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Time for careful planning

// SINCE May 1, when US Special Forces carried out the raid resulting in the death of Osama bin Laden, the nation has been up in arms against what is perceives as a violation of its sovereignty by the US as well as the Pakistan military’s failure to prevent the raid. There were a numberRead More »Time for careful planning

Reality begins to dawn

// AFTER 10 years of facing an existentialist threat from terrorism inflicted by extremist groups, Pakistan has finally woken up to the seriousness of the situation. An indication of this came the other day when the cabinet defence committee decided that there was a “need to clearly identify the threat posed by terrorism including theRead More »Reality begins to dawn

Dynamics of Fata Reforms

// THE government of Prime Minister Gilani is inconsistent, yet sometimes it surprises everyone with a landmark moment. Though it is marked by questionable decisions and bad governance most of the time, periodically it pulls out political rabbits out of its hat. It defies the Supreme Court for months and remains at the tip ofRead More »Dynamics of Fata Reforms

What Pakistan can learn‏

// THE recent report of the International Crisis Group (ICG) Aid and Conflict in Afghanistan is a critical appraisal of the efforts made during the past 10 years in that unfortunate country. It warns, “There is no possibility that any amount of international assistance to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will stabilise the countryRead More »What Pakistan can learn‏

Gen Asad Durrani headed the ISI in the 1990s so what he says is meaningful‏

// The ISI:  AN EXCEPTIONAL SECRET SERVICE by Lt. General Asad Durrani When Smashing Lists, a relatively unknown website, declared Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI, the best of its kind, it gladdened my heart but also had me worried. Soon after the Soviet invasion ofAfghanistan, I met an old colleague, a Special Forces officer recentlyRead More »Gen Asad Durrani headed the ISI in the 1990s so what he says is meaningful‏

Administration on the brink‏

// A FEW days ago I attended a stakeholders consultation to review the effectiveness of district governance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since the 2008 elections. The findings of the research into the counter-insurgency suggest that a weak and an exploitative management system fans insurgency and that if there is a gap between expectations and people`s capabilities,Read More »Administration on the brink‏

Call for unity

// The US is a strategic gorilla in a world of middling and poor states. It accounts for a huge 23 per cent of the world's GDP and is also the biggest spender on the means of war  a whopping 43 per cent of the global military expenditure. The other nations don't come anywhere nearRead More »Call for unity

The implications for Pakistan

// IN a meeting of Nato heads of state in Lisbon last November, it was decided that foreign forces would withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The meeting envisaged the handing over of security duties to Afghan forces. We will analyse this briefly later; we have as yet not thought about what implicationsRead More »The implications for Pakistan

Dangerous provocations

// LARGE-SCALE protests have begun in Afghanistan. They commenced in Mazar-i-Sharif, and spread to Kandahar the following day with other cities following suit. Mobs of Afghans protested the burning of the Quran by Terry Jones, a pastor of a small church in Florida. Jones, a former hotel manager, claims that the Quran incited violence, andRead More »Dangerous provocations

A new paradigm

// I RECENTLY saw a TV programme on BBC World that examined the circumstances leading to the declaration of a `no-fly zone` over Libya. Such a zone was declared after the adoption of a UN resolution that abridged Libyan sovereignty but supported the aspirations of the Libyans who were protesting and demanding greater freedoms, includingRead More »A new paradigm
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