The case of the Indian rape victim, Miss Jayoti Singh Pandey, is an eye-opener. This highly despicable and condemnable incident has raised serious questions about the political leadership, the structure of policing, the law and order situation, moral values and the place of women in society. In democratic societies, human rights are discussed at length, morality is valued, and democracy …

By Stanley Wolpert, Berkeley Year 2010 University of California Press PP. 126, Price Rs 1,695. In India and Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation? Stanley Wolpert, an expert on modern political history of Pakistan and India, sets out to explore the reasons which explain the continuing conflicts between the two countries. The task is great with a complex web of historical, …

In the history of Pakistan, the first direct elections to the national and provincial assemblies were held in 1970. The intelligence agencies reported to General Yahya Khan that no party would get majority in parliament. At the time of independence, Pakistan was without a constitution. The Government of India Act 1935, was adopted as its interim constitution. The Muslim and …

The withdrawal of US forces has special significance for South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular. This article looks at issues from different angles with a logical and prudent solution which, if implemented, would ensure peace and security in the region. The attack on World Trade Center in September 2001 prompted a bloody era of war, which engulfed both …

The peace process was still bleeding from the wounds of the Mumbai terror attacks that violation of ceasefire on the LoC has put a serious question mark on the future of the on-going peace process between the two countries. The incidents across the Line of Control (LoC) in early January have exposed the vulnerability of the so-called irreversibility of the …

‘Jiay Bhutto’, ‘doctrine of victimhood’, and above all ‘democracy is the best revenge’ with a theory of political rapprochement as followed by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) top leadership Panch Ka Tola (the gang of five): the PPP, PML-N, PML-Q, MQM and ANP (and of course a ‘friendly opposition’) lay exposed as those at the helm of affairs stay put. With …

How did Imran Khan manage to gather such a large crowd on October 30, 2012? How did Dr Tahirul Qadri manage to gather such a large crowd on December 23, 2012? And, how did Dr Tahirul Qadri manage to keep tens of thousands for four wintry nights in the open? The mother of all questions? Islamabad’s ‘million-man march’ can be …

This article aims at underscoring the matters of understanding and the issues of miscellaneous opinion and policies between Pakistan and the US over the distinctive national and international contexts that directly link the two parties’ interests and spell out causes of survival of interaction between them during crucial times of ‘pull-and-push’. The history of relations between Pakistan and the United …

The Soviet failure in Afghanistan due to Pakistan’s active support for the Afghan Jihad kept both the states locked in a state of continuous hostility, with the result that their relations were far from being normal for a long time. In the inter-state relations, politics has made national interests dominant all other considerations. The same was true about the China-U.S. …

The latest flare-up of tensions along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir is a reminder of the accident-prone nature of Pakistan-India relations in a strategic environment unaltered by improvement in trade and political ties. The border hostilities witnessed last week are inherent in the unresolved status of bilateral disputes. This makes the LoC susceptible to advantage seeking by one …