Preparing for President Biden
“Pakistan is fifty times more important to the United States, than Afghanistan”, Joe Biden to former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, January 2009. How can Pakistan best prepare for a Biden…
The winners in Afghanistan – cricket, Coke & Karzai
In 1963, I returned to Pakistan after a year in California under the American Field Service (AFS) programme. I joined the prestigious Edwardes College in Peshawar. Across the border, Kabul…
The Afghan president
No other topic is of interest for Kabul’s chattering classes these days than the upcoming presidential election. The making and breaking of political and electoral alliances, the likely candidates and…
The unpredictable Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai was welcomed in Islamabad on Monday with a 21-gun salute in accordance with the ceremonious and absurdly meaningless usages of protocol. But in a sense the booming of…
The Karzai visit
Sections of the Western media had been reporting that even though formally suspended talks on the US-Afghan bilateral security agreement had continued informally, agreement had been reached on a single…
Karzai on the warpath
Perhaps of all the bizarre and grim developments in Afghanistan over the last few days the one that takes the cake is President Hamid Karzai’s press conference on Saturday. After…
Karzai’s latest charges
In what was termed a routine meeting of the Afghan National Security Council on Sunday President Hamid Karzai instructed his ministers of defence, interior and foreign affairs to take “immediate…
What does Karzai want?
When I was in Kabul in the last week of November the main news was that President Hamid Karzai and his senior aides and political allies had a long meeting…
India’s Afghan gambit
On January 8, 2025, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met with Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting foreign minister of Afghanistan, in Dubai. This meeting marked the highest-level engagement between the…
A serious business
EXTENDED Eid holidays bring everything to halt, except one’s digestion. It is a time to eat, pray and watch long films one would not otherwise find the time to see.…
