Snags in the pact
Washington and Kabul are close to finalising a strategic partnership agreement ensuring continued American military footprints in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Although the details are still to be worked out, the…
Confronting China
For years I have suspected that in Washington there is an influential organization which could be called the ‘US Agency for Disruption of International Diplomacy’. It appears to have the…
The beggars’ budget
Budget 2011-12 was finalised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in meetings held with Pakistani officials in Washington and Dubai in May. This revelation by a TV channel is not…
Pak-US ties in 2012
A series of crises in 2011 set the tone for US-Pakistan interaction in 2012; these included Raymond Davis’ shooting of two Pakistanis and Bin Laden’s killing. However, it was the…
Away from the madressah
In the movie The Book of Eli, Eli (Denzel Washington) is charged by Providence to take a westward journey to deliver the very last copy of the King James Bible…
Democracy & development
IS democracy good for economic development or does it hinder it? The debate goes on. India has certainly been helped by it in recent decades. Pakistan has done poorly since…
A touch of art
Recently, writer and scholar Reza Aslan stopped off in Washington to promote, an anthology of 20th-century writings in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu that articulate the experience of colonialism. When…
The US-India dialogue
It has become quite the fashion these days to characterise even the semblance of good relations as ‘strategic ties’. Nevertheless, the US-India strategic dialogue that took place recently in Washington,…
When experts generalise
THE city of Washington, D.C. looks at everything outside the United States as if it is taking place in an action/suspense Hollywood film. Policymakers and ‘experts’ tend to speak about…
Dangerous doctrines
In recent months, worsening US-Pakistan relations kicked off a cantankerous debate in the media. But within this larger debate, some hawkish voices have been advocating an insidious nuclear weapons doctrine:…
