SANA, Yemen – After two and a half years of war, little is functioning in Yemen. Repeated bombings have crippled bridges, hospitals and factories. Many doctors and civil servants have gone unpaid for more than a year. Malnutrition and poor sanitation have made the Middle Eastern country vulnerable to diseases that most of the world has confined to the history …

The long-awaited new United States policy on Afghanistan, announced by President Donald Trump on August 21, 2017, represents a narrowly focused ambitious agenda for peace and stability in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan have been asked to play two different but supportive roles for American policy — India contributing liberally to Afghanistan’s economic reconstruction and rehabilitation and Pakistan pursuing a counterterrorism …

The unanimous decision of the Supreme Court on Panama leaks that disqualified Nawaz Sharif as the prime minister has greatly stirred the country’s political environment and has set in motion various political forces with their standpoints. The post-disqualification politics of Sharif seems to centre on the rejection of the court’s verdict as the decision has violated the “sanctity of vote” …

Few of us expect much from political leaders: to do otherwise is to invite despair. But to Aung San Suu Kyi we entrusted our hopes. To mention her name was to invoke patience and resilience in the face of suffering, courage and determination in the unyielding struggle for freedom. She was an inspiration to us all. Friends of mine devoted …

LAHORE: In the immediate wake of 1998 nuclear tests, United States (US), European Union (EU), and Japan straitjacketed Pakistan’s economy by choking all kinds of monetary and non-monetary assistance. To make things worse, even International Monetary Fund (IMF) cancelled a $600 million loan agreement with Pakistan under the influence of the international powers. Pakistan braved that storm of sanctions back …

ISLAMABAD: The Senate was told on Thursday that Pakistan suffered the loss of Rs11,275 billion in the war on terror. PML-N Senator Javed Abbasi said the US must stop crying for $17 billion which had been given to Pakistan, but it had no idea that the so-called war against terrorism cost Pakistan over $107 billion (Rs11,275 billion) losses. Prime Minister …

The international system seems heading toward a period of great uncertainty. Established security alliances of the post-World War II era are disintegrating while the fledgling new ones such as the G20 have no capacity to replace them. The dominant discourse of market-friendly neoliberalism is losing prominence while neo-protectionism and economic nationalism are gaining ground. Amidst rising geopolitical tensions among major …

Donald Trump has probably never heard of the Grand Old Duke of York and his 10,000 men. But in spelling out his new Afghan strategy, the US president gave a good impersonation of that symbol of military muddle-headedness, incompetence and futility immortalised in the English nursery rhyme. By marching US troops back up the Afghan hill, having previously solemnly vowed …

LAHORE: Pakistan’s ruling regime should take a leaf out the policy the Chinese have successfully been employing to metamorphose their loss-amassing public sector enterprises into profit-piling global corporations. If this can’t be done then all the dying state-owned entities of the country should immediately be privatised. It has been observed that assigning the toughest tasks to the strongest and the …

LAHORE’S population is estimated to be about 12 million people. If a third of these are children who go to school, 4m children need to move from their homes to school in the morning and then back again around midday. If about half the population works, around 6m people need to move from their homes to their places of work …