GCC’s defence
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) comprises six member states: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. The combined territorial expanse covers approximately 2,557,000 square kilometers,…
VIEW POINT: GCC states and their Iran problem
Last week, US President Barack Obama hosted an "Arab Summit' at the Camp David to provide his country's traditional Middle Eastern allies' security assurances. Out of the six Gulf Co-operation…
View Point: The rift within GCC countries
Three Gulf monarchies - Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain - are so annoyed with a fellow member of the Gulf Co-operation Council, Qatar, that they have recalled their ambassadors…
Trump’s reckless gambit
THE US-Israeli assault on Iran has sparked a regional conflict which has plunged the Middle East into chaos. The widening war has engulfed the entire region and has global consequences. Israel has…
Washington’s war on Iran
The US and Israeli air strikes on Iran on February 28 took the Iranian authorities and most of the world by surprise because of the earlier optimistic reports about the…
Age of strategic adjustment
CANADIAN Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos was one of the clearest enunciations of the strategic adjustment countries, especially middle powers, need to make when faced with a bullying superpower in…
Remittances: boon or bane?
CONCERNS are often expressed about the expanding role of workers’ remittances in the economy. They typically focus on the perceived risks of brain drain, excessive consumption, import leakage, exchange-rate overvaluation and the…
Farming’s climate solution
The discourse on carbon markets and sustainable agriculture has taken on renewed urgency, particularly for developing economies such as Pakistan, which stand at the intersection of climate vulnerability and agricultural…
A rising Pakistan: keeping the promise
The year 2025 was not just another year for Pakistan. It was a year in which the country, in several unprecedented ways, made its mark on the regional and global…
Pakistan’s Gaza calculus
Will Pakistan contribute to an International Stabilisation Force (ISF)) in Gaza? This question has rapidly become one of the most consequential questions and a critical foreign and security policy dilemma…
