In April 2016, Waseemullah, a second year student at the Aga Khan School of Nursing, hanged himself from the ceiling fan of his room. According to his friends, he was a lively boy who had come all the way from Gilgit to pursue his studies on a full-term scholarship. Friends say he had a promising career to look forward to. …

FRUSTRATED by Pakistan`s refusal to bow to Indian diktat, encouraged by its strategic partnership with the US, alarmed by the renewed revolt in India-held Jammu and Kashmir and humiliated by the killing of 18 Indian soldiers in Uri, Narendra Modi is on the path of war against Pakistan. He has vowed to `isolate` Pakistan, support Baloch separatists, dam Pakistan`s rivers …

ISOLATION is a word bandied about all too easily when it comes to discussing Pakistan`s place in the international community. In this century alone, seemingly every other year there has been alarmist rhetoric, by external rivals and internal political neophytes that Pakistan is on the verge of global isolation. Indeed, isolation and its more draconian cousin, containment, are issues that …

Shifting alliances The deal with the Russians had been cooking for a while now. The Taliban business, and the ‘wrapping up the war in Afghanistan’ business, not to mention its spillover into Chechnya and Xianyang, had led not just to increased cooperation with Beijing, but also fresh contact with Moscow. This was sometime in the PPP government, when the Russian …

You wake up one morning to the Indian claims that its soldiers had crossed the Line of Control and carried out attacks on Azad Kashmir soil. What comes to your mind immediately? Yeah, after bloody hell. War. Nuclear war. That is exactly what occurred to me. As the day passed by and we saw an intelligent and timely rebuttal by …

 BY TARIQ K HOSA | 10/3/2016 12:00:00 AMON Sept 22, the Afghan government signed a peace agreement with one of the country`s most notorious warlords, in a deal aimed at coaxing the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups to sign similar accords. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, designated a global terrorist by the US, entered into this deal on behalf of Hezb-i-Islami, the …

 BY S I K A N D E R A . S H A H A N D UZ A I R J. K AYA N I | 10/3/2016 12:00:00 AMIN the wake of the Uri incident, India has launched a campaign to `punish` Pakistan. The Indian offensive has proceeded swiftly on the diplomatic, political, economic and, as of this …

  Facebook is a classic Silicon Valley success story — from a Harvard dorm to the top of the world. Here’s a look at the Facebook story in pictures Facebook got its start at Harvard’s Kirkland House dormitory where sophomore Zuckerberg built a programme called Facemash in 2003. Facemash got 22,000 page views from 450 people within the first four hours …

Analysing Indian claims Indian claim of surgical strike across Line of Control is perhaps the most frenzied buzzword making headlines in the entire world. The raid, according to Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, Indian army DGMO, entailed carefully chosen targets based on a weeklong surveillance and calibrated destruction of at least seven “launchpads” – located between 1 and 3km across the …

Exercising her right of reply to the Indian chief delegate’s statement, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said: