Stolen papers
It is perfectly legitimate for a journalist to publish papers leaked to him by a source. But this is fundamentally different from the theft of a load of documents from…
Time to talk straight
A nuclear Pakistan fits nowhere in the western geopolitical vision of South Asia, where India and China are the two main competing powers. Regardless of whether India can assume…
Reviewing NAP
A year after initiating the National Action Plan, its ownership, implementation and efficacy are being extensively debated. This review has acquired an added urgency in the wake of the Charsadda…
Beyond PIA
The recent events surrounding the government’s nearly botched attempt to privatise PIA, and the official narrative weaved to justify the act, raise disturbing questions that are ‘larger’ and more fundamental…
Syria and us
When the Saudi government announced in December last year that Pakistan was part of a military alliance of 34 Muslim countries, it surprised everyone, including Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry. Chaudhry…
Quiet convulsions
It is correct to think that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is at the strongest political point in his career. Ironically, he is also at his most vulnerable, even though not…
Decentralised chaos
It is a great sight: Pakistan and Afghanistan security kingpins sitting together trying to iron out differences. Even better is to hear Abdullah Abdullah, Kabul’s significant co-sharer of power with…
Ideology is dead?
The 20th century gets a lot of bad press, and rightly so. In its first half inter-imperialist rivalries culminated in worldwide orgies of death and destruction with no precedent in…
Unplanned national inaction
The limits of the will and the capacity of the Pakistani state are fast being exposed, and it isn’t even a full year since the horror of December 16 was…
Sahel to South Asia
The global war on terror has morphed into an international salad bowl with the emergence of a grand arc of instability between the shores of Atlantic to West Asia. Incidentally,…
