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…
Karzai and the lost war
A lot has been said and written in the media in Pakistan about the recent visit of President Karzai to Islamabad. Efforts were made to pin responsibility for its failure…
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…
Karzai and Afghan reality
President Karzai’s visit to Islamabad was intended primarily to seek Pakistan’s cooperation in getting the Afghan peace talks back on track but with a difference. The resistance must agree to…
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…
Karzai in Washington
As I write this on Tuesday morning the drama of the ‘long march’ of the Tehrik Minhaj-ul-Quran dominates the air waves. Whatever its outcome we must recognise that it reflects…
