australia..................(Weekly pulse, May 03 ,2013)
A Pakistan-origin Muslim, MehreenFaruqi, broke new grounds when the Australian Greens party appointed her to the Upper House in the New South Wales. Faruqi, a Muslim academic, will replace Cate Faehrmann, who will resign in .....................[ Read Full Story ]

Truth and reconciliation.........................................(The Friday Times, April 26 ,2013)
The way Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of Islamabad High Court and Justice Kausar Zaidi of Islamabad Anti-Terrorist Court have handled former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf's case has raised legal concerns................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Western Lessons in Countering Extremism..................(Weekly pulse, April 19 ,2013)
At a recent conference in Ottawa, exchange of views with officials and experts from Australia, United Kingdom and Germany provided interesting perspectives on violent extremism. It was quite relieving to observe that a decade of state response to Al-Qaeda-inspired violence has entailed a number of lessons not onl ......[ Read Full Story ]

Balochistan braces for ballot..................................(The Friday Times, April 19 ,2013)
Quetta, the capital of the violence-prone Balochistan province is humming with some political activity. Major political parties are positioning themselves for the showdown on May 11, with each party attempting woo others for...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Cricket and Pak- Australia relations...........................(Weekly pulse, April 12 ,2013)
(Based on Imtiaz Gul’s recent visit to the Australian capital Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney)

Any discussion on Pak-Australia relations will remain incomplete without cricket. And Pakistani’s visit to Australia will probably be equally incomplete..........[ Read Full Story ]

A lost battle?...........................................................(The Friday Times, April 12 ,2013)
The diffusion of once monolithic Al Qaeda central into smaller but lethal territorial entities, though wedded to the same ideology, represents a much bigger challenge than Al Qaeda did from its safe haven in Afghanistan until 9/11....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Open Letter to CJ: Focus on Abuse of power................(Weekly pulse, April 05 ,2013)
My dear Chief Justice, More than 18,000 petitions in your court show the unprecedented trust that you and your colleagues have aroused among the public at large. Ever since March 2007, common Pakistanis have looked up to you all as..............[ Read Full Story ]

For better or worse.................................................(The Friday Times, April 05 ,2013)
The first three months of 2013 saw an unusual surge in violence across Pakistan. There have been an average 70 incidents of terrorism, violence and unrest every week since January. The average weekly death toll has been round 175 -..............[ Read Full Story ]

Missed opportunities..............................................(The Friday Times, March 22 ,2013)
Asif Ali Zardari took many Pakistanis by surprise on September 8, 2008 when he invited his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to sit next to him for his post swearing-in interaction with the press. The move, it looked, was meant to underline................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan’s Oxymorons and Terrorism........................(Weekly pulse, March 22 ,2013)
Glaring contradictions continue to eat Pakistan from within; it’s touted to be an Islamic republic, but deceit and deception at highest political and military level deny the fundamentals of an Islamic republic such as honesty and integrity, and commitment to the people of Pakistan. The armed forces are supposed to guard ...............[ Read Full Story ]

Strange bedfellows................................................(The Friday Times, March 15 ,2013)
Five US troops were killed in a helicopter crash and two American soldiers died in a green-on-blue attack on March 11, making it the deadliest day for the United States in Afghanistan this year so far. Last year, attacks by Afghan troops .........[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan, US on same page? At least for now...........(Weekly pulse, March 15 ,2013)
As of March 2013, Pakistani and the American establishments are talking again. Afghanistan and Pakistan’s dealings with Iran (gas pipeline inaugurated on March 11) constitute the core of this dialogue that began unfolding soon after......[ Read Full Story ]

Arrows in the army's quiver...............................(The Friday Times, March 08 ,2013)
In a country where the military establishment has called the shots for most of its existence, an unusual focus on the army, particularly during times of crisis, makes sense. Whether it is the general elections,......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The power of counter-narrative...........................(The Friday Times, March 01 ,2013)
After months of dithering, President Asif Ali Zardari signed the Fair Trial Bill of 2012 into law on February 20. The law empowers Pakistan's spy agencies to intercept private communications in order to catch terrorists............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Counter-Terror War: Indonesia and Pakistan............(Weekly Pulse, March 01 ,2013)
Indonesia with around 6,000 inhabited islands out of approximately 17,500 islands is a huge country with close to 250 million inhabitants. It has roughly 97 public universities, but the private universities or equivalent institutions are about 3,200....[ Read Full Story ]

Curious Parallels(Pat-II) ..................................................(The News, Feb 25 ,2013)
A scandal recently hit Indonesia’s Islamist, self-righteous Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) when the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the equivalent of Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau, named its president Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq...........[ Read Full Story ]

Curious Parallels(Pat-I) .......................................................(The News, Feb 23 ,2013)
The setting looks so familiar: Edhie Ibas Baskoro Yudhoyono, the son of the Indonesian president, being caught on camera asking his staff to bring him an attendance form for the plenary session of the House..........................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Getting real.................................................................(The Friday Times, Jan 11 ,2013)
Drone strikes on targets in Pakistani border territories remain highly contentious and deeply unpopular particularly among the political right and lower rungs of the security forces, which condemn these attacks as violation of...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Enemy is Not Amorphous..........................................(Weekly Pulse, Jan 04 ,2013)
In his address to the 98th Midshipmen Commissioning term and 7th SSC Officers class at Pakistan Naval Academy PNS Rahbar on Dec 29th, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani made a statement that merits a critical scrutiny....[ Read Full Story ]

The enemy is not amorphous.....................................(The Friday Times, Jan 04 ,2013)
The daring two-pronged storming of the Peshawar airbase on December 15, the assassination of Bashir Bilour in Peshawar on December 22, the cold-blooded execution of 22 Levies men near the city on December 29, and the killing............[ Read Full Story ]

Peshawar on the brink..............................................(The Friday Times, Dec 21 ,2012)
Peshawar is in the eye of the storm. Regardless of whether the orchestrators belong to Al Qaeda or Taliban, they have demonstrated that the old plan of laying siege around greater Peshawar is still very much in place. Back in early 2009...........[ Read Full Story ]

Eye spy.....................................................................(The Friday Times, Dec 14 ,2012)
Despite the changed dynamics of information - the combination of print, electronic and social media - the ISI continues to look at the world through the cold war era prism. Its policies still appear to rest on intrusive, preventive and obstructive.......[ Read Full Story ]

SPA with Afghanistan: Panacea for Peace?................(Weekly Pulse, Dec 14 ,2012)
A number of Pakistani and Afghan members of parliament and civil society recently got together in Islamabad as part of an Afghanistan-Pakistan Track Two dialogue. Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung is the driving spirit behind.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Europe's war............................................................(The Friday Times, Dec 07 ,2012)
A recent consultative workshop on Effective Programming for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) at Brussels drew experts, academics and analysts from all over the world to provide practical ideas on how to programme..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Supreme Court Redefining Power Structures................(Weekly Pulse, Nov 09 ,2012)
Did the Oct 12 Supreme Court ruling on Balochistan spring any surprises? What is new in terms of facts on ground, and does it help the province break out of the clutches of Nawabs, Sardars and Mirs on the one hand and the..............................[ Read Full Story ]

What Obama's victory means for Pakistan.........(The Express Tribune, Nov 08 ,2012)
The victory speech US President Barack Obama gave to the roar of the crowd was a mixof confidence, sobriety, magnanimity, oratory and optimism......................[ Read Full Story ]

Anti-Terror Legislation: Finally visible?.......................(Weekly Pulse, Nov 02 ,2012)
On Oct 8th, the ruling coalition introduced a draft legislation titled ‘the Investigation for Fair Trial Bill 2012’ in the National Assembly. It is expected to formally pave the way for the government to tap phones and use e-mails...................................[ Read Full Story ]

Losing the war on drugs............................................(The Friday Times, Nov 02 ,2012)
Between 2001 and 2009, the US spent nearly $3 billion on the counter-narcotics mission in Afghanistan, becoming the largest contributor to international efforts against drug trade originating in Afghanistan.............................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Laws and outlaws......................................................(The Friday Times, Oct 26 ,2012)
President Asif Ali Zardari recently underscored the "need for consensus" to achieve "the desired results in the war against terror". The president warned against the use of force against a mindset which is widespread in cross....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Narcotics and the war...........................................................(The News, Oct 24 ,2012)
Narcotics – poppy and heroin – continue to serve as one of the major conflict drivers in Afghanistan. A recent United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report says that opium production nearly doubled in southern Afghanistan.....................[ Read Full Story ]

Analysis: Waziristan finally off US agenda?........(The Express Tribune, Oct 22 ,2012)
ISLAMABAD: If somebody thought the attack on Malala Yousafzai would amount to Pakistan’s “Moment of Action” when it came to tackling militant ideology, it was sheer delusion............[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan outraged over girl's shooting, but crackdown on Taliban unlikely................(The Los Angeles Times, Oct 12 ,2012)
The United States has long urged Pakistan to target North Waziristan. The Pakistani army has talked of an offensive there, but has never followed through...........[ Read Full Story ]

Laden in a clueless Pakistan...........................(The Hindu Business Line, Oct 05 ,2012)
Imtiaz Gul uses his excellent contacts and reach to portray Osama Bin Laden, considered the world’s No. 1 terrorist until the Americans took him out. His book Pakistan Before and After Osama explores at some length whether........................................[ Read Full Story ]

What stopped Putin?.........................................................(Friday Times, Oct 05 ,2012)
What made Russian President Vladimir Putin postpone his much-anticipated maiden visit to Pakistan? Did India, as many right-wing hardliners would have us believe, play dirty in subverting what could have been a landmark event, or did the ............[ Read Full Story ]

Game-changer?.................................................................(Friday Times, Sep 14 ,2012)
Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar seemed to exude the confidence that is required for a constructive......[ Read Full Story ]

Blasphemy law and criminal inaction of the ruling elite.(Weekly Pulse, Sep 14 ,2012)
Young but terrified Rimsha Masih is out. But her fate hangs in the balance because countless lunatics lurch around in the society who, despite the startling revelations, would still believe she committed a blasphemous..................................[ Read Full Story ]

Eleven years on, Pakistan seething in violence?..........(Weekly Pulse, Sep 07 ,2012)
Eleven years on, Pakistan faces unprecedented consequences of what began on October 7, 2001 as a crucial partnership in the coalition against terrorism. Today, about 36 percent of Pakistan’s territory is reeling under one or other...................[ Read Full Story ]

Open letter to the chief justice of Pakistan.....(The Express Tribune, August 31 ,2012)
On August 8, Mr Yaseen Azad, President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, drew your attention to an extremely pressing issue, i.e., massive.........................[ Read Full Story ]

The Judiciary and the Kleptocrats.............................(Weekly Pulse, August 17 ,2012)
On August 13, the Supreme Court again took up the issue of the so-called "obscene TV programmes" and the exchange between the judges, lawyers and PEMRA officials revolved around the definition of obscenity.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Indo-Pak on the way to ‘Peace’.................................(Weekly Pulse, August 10 ,2012)
A string of background interviews with senior civilian and military officials reflects a bit of new thinking within the policy planning apparatus. This indicates a new line of thinking i.e. reach out to India, because, presumably, if relations......................[ Read Full Story ]

India key to internal peace?...........................(The Express Tribune, August 09 ,2012)
After decades of relentless mutual pin-pricking, India and Pakistan appear to be moving out of the mutually damaging negative zone that have characterised their relations so far. A gradual change is possibly in the air, discernible from....................[ Read Full Story ]

The elusive alliance................................................(Foreign Policy, August 07 ,2012)
The July 31 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing for ambassadors-designate Richard Olson (for Pakistan) and James Cunningham (for Afghanistan) exemplified the contradictory nature of U.S......................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan Must Change................................................(Weekly Pulse, August 03 ,2012)
The final deal on the ground lines of communications (GLOCs), and ISI Director-General, Lieutenant General Zaheer-ul Islam’s first formal interaction with his CIA counterpart in Washington, probably hardly matter to a relationship.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Change we need...................................................(The Friday Times, August 03 ,2012)
There is finally a deal on ground lines of communications between Pakistan and the US, and the new ISI director-general had his first formal interaction with his CIA counterpart in Washington. But that may not change much in..................................[ Read Full Story ]

The essence of democracy.......................................(The Friday Times, July 27 ,2012)
As a whole, the historic 18th, 19th and 20th amendments, the amicable determination of the 7th National Finance Commission (distribution of federal financial resources) among provinces, and at least a dozen laws relating to human and..................[ Read Full Story ]

Punishing Pakistan for non-action in North Waziristan?.....................(Weekly Pulse, July 27 ,2012)
Even if Pakistan and United States conclude the final deal on the ground lines of communications (GLOCs) early next month, the relations are likely to remain hostage to the ego and arrogance of a super power driven...................................[ Read Full Story ]

The issue of border attacks .............................(The Express Tribune, July 25 ,2012)
Two recent developments underscore the unravelling of contradictions that have accompanied the questionable US-led war against terrorism unleashed in October almost 11 years ago. In the first instance, the family of an al Qaeda member,...[ Read Full Story ]

Russia and Evolving Regional Order.............................(Weekly Pulse, July 20 ,2012)
For the past couple of years, Russia has been pursuing a pro-active engagement with both Afghanistan and Pakistan, shaking off the controversial and atrocious past resulting from its occupation of Afghanistan, probably.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

A new lens on Pakistan ...........................................(The Friday Times, July 20 ,2012)
For decades, an expressed desire for parity with India and a defence doctrine predicated on "strategic depth to the West" in case of a conflict with India shaped Pakistani responses to the issues in its neighbourhood.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

The judiciary’s ‘overdrive....................................................(The News, July 20 ,2012)
Pakistan is currently aflush with two opinions about the senior judiciary; its supporters hail the current conduct of the court as benchmark-setting but detractors begrudge the Supreme Court’s “activism” vis a vis state functionaries.........................[ Read Full Story ]

Balochistan: Crying for Attention: Crying for Attention..(Weekly Pulse, July 13 ,2012)
Law and order in Balochistan has broken down largely because of certain groups that enjoy direct or indirect support of some state institutions. The provincial government and the security forces, particularly the FC and..............................................[ Read Full Story ]

The dynamics of a crisis........................................................(The News, July 13 ,2012)
Balochistan has clearly turned into a security and governance black hole where multiple political, financial and criminal interests either converge or ....................[ Read Full Story ]

Who is Pakistan’s enemy?.................................(The Express Tribune, July 12 ,2012)
It is indeed certain that non-state actors serve as the basic ingredient of Pakistan’s discord, particularly with the United States, India and Afghanistan. Such groups have been operating, at times unhindered within Pakistan,. ........................[ Read Full Story ]

Workshop demands end to target killings in Balochistan..........(Daily Dawn, July 07 ,2012)
QUETTA, July 6: At a workshop on law and order situation in Balochistan, organised by Centre for Research and Security Studies on Friday, speakers urged all stakeholders, including the government, law-enforcement agencies, political leadership and others to play their due role to restore peace in the province and ........................[ Read Full Story ]

Does Pakistan have an Afghan strategy?................(The Friday Times, July 06 ,2012)
Does Pakistan have an Afghanistan strategy? Is it still a carry-over from the cold war era policy embedded in the desire for using Afghanistan as a strategic backyard in case of a conflict with India? Can the Pakistani military.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Panetta and after.................................................................(The News, July 01 ,2012)
“Too much Panetta has spoiled the air,” remarked a senior American diplomat recently. This has left us little room for setting things back, he said, visibly anguished for having been caught between Pakistani demands.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Fighting terror with prayers? ............................(The Express Tribune, June 29 ,2012)
On June 19, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s (K-P) information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain shocked us all when, at the end of his keynote speech at a CRSS-Radio launch ceremony in Peshawar, he asked all those present to..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Hoping against Hope ...................................................(Weekly Pulse, June 29 ,2012)
Within two days (June 24/25) Pakistan Army lost 17 soldiers in twocross-border attacks in Upper Dir district. In surprise raids, MaulanaFazlullah-led militants from Afghanistan’s Kunar province inflicted the heaviest loss thus far.................................[ Read Full Story ]

Never before did they walk this path ................................(The News, June 28 ,2012)
The rise of Raja Pervaiz Ashraf to the prime minister’s office underscores a stark reality; we have lost fundamentals of ethics to politics of expedience. Most Pakistanis seem to have lost distinctionbetween the quest for rule of..................................[ Read Full Story ]

Rio the Beautiful......................................................(The Friday Times, June 22 ,2012)
The aerial view of Rio de Janiero at night is straight out of an animated fairy tale: flickering lights, wild sea waves smashing into the lit-up rocks and illuminated beach, and countless cars forming a beeline on its busy roads..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Disaster averted?....................................................(The Friday Times, June 22 ,2012)
The PPP seems to have read the writing on the wall and has chosen to avoid confrontation with an increasingly assertive superior judiciary. It finally gave up its defiant posturing and decided to replace disqualified prime..............................[ Read Full Story ]

Egyptian turmoil stokes up fears in Gulf ......................(Weekly Puls, June 22 ,2012)
The stunning, though not unexpected, ruling by Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court in Egypt Thursday that declared parliamentary elections null and void, followed by the actual dissolution of the parliament — which was ............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan and the SCO........................................(The Express Tribune, June 19 ,2012)
Pakistani officials insist that the Beijing Summit, held on June 8-9, turned out to be very useful considering the troubled times the country faces. After President Barack Obama did not officially meet President Asif Ali Zardari at the .................................[ Read Full Story ]

Regional Realities of Gulf Security and Transnational Concerns...................(Manama, Bahrain, June 13, 2012)
Pakistan – fighting many wars – suffering partly because of skewed and short-sighted domestic and foreign policies its military pursued for long. It is also suffering because the United States twice partnered with illegitimate military rulers...............[ Read Full Story ]

Looking ahead in the post-Spring era.....................(Manama, Bahrain, June 13, 2012)
sub-surface tribal and ethnic rivalries, quest for political freedoms, sectarian tensions,
the role of media and the impact of the US-led NATO's paradoxical Middle East policy on these conflicts dominated the proceedings.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Brazil and Pakistan..............................................(The Express Tribune, June 06 ,2012)
Brazil attracted tourists from all over Europe for its triple ‘S’ appeal i.e., surfing, sun and sex. the world over, its carnivals were seen as synonymous with an extremely liberal society. Brazil was looked down upon as a country.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan should seize the moment......................(The Express Tribune, May 26 ,2012)
Cynics in and outside the country have derided any attempt by the government to try and resume the passage of US-Nato supplies as yet another capitulation to America. Others still have called it a compromise of national honour................................[ Read Full Story ]

What went wrong in Chicago?................................(The Friday Times, May 25 ,2012)
Regardless of the spins that Pakistani officials are now putting on President Asif Zardari's participation in the Chicago summit, predicating it on the need to be "present" at such an international forum, the occasion brought unnecessary.......................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan on Trial Again..................................................(Weekly Pulse, May 25 ,2012)
Pakistan got an unconditional invitation for the Chicago conference. NATO officials took the resumption of the ground lines of communication- GLOC – for granted. Little did they realize that the Pakistani and US officials.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Embarrassment and patriotism ...............................(The Friday Times, May 11 ,2012)
Around 7:45 in the morning on 2nd May 2011, two consecutive calls on my cellphone pulled me out of bed. 'Osama has been found and killed in Abbottabad,' said the caller, my younger brother. This electrifying revelation....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Mending Pak-US ties: the Challenges ......................(Weekly Pulse, May 11 ,2012)
Mutually conflicting interests and different approaches to some of the fundamental issues continue to dog the Pakistan-US relations. Through revised recommendations, Pakistan’s parliament spelt out the main contours of its.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-US ties: Challenges ahead...........................(The Express Tribune, May 08 ,2012)
Ahead of a Nato summit in Chicago which is to review the military effort in Afghanistan and take stock of progress towards reconciliation, Pakistani and US officials are negotiating a way out of the impasse....................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pak-US Relations: Hostage to Two Narratives..............(Weekly Pulse, May 04 ,2012)
Pakistan and US relations are currently being defined by two narratives, one being peddled in Washington, and the other in Islamabad. The former questions “Is a nuclear-equipped Pakistan really worth $928.3 million in economic....................[ Read Full Story ]

Crisis of conscience and credibility............................(Express Tribune, May 02 ,2012)
In a recent editorial in the The Friday Times (April 20), my dear friend Najam Sethi listed 10 crisis that he says are wrecking Pakistan: crisis of economy, education, urbanisation, demography, foreign policy, terrorism and radicalisation........................[ Read Full Story ]

Grey areas.....................................................................(Friday Times, April 27 ,2012)
Are Taliban Pashtun nationalists? Or are they all proxies of the Pakistani military establishment? Does the establishment still support these...................[ Read Full Story ]

Defence of Pakistan Council Antics, Premised on delusional vision................................ ......................(Weekly Pulse, April 27 ,2012)
“When studying any matter or studying any philosophy, see what are the facts what is the truth that facts bear out, never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think could have been.”......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Mountains and molehills.................................................(Friday Times, April 20 ,2012)
The conflict on and around Siachen glacier symbolizes the scourge of overbearing militarism that has hurt both India and Pakistan...................................[ Read Full Story ]

Terror in Kabul portends dismal future.........................(Weekly Pulse, April 20 ,2012)
Sunday’s multiple terrorist attacks on locations in Kabul, Jalalabad, Logar and Paktia offered yet another grim reminder of the volatility of Afghanistan in 2012. The extremely well-coordinated strikes took security forces.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Chilling reality....................................................................(The News, April 15 ,2012)
The deadly avalanche that struck the battalion headquarters of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) in Gyari sector of Siachen Glacier on Saturday, April 07, 2012 underlined the appalling human and economic costs of the protracted.......................[ Read Full Story ]

Death and despair in Balochistan ....................(The Express Tribune, April 15 ,2012)
Balochistan continues to burn. The federal government remains indifferent to the smouldering fires of militancy, sectarian violence and, above all, the wave of crime that many believe is happening under political patronage..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Turn Siachen into Peace Park ..................................(Weekly Pulse, April 13 ,2012)
The nature delivered yet another bitter reminder to India and Pakistan when it struck at 22,000 feet high altitude on April 7, 2012, burying 135 soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) of Pakistani Army - the latest toll that the Indo-Pak dispute over this forbidding glaciated region has taken on human lives..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Boao Forum: Lessons for Pakistan?..............................(Weekly Pulse, April 06 ,2012)
Economy drives the world in the new world order and all the countries must focus on economic development as a panacea for their political problems as well as a tool for improving the lives of their peoples......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Choices are limited...................................................(The Friday Times,Mar 30 ,2012)
Pakistani leadership has pushed itself into a corner in the way it has dealt with the controversial issue of the transit of NATO supplies through Pakistan......[ Read Full Story ]

Turkish Advice for Pakistan: Rethink Rationally...........(Weekly Pulse, Mar 30 ,2012)
As the government agonizes over the review of relations with the United States, and expects the parliament to rubber-stamp the recommendations by the Security Committee, one wonders whether Pakistan can afford a..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan and Turkish democracy........................(The Express Tribune, Mar 28 ,2012)
Turkey used to be called the ‘the sick man of Europe’ and suffered inflation rates as high as 80 per cent per annum. But eventually, it fought back, reformed its economy with some tough decisions and made a remarkable economic turnaround.............[ Read Full Story ]

Fukushima: Japan’s Living Horror One Year On!..........(Weekly Pulse, Mar 16 ,2012)
Japan – a remarkable blend of cutting-edge technologies and tradition; humility, hospitality and mannerism – is redefining itself. A year ago, on March 11, 2011, monstrous waves caused by a tsunami ..................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Why not the Turkey way?...................................(The Express Tribune, Mar 15 ,2012)
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923, with the aim of reigning in religious forces and making religion irrelevant to the sociopolitical climate of the country. He considered Islam ............................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Reforming and Preserving Public Broadcaster – How?...(Weekly Pulse, Mar 9 ,2012)
Lack of dispassionate and informed debate obfuscates many issues in Pakistan because Pakistanis at large suffer from a high degree of emotionalism and a tendency to knee-jerk reaction to new ideas. The recent proposal to introduce ......................[ Read Full Story ]

Rhetoric versus reality ... .........................................(The Friday Times,Feb 24 ,2012)
The Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan summit on counterterrorism in Islamabad was high on rhetoric and low on substance. .............................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Balochistan’s Maze of Violence ! .....................................(Weekly Pulse,Feb 24 ,2012)
The security situation in Balochistan continues to aggravate with the passage of time, despite the government’s efforts to curtail the downward spiral and win back the trust of the disenchanted Balochis.....................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Above the Constitution? ..................................................(Weekly Pulse,Feb 22 ,2012)
It is a story of stark contrasts; German President Christian Wulff resigned on February 17, following disclosures over his personal financial dealings and acceptance of financial favours from political backers.................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Grand Deescalation ! ......... ...........................................(Weekly Pulse,Feb 03 ,2012)
Conscious of their respective limitations, the titans have decided to deescalate, and climb down from their stated positions. The Centre of Gravity – the Supreme Court on Jan 30 gave two more months for the controversial..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Land of some haves, many have-nots ................(The Express Tribune, Feb 02 ,2012)
The people of Pakistan are caught between a self-centred ruling elite and an arrogant superpower. The ruling elite — the politicians and the military — treat power as a privilege rather than as a sacred public trust. ......................................[ Read Full Story ]

EU Counter-Terror Strategy ...........................................(Weekly Pulse, Jan 27 ,2012)
Is the European Union emerging out of the shadows of the United States on the terrorism and radicalization front?........................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Battle of elephants......................................................(The Friday Times Jan 27 ,2012)
Before commenting on the current stand-off between the government and the judiciary, let us take a look at two sharply contrasting realities: the depressing social reality and the bitter but ironic political reality......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The big fight.............................................................(Hindustan Times, Jan 24 ,2012)
Political crises are hardly new to Pakistan, but the one playing out now is unprecedented: the government is under threat primarily from the judiciary, not the army, which has intermittently seized the reins of power................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Fighting terror.....................................................(The Express Tribune, Jan 22 ,2012)
A high-level EU delegation recently met with a number of Pakistani officials as part of the EU’s counterterrorism strategy.............................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Security apparatus under attack again .........................(Weekly Pulse, Jan 20 ,2012)
Five bloody incidents since the middle of December betray have left a trail of over 80 deaths, mostly of the security personnel, and rocked Pakistan’s military and civilian security apparatus................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Battle of elephants......................................................(The Friday Times Jan 20 ,2012)
Before commenting on the current stand-off between the government and the judiciary, let us take a look at two sharply contrasting realities: the depressing social reality and the bitter but ironic political reality.......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Bad blood, defiance and acrimony.............................(The Friday Times Jan 13 ,2012)
Are the Supreme Court and the military establishment acting in tandem against the Pakistan People's Party-led government? Prima facie, they are in unison in their bid to undo President Asif Zardari and his government.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan way of New Silk Route Idea...........................(Weekly Pulse, Jan 13 ,2012)
Obama Administration’s AfPak envoy Marc Grossman says that the proposed new ‘Silk Road’ project places Afghanistan and Pakistan at the centre of economic activity in the region. It will also integrate regional economies................................[ Read Full Story ]

Curricula and socio-political security.................(The Express Tribune, Jan 12 ,2012)
Distortion of facts, glorification of war, a bloated sense of Muslims’ self-righteousness and the dehumanisation of followers of ‘other faiths’ or subtle projection of non-Muslims as sub-humans, continues to cast its shadows on the..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Political tsunami brewing across Pakistan ...............(Hindustan Times, Jan 12 ,2012)
A  political tsunami has been sweeping Pakistan since the Supreme Court on Tuesday gave the federal government six options to implement its various rulings, particularly those that directly relate to President Asif Ali Zardari..........................[ Read Full Story ]

Tsunami and Japanese spirit of Volunteerism..............(Weekly Pulse, Jan 06 ,2012)
Until the massive tsunami struck on March 11, the sleepy but sprawling town of Ozuchi, Iwate Prefecture, with 13,000 inhabitants, prided itself for being the gateway to three rivers. Surrounded on three sides by lush-green hills...........................[ Read Full Story ]

The Great Game revisited...................................(The Express Tribune, Jan 04 ,2012)
Imran Khan and Co. want to deal with the US as equal partners. They want the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty. The PTI also wants a permanent end to the drone war, as well as a fundamental review of the counter-terror cooperation.............[ Read Full Story ]

Another bumpy road ahead ...........................................(Weekly Pulse, Dec 30 ,2011)
2011 leaves behind a sad and bitter legacy; it practically began with the murder of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis on January 27. The ensuing spat until his release on March 17held the US-Pakistan............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Countering terror in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ..............(The Friday Times Dec 30 ,2011)
When hundreds of Taliban militants, disguised in FC uniform and armed with sophisticated weapons, overran a paramilitary Frontier Corps fort in Mullazai area of Tank in the northwestern KPK province and took 17 personnel...........................[ Read Full Story ]

The farce called Memogate: More questions than answers......................(The Express Tribune, Dec 28 ,2011)
It can only happen in Pakistan; the national discourse is being held hostage to something that never happened – the contents of a..............................................[ Read Full Story ]

A dismal outlook for 2012....................................(The Express Tribune, Dec 28 ,2011)
The latest State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) annual report highlights Pakistan’s institutional weakness at all tiers of the government — judiciary, civil services, law enforcers, regulatory bodies and accountability agencies .....................................[ Read Full Story ]

A billion dollar question ......................................................(The News, Dec 25 ,2011)
In the aftermath of the Mohmand incident resulting in the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers and officers, the Obama administration and lawmakers in Washington have once again invoked economic and military ..............................................................[ Read Full Story ]

What’s happening in Pakistan? .............................(The Times of India, Dec 25 ,2011)
In 2011, Pakistan took a big leap forward. Despite serious political and economic crises, relentless power outages and great popular discontent, the country fended off the threat of yet another direct military intervention.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Dismal Pakistan in 2011 ...........................................(Weekly Pulse, Dec 23 ,2011)
If we look back, the picture for 2011 has remained bleak; politicians are at each others’ throat. Together they are gunning for the military establishment. And the establishment, so is the perception, is keenly expecting.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Mengal’s timely warning......................................(The Express Tribune, Dec 21 ,2011)
The Veteran Baloch nationalist, Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal’s warning that atrocities against the Baloch have pushed the situation to a “point of no return” is timely. After his meeting with Nawaz Sharif in Karachi on December 19,........................[ Read Full Story ]

An American in Tokyo ............................................(The Friday Times Dec 16 ,2011)
It is an amazing story of love and hate, like and dislike: the father fought against the Japanese army; the son flew with Japanese fighter pilots. The father - noted Hollywood cinematographer Frank W. Stanley, A.S.C. - viewed.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Illegal structures: paradox of rule of law ..................(Express Tribune Dec 15 ,2011)
In the maze of issues, most Pakistani politicians lose sight of some matters that are fundamental to the rule of law. The construction of illegal structures, such as mosques and seminaries, in the name of Islam..............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Fallout for Pakistan ..................................................(The Friday Times Dec 09 ,2011)
Ties between the US and Pakistan are in jeopardy after the Salala episode. Whether long term interests in mutual cooperation will revive the relationship is yet to be seen, but it is clear that the security establishments of.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

Iran– US-UK Tangle: Historical Mistrust Continues to breed acrimony, competition ............................(Weekly Pulse Dec 09 ,2011)
Iran is back in news; all Iranian diplomats in Britain have left the country after receiving marching orders by the foreign secretary. All British diplomats based in Tehran are also back home following the Nov 29th siege and ransacking .................[ Read Full Story ]

A for effort .............................................................(The Friday Times Dec 02 ,2011)
An enquiry into the state of academia and policy research in Pakistan demands a scrutiny of the system and circumstances that governed higher education in the country for decades........................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

US bullying: something’s got to give ............................(Weekly Pulse Dec 02 ,2011)
The US and NATO want Pakistan to do more. One way to make Pakistan – specifically the army – comply with this desire is to prick and pressure it. This has been the pattern, and one wonders whether the Nov 26th brazen......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Bitten by a double-sting operation? .........................(Express Tribune Nov 30 ,2011)
On the face of it, Pakistan’s response to the memo — the removal of the ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani — looks like the salvaging of its so-called national pride. The matter for the time being seems settled.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Japan Quake: Story of a hanging newspaper in Japan....(Weekly Pulse Nov 25 ,2011)
This is how a Japanese reporter for the Washington Post remarked when journalists of local newspaper informed him how they produced a hand-written newspaper for almost a week after the March 11 quake-tsunami disaster...............................[ Read Full Story ]

TREASON, Civilians and Military ...................................(Weekly Pulse Nov 25 ,2011)
The memogate has raised questions that essentially revolve the constitution’s Article 6 which says that that, any person who “attempts to abrogate or subvert or suspend or hold in abeyance... the Constitution................................................[ Read Full Story ]

How South Asia can learn from Japan and Korea..(The Express Tribune Nov23 ,2011)
During the recent Saarc summit in the Maldives, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Gilani a “man of peace”. The two leaders also vowed to write “a new chapter” in the troubled mutual ties because...............................................[ Read Full Story ]

US Okinawa Bases, Alliance or Punishment for defiance? Part II...................(Weekly Pulse Nov 18 ,2011)
Some of the wounds that the world war II inflicted on Okinawa, the southern-most prefecture of Japan, still seem to fester. Until the Japanese moved into the island to use it as a first line of defense of the mainland.........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Slander, speculation and sense ...............................(The Friday Times Nov 18 ,2011)
A totally ridiculous article," is how Dr Berry Blechman, an American expert on nuclear safety, reacted to the recent report on the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons by the Atlantic. This denunciation notwithstanding....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Can India learn from Japan?..................................(The Friday Times Nov 11 ,2011)
Major capitals anxiously watch as Islamabad and New Delhi tread the delicate path of normalisation. The vibes right now look good and all those concerned about the two "nuclear-armed" south Asian neighbours........................................[ Read Full Story ]

US Military Bases in Okinawa: Alliance or longest Punishment for Defiance of USA? ......................(Weekly Pulse Oct 28 ,2011)
Some say it is a strategic partnership, others call it a partnership of expedience, and many dub it enslavement in the name of such an alliance, something a young Japanese artist has illustrated at the Sakima Art Museum;.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Hillary shows Pakistan 'a new Silk Road'................(The Friday Times Oct 28 ,2011)
Hilary Clinton's October 21 visit to Islamabad underlined a new sense of realism in Washington. It was the reiteration of the old Washington view on Pakistan, though embedded in a more cautious and comforting tone.............................[ Read Full Story ]

Back to Brinkmanship..........................................................(Newsline Oct 25 ,2011)
In the five months since the controversial raidon Osama bin Laden’s last abode in Abbottabad, the trajectory of Pak-US relations has nosedived, with both sides now trading allegations and bitter recriminations. In September,................[ Read Full Story ]

Machiavelli's prince and the Sharifs.......................(The Friday Times Oct 21 ,2011)
Before venturing comment on the style of politics of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), let us take a peep into the history; the Italian writer Count Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote his classic ThePrince .......................................................[ Read Full Story ]

A different worldview: From Japan with compassion..............(The Express Tribune, Oct 17 ,2011)
TOKYO: Unlike the acrimony intermittently poured out from Washington, Tokyo resonates with compassion. Pakistan, after all, is too important to be left on its own. Without it, there is little hope for peace and stability in the region, and thus it would be suicidal to sidestep the country in the current circumstances. It is also................[ Read Full Story ]

A conflict of national interests?....................................(Friday Times, Oct 07 ,2011)
eptember 2011 has been as unusual for Pakistan-US relations as was the September exactly one decade ago. In 2001, the entire American empire and its people wanted revenge on Al Qaeda for the dastardly attacks on symbols of the American financial and military might......................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan-US relations: Back to Brinkmanship...............(Weekly Pulse,Sep 30 ,2011)
"We need to put Pakistan on notice, …I am saying that the sovereign nation of Pakistan is engaging in hostile acts against the United States and our ally Afghanistan. "The idea of Pakistan's intelligence agencies supporting terrorism as a national strategy needs to come to an end. It destabilizes Afghanistan.......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Haqqani Network – the Eye-Sor................................(Weekly Pulse,Sep 23 ,2011)
The latest spat between the Pakistani and American officials suggests that the Haqqani network continues to cast ominous shadows on the Pak-US relations. Ambassador Cameron Munter first shocked everybody by telling Radio Pakistan that the Pakistan government was linked .................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Situationer: Rabbani murder ruptures reconciliation process .............(The Express Tribune, Sep 22 ,2011)
Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani’s brutal assassination – more or less a repeat of what had happened to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance military commander on September 9, 2001 – underscores the extreme volatility of present-day Afghanistan. Massoud fell to assassins disguised .............................[ Read Full Story ]

The surrender of foreign policy....................................(Friday Times, Sep 16 ,2011)
When the Zardari-led Pakistan Peoples' Party swept into power in the Feb 2008 general elections and struck an alliance with Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League and the Awami National Party, it radiated an unusual confidence and hope...............[ Read Full Story ]

Gas Pipeline – Regional Stabilisation Factor? .............(Weekly Pulse,Sep 16 ,2011)
Both President Asif Ali Zardari and his Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gillani currently seem preoccupied with their neighbourhood. Zardari’s recent visits to some central Asia republics, followed by Gillani’s visit to Iran ..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Small wonder ...............................................................(Friday Times, Sep 16 ,2011)
Pakistan's northern areas are a tourist paradise. Dozens of towering peaks and high altitude plains are like a magnet for trekkers, climbers and nature-lovers. K-2, Nanga Parbat (the killer mountain), Gashabrum, Mashabrum........................[ Read Full Story ]

Salaam from Tokyo ..........................................(The Express Tribune, Sep 15 ,2011)
On March 13, 2011, outspoken Indian writer, critic and essayist Arundhati Roy was supposed to dilate on this subject at the prestigious International House of Japan........... ........................[ Read Full Story ]

9/11: Pakistan a decade later ....................................(Weekly Pulse,Sep 09 ,2011)
It has been a decade of trauma and pain for most Pakistanis – dominated by a gradual but unprecedented spike in violence, largely attributable to Al Qaeda and its Pakistani force-multipliers (in the words of Daniel Benjamin, the UN..................[ Read Full Story ]

Can the army save Karachi? ........................................(Friday Times, Sep 02 ,2011)
With a population of over 17 million, including up to 4 million Pashtun and more than 2.5 million Punjabi settlers, Karachi makes an ideal arena for conflict, particularly when it is about protecting or expanding political and economic interests.............[ Read Full Story ]

On top of the world ................................... .............(Friday Times, August 19 ,2011)
cup of steaming cappuccino, the roar of the Shigar river, the fast breeze made by the gushing water, a huge walnut tree nearby, massive mountains on three sides and the lively company of friends - it reminds me of William Wordsworth eulogizing "a book of verses, a bottle of wine, a shady tree ............................................[ Read Full Story ]

What draws army officers to Hizbut Tahrir .............(Friday Times, August 19 ,2011)
Barely two weeks after the US raid on the Osama bin Laden compound, hundreds of leaflets were distributed in the Rawalpindi cantonment, where the army has its headquarters,by operatives of Hizbut Tahrir......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Afghan Quagmire: Multi-Decade Conflict..................(Weekly Pulse,August 19 ,2011)
Former British ambassador and Special Representative to Afghanistan Sherard Cowper Coles offers a revealing first-hand account of the present day Afghanistan in his memoires Cables from Kabul. His critical comments............................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan today reels under multiple crises................(Daily Dawn ,August 14 ,2011)
Pakistan today reels under multiple crises. These range from the economic crisis to insecurity to the crippling of governance. All these crises flow from the armed forces’ predominance of the national security paradigm................................[ Read Full Story ]

Security and terrorism, Can we go hand in hand? ......(Weekly Pulse,August 12 ,2011)
Recently, a group of about a dozen well-placed Pakistanis – corporate and business executives and writers - suffered an indignation at the hands of young captain and his colleagues at the check post immediately after the Khaplu town, some 80 kilometres north of Skardu....................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

US-Pakistan ties: prospects and fears ...................(Friday Times, August 12 ,2011)
On July 25, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen warned in a press briefing that US-Pakistan military-to-military ties were at a "very difficult" crossroads. "We are in a very difficult time right now in our military-to-military relations...[ Read Full Story ]

Analysis: Fiddling while Balochistan, Karachi sizzle ........................(Express Tribune, August 05 ,2011)
The two strategic locations of the country are aflame but the ruling elite is fiddling and busy in pulling one another down. The solution for Karachi that most of politicians suggest is a grand operation, including increased .............................[ Read Full Story ]

Balochistan sizzles, so does Karachi ........................(Weekly Pulse,August 05 ,2011)
The death toll – political and social murders / assassinations - in Karachi surged to 318 for the month of July, among them almost 100 only in and around the Orangi town area. The first day of August alone saw at least 23 people...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Spy wars at heart of worsening US-Pakistan ties.......(Friday Times, August 05 ,2011)
In the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden, the American CIA expanded its tentacles across Pakistan, spinning a multilayered spider web to incapacitate its prey. Although most ISI officials were ostensibly aware and....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Norwegian Tragedy: Alarming Message for Pakistanis...(Weekly Pulse,July 29 ,2011)
Is it strange or surprising that Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer of over 90 people considers Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan as a contagion that will engulf entire Europe by 2083? For Breivik, Pakistan...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Between defiance and diktat ...................................(Friday Times, July 29 ,2011)
"We will guard our interests, come what may," says a top Pakistani general. His posture indicates the defiant mood in the General Headquarters....................[ Read Full Story ]

Is agreement on Afghanistan possible? ........................(Friday Times, July 22 ,2011)
The recent spat between Pakistan and the US over "security assistance" was brinkmanship at best. Whoever advised the Obama administration to suspend payments to Pakistan most probably lacked knowledge..............................[ Read Full Story ]

US-Pakistan: Coming back to Senses .............................(Weekly Pulse, July 22 ,2011)
American Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s statement on Pakistan during the press stake-out with her Indian counterpart S.M.Krishna on July 19th at New Delhi augurs well for the........................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

US says ‘aid’ , Islamabad ‘coalition support fund’................(The Times of India, July 17 ,2011)
It has been a season of acrimony for Pakistan and America. Post Abbottabad, both countries have been quick with offensive rhetoric and administrative retribution against each other. Never before has the relationship ..................... ...........[ Read Full Story ]

Why the army will have to go into North Waziristan.................(Express Tribune, July 15 ,2011)
Shortly before leaving Kabul, General David Petraeus, the outgoing chief commander of the US-Isaf troops, referred to Pakistan Army’s long-overdue operation in Kurram and the trans-border movement by Afghan militants and their TTP affiliates as “North Waziristan in Reverse.” ...................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Who's hoodwinking whom............................................(Friday Times, July 15 ,2011)
Imagine Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani making statements against the American government in the media. "I cannot disabuse the Obama administration of a role in the murder of X, but I don't see any evidence that the ...........[ Read Full Story ]

Appeasing the Baloch youth.......................................(Express Tribune, July 08 ,2011)
The youth – the future leaders of this country – continue to bear the major brunt of the simmering conflict in Balochistan. ...................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Winning Back Balochi Youth..........................................(Weekly Pulse, July 08 ,2011)
Balochi youth continues to bear the major brunt of the nationalist insurgency in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but the poorest province. It is also marred by the collusion between the ruling elite........................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

A royal mess ................................................................(Friday Times, July 08 ,2011)
As the US troop drawdown in Afghanistan begins amid news of a mini-surge of 'special troops' being relocated from Iraq to Afghanistan, negotiations over Kabul's future appear to be headed nowhere..........................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Addressing America ...................................................(Friday Times, July 01 ,2011)
The cumulative cost of the Operation Enduring Freedom that began with the bombing of key installations in Kabul on October 7, 2001, will touch the trillion dollar mark by the end of this year. To the backdrop of domestic financial crunch that is forcing President Barack Obama to cut costs, the drawdown of combat troops was................[ Read Full Story ]

Focusing on Intelligence ................. .........................(Weekly Pulse, July 01 ,2011)
The deadly violence Pakistan has been experiencing since the killing of Osama bin Laden explains the length and breadth of the asymmetrical war that the country currently faces; the security apparatus from Karachi to Peshawa................................[ Read Full Story ]

Call of the Hour ...............................................................(Newsline, June 29 ,2011)
The twin-suicide attacks outside the Frontier Corps Fort at Shabqadar (May 13), that left almost 100 dead, the PNS Mehran raid (May 22) registering 10 casualties, the early morning mobile suicide strike at the CID Police Station opposite the Peshawar Defence Housing (May 25), and a deadly attack.................................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan needs to learn from Turkey .........................(Weekly Pulse, June 24 ,2011)
I wish I did not know what I know.” This was how Zulkof Ajer surprised us, and in fact had us speechless for a while after we had asked him what he knew about Pakistan. It was dinner time at the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul on June 4, where we had gathered for a pre-consultation of the International Contact.................................[ Read Full Story ]

Has Pakistan's military been infiltrated by extremists? ...... .....(Foreign Policy, June 21 ,2011)
A few days after the May 2nd Abbottabad raid by the U.S. Navy SEALs, in which al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed, a member of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulemai Islam stunned other members of the Pakistani parliament by asking them to offer condolences for "the departed soul of bin Laden. ..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Reform or perish ..........................................................(Friday Times, June 17 ,2011)
On the heels of an inconclusive visit by CIA director Leon Panetta to Islamabad on June 10, the US House Appropriations Committee on June 14 imposed limits on US aid to Pakistan. The bill will withhold 75% of the $1.1 billion in US assistance to Pakistan until the administration reports to the Congress ..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Turkey Elections and Pakistan...................................(Weekly Pulse, June 17 ,2011)
Huge bill boards all over Turkey with portraits of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan carry a three-word promise: Hazir Hadef 2023 (Present Target 2023)...........[ Read Full Story ]

Clinton’s Tough Message: Play ball or don’t ask for Help..........(Weekly Pulse, June 03 ,2011)
“America cannot and should not solve Pakistan’s problems. That’s up to Pakistan. But in solving its problems, Pakistan should understand that anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories will not make problems disappear............................................[ Read Full Story ]

American aid: myth and reality ..................................(Friday Times, June 03 ,2011)
"We provide more support than Saudi Arabia, China, and everybody else combined, but I will stand here and admit that I’m not sure many Pakistanis know that,” US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in Islamabad on May 27. She was talking to the press after meetings with Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership.................[ Read Full Story ]

Strategic Rethink Needed ............................................(Weekly Pulse, May 27 ,2011)
"If the army doesn’t back off, we will turn entire Pakistan into Kashmir for it.” A Tehreeke Taliban commander, Abdullah, gave me this message in the outskirts of Wana, South Waziristan, in April 2004, as we sat at a compound late in....................[ Read Full Story ]

The invisible enemy .......................................................(Friday Times, May 27 ,2011)
May is turning out to be a month of bloodshed and embarrassment. An early-morning suicide attack at a CID police station in Peshawar two days after the raid on the PNS Mehran navy base in Karachi explains the length and breadth of the asymmetrical war that Pakistan currently faces. On May 13, two motorbike riders............[ Read Full Story ]

PNS Mehran attack: Vulnerable, embarrassed and targeted ..........(Express Tribune , May 24 ,2011)
The daring raid on PNS Mehran can probably be viewed in three dimensions. If the objective was to make Pakistani defence look vulnerable, the operation came remarkably close to doing just that. If the goal was to embarrass the country’s security establishment, it certainly did — like similar attacks in the recent past....[ Read Full Story ]

Pushed or shoved? ........................................................(Friday Times , May 13 ,2011)
"Pakistan is a real problem because they have nuclear weapons. And I would say something that I haven’t heard. I would say we don’t give them any money unless they get rid of their nuclear weapons,” ....................................................[ Read Full Story ]

“Mother of all Embarrassments!” .................................(weekly Pulse , May 13 ,2011)
“For a country with more than its share of misfortunes and sheer bad luck, we could have done without this warrior of the faith, Osama bin Laden, spreading his beneficence amongst us.........................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Quid pro quo? . ...............................................................(Friday Times , May 06 ,2011)
They came, they killed and got away with the booty - a perfect display of skill and a brazen projection of power. The midnight operation demonstrated that the Americans won’t sit back until they get what they want.......................................[ Read Full Story ]

A Slap in the face! .........................................................(weekly Pulse , May 06 ,2011)
It was nothing less than a slap in our face; the world’s most wanted person living under the shadow of the Pakistan Military Academy Kakul. The news of the spectacular mid-night commando raid that got Osama bin Laden came thus as a shocking surprise to us all; that of all the places in Pakistan,....................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Tactical games ...............................................................(Friday Times , April 29 ,2011)
The Pakistani political circus continues amid new alignments and new alliances. President Asif Zardari and his prime minister have reached out to the party he had called the Qatil League after his wife Benazir Bhutto’s assassination...........................[ Read Full Story ]

ISI – Again under Fire ..............................................(Weekly Pulse , April 29 ,2011)
The ISI is again in the eye of the storm. After Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen's damning statements on the agency’s past and its relations with the Haqqani Network and Lashkare Taiba last week, the Wikieleaks has spilled more beans on it;.....................................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The U.S.-Pakistan stalemate.........................................(Foreign Policy , April 23 ,2011)
It looks like the proverbial marriage of convenience; although international obligations and strategic considerations continue to serve as the glue for an increasingly volatile partnership between the United States and Pakistan, deep-seated mutual mistrust and conflicting geo-strategic objectives prevent Pakistan ..........................[ Read Full Story ]

The balancing act .....................................................(Friday Times , April 22 ,2011)
et us consider what primarily drives and defines the current US policy toward Pakistan.in January this year, Adm Michael Mullen reiterated what the majority of the US Congress and the establishment believes. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, [Pakistan] is the epicentre of terrorism in the world right now. .....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Paradise Lost and Neglected ......................................(Weekly Pulse, April 22 ,2011)
The construction of road for the small village of Jarray near Madyan is a telling comment on the perfect illustration of slow political and bureaucratic response to the devastation that the floods caused last year; comprising about 120, if not more, households with very small farming plots, the enti ..................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Judging government on Counter-Terror Front ............(Weekly Pulse, April 08 ,2011)
"On September 6 this year the nation is confronted with an existential threat from fanatics, zealots and extremists on the one hand and from the material devastation caused by the history's worst floods on the other. While the former is testing our will to survive and live in accordance with our val.............................................[ Read Full Story ]

It takes two to tango.....................................................(Friday Times , April 08 ,2011)
Before looking at the future of the current thaw, let us rewind to the tumultuous year of 1999. In February that year, Atal Behari Vajpayee became the first Indian prime minister to cross Wahga border on board a bus and eventually visit the Minar-e-Pakistan as a great gesture of recognition of the Muslim state.....................................[ Read Full Story ]

Illegal religious structures ............................................(Weekly Pulse, April 01 ,2011)
The presence of as many as 83 illegally constructed mosques illustrates one dimension of the internal security challenges that Pakistan faces today (reported in a national daily on March 28th). It is a combination of poor law enforcement by the police and the city administration as well as the willf ..........................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Performance on the anti-terror front ...........................(Friday Times , April 01 ,2011)
"n September 6 this year the nation is confronted with an existential threat from fanatics, zealots and extremists on the one hand and from the material devastation caused by the history’s worst floods on the other. While the former is testing our will to survive and live in accordance with our values and ideology,..........................................[ Read Full Story ]

America’s war economy.............................................(Express Tribune , Mar 31 ,2011)
Wastage, pilferage, appropriation and criminalisation of development and reconstruction are some of the unintended but almost certain consequences of conflict. What emerges out of this de facto war economy is a number of non-governmental vested interests, i.e. security contractors, supplies, cargo contractors and officials who directly deal with and eventually benefit from this interplay of interests. For example, ...........[ Read Full Story ]

CIA-ISI partnership after Davis.....................................(Friday Times , Mar 25 ,2011)
It was a classic proverbial mid-night deal secured by all those who matter in this country – from the presidential palace on the Hilltop to Aabpara to the General Headquarter in Rawalpindi, underscoring a “consensus among all the stake-holders in the current power structure” that Davis deserved no diplomatic immunity but his case would be wrapped up before sunrise on March 16, in the heavily fortified Kot Lakhpat jail........[ Read Full Story ]

FATA Security Challenges: Internal Dimensions............(Weekly Pulse , Mar 25 ,2011)
Pakistan today faces several internal security challenges. One is how to counter the godzillas created during the anti-Soviet jihad. These challenges also entail the question whether the Pakistani establishment realizes the need to weigh the costs of its deference to and tolerance of groups such as the Haqqani Network, Tehreeke Taliban of Hafiz Gul Bahdaur and Lashkakre Taiba (Jamaatud Dawa) – because these outfits are at the core of the challenges that Pakistan faces today in FATA and on the mainland..................................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Why fear US Presence in Afghanistan?..........................(Weekly Pulse , Mar 18 ,2011)
In and outside Pakistan, we often come across the apprehension that the Americans are here to stay. They will not leave Afghanistan and that is why we may have to hedge our bets. These apprehensions primarily stem from the alleged American quest for permanent basis in Afghanistan, a subject that President Hamid Karzai has cleverly deferred to the Parliament – Woolasi Jirga......................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Perfidious America ................................................(Wall Street Jounral , Mar 17 ,2011)
Regardless of the circumstances that prompted Mr. Davis to kill two Pakistanis, the episode blew the lid off covert American operations in a country that was awash with rumors about the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and its private contractors. For the majority of Pakistanis, particularly the religious-political right as well as hardliners within the security apparatus, the Davis case proved what they had long suspected: Americans are a rogue force within Pakistan...........................................[ Read Full Story ]

Arab Uprising Defies Al Qaeda's logic ...........................(Weekly Pulse , Mar 11 ,2011)
In a recent thought-provoking article, Drs. Peter Knoope and Eelco Kessels of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, the Hague, have questioned the reationale of al Qaeda's militant struggle and also taken on the dictators who have tried to invoke fears of Islamic fundamentalism by urging the West to stand by them. The Islamist radicals, on the other hand, have tried to use the presence of autocratic rulers as the legitimate excuse for their violent political struggle................................[ Read Full Story ]

Enemy inside the gates....................................................(Friday Times , Mar 11 ,2011)
" I have not mourned the killing of Salman Taseer because I never knew him. I mourn that enlightened Pakistan is being killed. I am leaving the country because it is close to becoming an unsuccessful state, full of extremism and Muslims are being killed, not by Hindus, by Muslims.” ...............................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

The Punjab saga: towards political uncertainty..............(Friday Times,Mar 04 ,2011)
Mutual recriminations between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Musim League-Nawaz (PML-N) seem to have plunged Pakistan into yet another phase of political uncertainty. The uncertainty is not because of a strident and increasingly assertive Nawaz Sharif alone..................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Egypt, Libya, Tunisia... could Pakistan be next?.........(Published on Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Mar 01, 2010)
First it was Tunisia. Then Egypt. Then Bahrain, Libya, Oman. It seems that every day another Islamic Conference country is witness to widespread pro-democracy protests within its borders. In Pakistan, people are watching with bated breath...[ Read Full Story ]

Cobweb of spy network................................................(The News, February 27, 2010)
Let us first briefly recap the circumstances surrounding agent Raymond Davis to put things in perspective. The Guardian, London broke the story and leading American newspapers and tv networks, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, followed suit. They all broke their silence, and, quoting US officials, said Raymond Davis worked for the CIA as a security contractor.......................................[ Read Full Story ]

Survival made difficult?...........................................(Friday Times, February 25, 2010)
Is the PPP government a headless chicken or a drunk-with-power cock running amok, bent on steam-rolling all opposition to it? Is it committed to the interest of the country or biding time for its own interests? Before passing a judgment let us look at the three PPP stalwarts i.e. Dr Zufliqar Mirza, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan and Dr Babar Awan. If judged by their lofty and often inflammatory rhetoric, they come across much as an aberration to the democratic values and all reasonable norms of civility. These leaders constitute the core of a party that stands for liberal, secular and pluralistic values but their conduct betrays otherwise..............................................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Are CIA agents also immune?..................................(Weekly Pulse, February 25, 2010)
The cat is finally fully out of the bag. Raymond Davis, 36, U.S. officials in Washington have confirmed, is a contractor with CIA and was part of a secret agency team operating out of a safe house in Lahore. Will now the US and Pakistani governments be able to invoke the diplomatic immunity for him? It also raises the fundamental question as to whether agents of CIA or of similar foreign outfits really enjoy immunity? ..........[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan couldn't give Davis immunity even if it wanted to.................(Foreign Policy, February 23 ,2011)
The diplomatic and political saga surrounding the arrest of American intelligence contractor Raymond Davis last month demonstrates clearly the polarization within the Pakistani society. This divide became apparent following an extremely damaging press conference by former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Feb.16, when Qureshi declared in unequivocal terms that Davis had no diplomatic accreditation with the ministry of foreign affairs -- a primary requisite for entitlement to immunity..........[ Read Full Story ]

Anti-Americanism in Pakistan:  an inescapable reality.............................(Friday Times, February 18 ,2011)
Anti-Americanism in the Pakistani context is nothing new. It is rooted in the history of the American role in this country. The US refrain from support during Pakistan’s stand-off with India in 1971, the opposition to the Pakistani nuclear programme, their alleged involvement in the political elimination of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear pursuits, President Bill Clinton’s controversial under-five hour stay in Islamabad in March 2000, the famous threat of “bombing Pakistan to the stone age”, and now the US outrage over detention of Raymond Davis on murder charges ..............[ Read Full Story ]

In search of a counter-narrative..................(The Express Tribune, February 14 ,2011)
The West is seized with how to contain the spiral of terrorism. The Muslim East, led by the affluent Arabs, is still seized with the Palestinian issue and wants a differentiation between terrorism and freedom struggle. The West is looking for a counterterrorism narrative rooted in Democratic Values and the Universal Charter of Human Rights. The Muslims, Arabs in particular, are mostly ruled by undemocratic rulers in an extremely patriarchal social milieu, and thus take exception to the western love for democracy and human rights...............................[ Read Full Story ]

Raymond Davis, Moscow Attacks, Rule of Law.......(Weekly Pulse, February 11, 2010)
The American attempts to invoke diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention for Raymond Davis underscore an extremely partisan and selective approach. For the United States, every single citizen counts at the cost of rule of law and democratic principles, even if that citizen is a killer. Asking for protection of citizens is legitimate, but doing so at the cost of universally accepted principles of justice and democratic norms runs contrary to the very values that the United States claims to support and promote across the world..............................[ Read Full Story ]

“Tunisia changed because of internet, will Egypt follow suit?” ...............(Friday Times , February 4, 2011)
I was lunching with a colonel of the Egyptian intelligence at the Holiday Inn, Riyadh on January 26th, as we watched on flashes of the unraveling anti-Hosni Mobarak crisis in Cairo and Alexandria......................................................................[ Read Full Story ]

Countering Radicals through Internet and Electronic Media ..................(Weekly Pulse, January 28,2011)
Almost three decades ago, the United States and Saudi Arabia got together with finances and technology to mount the jihad against the Soviet Union. Pakistan volunteered to play as the host to this unholy jihad. It gave birth to a certain jihadist narrative........................[ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan's Festering Wound - Balochistan .................................(The Express Tribune, January 28,2011)
Balochistan, today, is a politically fragmented, socially isolated and economically backward society. Over the years, political divisions along tribal and ethnic lines have necessitated unholy alliances and compelled the central government and the security apparatus to please everyone — evident from the fact that, at least, 60 of the 65 members of the Balochistan Assembly are either ministers or hold posts with an equivalent status ............................. [ Read Full Story ]

Fixing Afghanistan via Pakistan? ..................(The Express Tribune, January 14,2011)
Following US Vice-President Joseph Biden’s hard talk with Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders on January 13, both countries seem headed into another phase of tension and mutual apprehensions because of conflicting recipes for Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border regions. While Biden reassured his hosts against “foreign boots on the ground”, Pakistani leaders cautioned against any “new great game” in neighbouring Afghanistan. ........................[ Read Full Story ]

Facing tough questions ...............................(The Express Tribune, December 22,2010)
An economically and politically fragile Pakistan faces very tough but fundamental questions, the most important of them being the quandary as to whether it can afford to hang on to a policy it had embraced in the late 1970s as a “guarantee to national security.”............................. [ Read Full Story ]

When will we disband our two-faced US policy? ..........................(The Express Tribune, December 06,2010)
Islamabad-Last Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it would soon built a new facility in southwestern Pakistan to house U.S. military officials. It was meant to be a bilateral "confidence-building measure" in the ongoing war on terror, according to U.S. officials -- but it has instead produced a furious backlash in Pakistan..................... [ Read Full Story ]

Mischievous leaks ......................................................(The News, December 05 , 2010)
Should we call it a historic treasure trove or the "mischievous" side of the US private and public diplomacy? Or perhaps a Tsunami that has swept in a good part of what US civilian and military leaders say in public about countries such as Pakistan and their leaders?............... [ Read Full Story ]

The Pakistani backlash you haven't heard about .................(Foreign Policy, December 02 , 2010)
Islamabad-Last Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it would soon built a new facility in southwestern Pakistan to house U.S. military officials. It was meant to be a bilateral "confidence-building measure" in the ongoing war on terror, according to U.S. officials -- but it has instead produced a furious backlash in Pakistan..................... [ Read Full Story ]

Karachi's newest threat ....................................(Friday Times, November 12 , 2010)
Thursday's combined arms attack on the criminal investigation department (CID) in Karachi, which has so far killed 18 people and injured over 100, underlines a new reality; Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) is now Pakistan's sworn enemy .................... [ Read Full Story ]

Is There Any Way to Fix Pakistan ? .......................(Foreign Policy, October 21 , 2010)
This week's high-level talks between the United States and Pakistan will formally be led on the Pakistani end by the country's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi. But the success of the dialogue will hinge less on whether the two countries' civilian leaders can see eye to eye, and more on whether their military leaders can. As such, most attention will be focused on another Pakistani official: Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of Pakistan's army........ [ Read Full Story ]

The Long War in Pakistan ...................(Wall Street Journal, Asia, October 07 , 2010)
It took the destruction of almost 100 oil tankers and more than a week of suspended supplies before U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson apologized for a Sept. 30 NATO helicopter incursion which killed three Pakistani soldiers. A U.S. Embassy statement late Wednesday said a joint investigation showed American pilots had mistaken the soldiers for Afghan insurgents they had been pursuing......... [ Read Full Story ]

India and Pakistan’s dilemma..............................(Friday Times , September 24, 2010)
Terrorism sits deep at the centre of Indo-Pak relations. India remains focused on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which it believes is the prime source of terrorism on Indian soil and in Kashmir. The terror attack on the Indian parliament (Dec 13, 2001) and the Mumbai carnage (26 Nov, 2008) not only reinforced Indian certainty that LeT was behind the attacks, but they also stand out as stumbling blocks in the path of the resumption of formal talks between the two countries........ [ Read Full Story ]

A Failed Afghan Strategy...................(Wall Street Journal, Asia, September 21, 2010)
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Gen. David Petraeus and AfPak special envoy Richard Holbrook met in Islamabad late last week to figure out how to fix the mess in Afghanistan. Officials portray these meetings as routine brainstorming sessions. Yet there is no denying the effort to stabilize the country is in crisis, given the surge in violence and an extremely low turnout in the parliamentary election Saturday. ....... [ Read Full Story ]

The Most Dangerous Place ........................(The Huffington Post, September 20, 2010)
As far back as in 2005, when he was serving as US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann warned that if the US did not address al Qaeda's new sanctuary in Pakistan it would "lead to the re-emergence of the same strategic threat to the United States that prompted our intervention in 2001 ........ [ Read Full Story ]

New attacks stun Pakistan ...............................(Foreign Policy, September 10, 2010)
While August in Pakistan was dominated by the incredible turmoil of flooding and related destruction, September began with its own nightmare; nearly 120 casualties from several acts of terrorism in the two largest cities Karachi and Lahore on the 1st, followed by deadly suicide bombings in Quetta and in Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa........ [ Read Full Story ]

Imtiaz Gul “The Most Dangerous Place” (Viking) By AARON HOWARD .............(Herald Voice, September 02, 2010)
Following recent floods that left up to three million people homeless, Reuters and British television news reported that charity organizations tied to the Pakistani Taliban have set up at least 13 camps for displaced Pakistanis. Where was the Pakistani government? Obviously not providing food and shelter where and when the Pakistani people needed them......... [ Read Full Story ]

A State in Perennial Crisis .......................(Wall Street Journal, Asia, August 19, 2010)
The Indus River flooding has displaced 20 million Pakistanis and continues to maroon hundreds of villages in the south of the country. This represents a crisis bigger than the one Pakistan faced last year after the army moved against radical Taliban militants, displacing more than two million in the Swat region. ....... [ Read Full Story ]

Kayani holds the cards ................................(Friday Times, July 30, 2010)
Has the Obama administration succeeded in managing all the key players in Pakistan's ruling matrix? Are Asif Zardari, Premier Gilani, Gen Kayani are all happy because they all can coexist until 2013 under international guarantees?....... [ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan's special relationships...................(Foreign Policy, July 29, 2010)
Understanding the negative ratings that Pakistanis surveyed by a poll released today by Pew gave to the United States requires a careful study of the very recent history of Pakistan's relations with two leading NATO members --...... [Read Full Story]

What next in Swat?........................................(Express Tribune, July 23, 2010)
In July 2010 Kalam looks different. Instead of the intimidating bands of Mullah Fazlullah, it is tourists and the army that roam this picturesque windswept valley................................. [ Read Full Story ]

Buying a fake degree and its consequences.......(Express Tribune, July 16, 2010)
It is a moment of shame for Pakistan; the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has informed parliament that the University of Monticello, US, ....... [ Read Full Story ]

McChrystal was doomed anyway ................................(Friday Times, July 05, 2010)
McChrystal's announcement of the delay of the Kandahar military operation was a serious blow to his earlier chest-thumping statements in which his staff had touted the Kandahar operation as the "pivotal campaign of the war" ....... [ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan's dueling drones debate.....................(Foreign Policy, July 02, 2010)
While Pakistan's security forces battle al Qaeda-inspired Pakistani Taliban militants in the volatile tribal regions of Bajaur and Orakzai, CIA-operated drones continue chasing foreign al-Qaeda operatives hiding in the wild Waziristan region...... [Read Full Story]

Pakistan's New Networks of Terror.....................(Foreign Policy, June 10, 2010)
It's not just about Waziristan anymore. How the country's various militias are joining forces -- and what it could mean for attacks within the United States........... [Read Full Story]

Media games and the evil hand ................................(Friday Times, May 28, 2010)
The propagation of pro-militant views amounts to betrayal, if not treason when one talks about the interests of this country and its residents. Apologists of this worldview must be exposed and taken to task ....... [ Read Full Story ]

AJK and Pakistan’s security doctrine.........................(Friday Times, May 14, 2010)
Recently, a former Musharraf aide admitted that incessant US pressure resulted in a scaling down of cross-border Jihadi operations ....... [ Read Full Story ]

Security State's perils for citizenry.............................(Weekly Pulse, Apr 23, 2010)
Most of the states in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa that emerged in the aftermath of the post World War 11 went on to become either security states (controlled by a mighty intelligence-security apparatus), ....... [Read Full Story]

Pakistan's Top Challenge........................................(Weekly Pulse, Apr 16, 2010)
The 18th amendment, coupled with the unusual surge in Pakistan’s crackdown against militants in the Kurram, ....... [ Read Full Story ]

Tackling terrorism .....................................................(Friday Times, Apr 16, 2010)
While the short-term counter-insurgency measures are bearing fruit, the medium to long term success would greatly hinge on Pakistani civilian leadership’ s will to address pressing daily life issues of the ‘common man’ ....... [ Read Full Story ]

Motives behind the attack on U.S. consulate in Peshawar.....................(Foreign Policy, Apr 05, 2010)
The Monday attack on the U.S. consulate in Peshawar marked the first most-coordinated and well-planned direct strike on a U.S. interest in Pakistan.......... [Read Full Story]

The strategic hug .....................................................(Friday Times, Apr 02, 2010)
There seems no way around a firm expression of commitment, and demonstration of it, against the lethal trans-boundary fusion of radical militant groups....... [ Read Full Story ]

Window of opportunity for Pakistan?............ (Weekly Pulse, Apr 02, 2010)
After a very long time, Pakistan has got an opportunity that is called the Strategic Dialogue, something the US had began with India in early 2000, immediately after the Kandahar Hijacking episode, that had ended on Dec 31st, 1999. ......[Read Full Story]

Search for reconciliation........................................... (DAWN, Mar 30, 2010)
The idea of reconciliation is gradually picking up steam. President Hamid Karzai’s ‘preliminary talks’ with a delegation of the Hizb-i-Islami in Kabul recently threw some light on the efforts that have been going on behind the scenes for translating the idea into reality.......[Read Full Story]

Al-Qaeda, Anthrax and Afghan Narcotics............. (Weekly Pulse, Mar 26, 2010)
Afghanistan produces between 70-90 % of world’s drugs including heroin, worth at least 65 billion dollars. While human beings consume most of these narcotics, some of them do find use in sedatives medicines, chemicals, ......[Read Full Story]

Karzai courts Hizb-i-Islami............. (Weekly Pulse, Mar 26, 2010)
The news on President Hamid Karzai’s “preliminary talks” with a delegation of the Hizb-i-Islami (March 22nd) , should be a welcome development. The Hezb in fact represents an erst-while radical Islamist force, ......[Read Full Story]

Countering Afghani perceptions of Pakistan............. (Weekly Pulse, Mar 12, 2010)
Irrespective of how Afghan and Pakistani leaders – including Presidents Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari – characterise their relations, it is a pretty complicated relationship, heavily tainted by suspicion, misgivings,......[Read Full Story]

Challenges in Afghanistan........................................... (DAWN, Mar 06, 2010)
The well-planned assaults around the City Centre shopping complex and the Safi Landmark hotel in Kabul on Feb 26 delivered yet another blow to the Pakistan-Afghanistan-India confidence-building process.......[Read Full Story]

Peshawar and Swat.................................................... (Weekly Pulse, Mar 05, 2010)
Peshawar, spread over 2257 sq kms, and the 5337 sq km Swat valley epitomize the cost that the Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP) has paid as a consequence of the war that had originated in the early 1980s,......[Read Full Story]

Is North Waziristan next?........................................... (Foreign Policy, Mar 04, 2010)
A day after the Pakistani Army showed off the newly militant-free mountainous Bajaur to journalists, a regiment of tanks rumbled into Miram Shah, the administrative headquarters of North Waziristan.......... [Read Full Story]

Mulla Baradar arrested will it dent insurgency?........ (Weekly Pulse, Feb 26, 2010)
For quite some time the US-led international community expected Pakistan to demonstrate its sincerity in the war against al Qaeda and Taliban being fought on the Afghan soil since October 7, 2001,......[Read Full Story]

Fighting terror Securing Marjah for Obama or Afghans? (Friday Times, Feb 26, 2010)
Some diplomats in Kabul have likened the Marjah operation to the Pakistan Army's Malakand offensive, launched in the first week of May 2009, suggesting that McChrystal was perhaps drawing on the Pakistani counter-insurgency experience....... [ Read Full Story ]

Pakistan Plays Ball...................................................... (Foreign Policy, Feb 24, 2010)
The U.S. intelligence community has long viewed Pakistan's military with suspicion, due to its ties to the Afghan Taliban. Following the arrest of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban's second in command, that may finally change. ......... [Read Full Story]

Does the US understand Pakistan Strategic Framework better?................................... (Weekly Pulse, Feb 19, 2010)
When, in mid December, 2009, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told US journalists accompanying him he "couldn’t give the Pakistani Army anything but an 'A'" for how they’ve conducted their battle so far (in Swat and Waziristan),” there was a context to it; ......[Read Full Story]

Will the Talks Option succeed? .................................. (Weekly Pulse, Feb 12, 2010)
The message flowing from the London Conference on Jan 28 to pursue talks with “good Taliban” (by driving division within the Mullah Omar-led insurgency through a multi-million dollar Trust)......[Read Full Story]

Hoping to separate Afghan Taliban and Qaida...(THE TIMES OF INDIA , Feb 06, 2010)
The vibes after the London Afghanistan Conference on January 28 are getting clearer by the day. The international community wants to pursue dialogue with the Afghan Taliban to break the cycle of spiraling violence........ [