Pakistan may have climbed to the top of the ICC’s Test rankings this year, but none of their players managed to secure a place in the ICC Test Team of the Year 2016 announced on Thursday. Same is the case in the 50-over format, with Pakistan’s struggles in the one-day game meaning the ICC ODI Team of the Year 2016 …

By Shahzad Chaudhry When Nawaz Sharif won the 2013 elections but had not yet been inducted in the government, the then army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, called on him at Lahore one  Sunday. This was to be as much an introductory session of the chief to the new prime minister as it was an advisory session on what seemed …

By Ali Sarwar Naqvi The annual plenary session of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) held in Seoul in June this year failed to achieve a consensus regarding the entry of non- Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory countries. This was followed by an informal session in Vienna in November which also failed to agree on the criteria to be applied for …

By Ayaz Amir A dictator, Gen Musharraf, gave us the regulatory bodies – bodies to act as a check, in the public interest, over various ministries. A democrat – for that’s what we must call him – is doing away with them, because they were irksome and restrictive and not allowing the government to do as it wanted with the …

BY M. UZAIR YOUNU PAKISTAN`s economy has routinely oscillated between periods of relative stability and busts brought about by external payments crises. Failure of successive governments to push through structural reforms when the economy is stable typically drives this volatility. In the last few years, Pakistan has failed to push through these reforms, raising the likelihood of economic turbulence in …

BY AFZAL ALI SHIGR PAKISTAN has faced multiple active terrorism threats over the past 15 years, which now constitute an existentialthreat to the state.In order to deal with this, Pakistan enacted an anti-terrorism law in 1997, subsequently improved to meet emergent threats through a number of amendments.

By Navin Singh Khadka India is stepping up efforts to maximise its water use from the western rivers of the Indus basin, senior officials have told the BBC. The move would involve building huge storage facilities and canals. The three rivers flow through Indian-administered Kashmir but most of the water is allotted to Pakistan under an international treaty. Experts say …

For the moment, the most important thing to say about Monday’s dramatic assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey by a lone gunman is that it has not ruptured relations between the two countries. It might have, given past tensions and Turkey’s dismay at Vladimir Putin’s role in the devastating civil war in Syria. Fortunately, the two sides appear to have …