Pakistan’s civilian and military rulers must understand that three decades of instability in Afghanistan has generated an acute security crisis at home Pakistan’s foreign policy has always been a story of constraints and compulsions and not the opportunities and choices. The three pillars of Pakistan’s foreign policy Washington, Beijing and Riyadh are also a function of this. The alliances Pakistan …

Two-Nation Theory is the basis of creation of Pakistan. It states that Muslims and Hindus are two separate nations by every definition; therefore Muslims should have a separate homeland It is human nature to show affection to the land where he is born, grows up and lives. He admires and follows the customs, values and principles of the life designated …

The hinterland Sindh and the city of Karachi, produce about seventy per cent of wealth of the country. Despite such an abundance of resources, Sindh has a strong segment of the poorest people, living mainly in its rural areas. Sindh is the southern province of Pakistan having a coast on the Arabian Sea. In fact, the two seaports of Pakistan, …

Politics should ideally be about ideology but in Karachi, over the last ten years or so, it has become more about money. Whether it is Mumbai, Miami or Karachi, gangs or other criminal outfits start controlling cities when the system does not adjust to rapid economic growth. Those who live in Karachi; and those who go to the city of …

Stephen Cohen in ‘The Future of Pakistan’ opines that the generals of the Pak army know ‘that the country is falling behind its peers, notably India, yet there is no consensus as to what has to be done.’ Cohen continues that there is also a ‘remote prospect of an army-led transformation of Pakistan, one in which the generals became true …

Despite the failures of the UN and its inherent shortcomings, it is difficult to imagine a world without such multilateral organisation in which the values of peaceful coexistence through political independence, mutual self-respect and territorial integrity of each country, at least, exist on paper. The United Nations ‘a successor of the League of Nations’ was created in an attempt to …

Assam, located next to Bangladesh on the north-east corner of India, has a long history of recurring violence targeting minority Bengali-speakers. In 1983, Nellie massacre when Indira Gandhi ruled India, the pogrom, carried out with crude weapons in a matter of a few hours, left some 5,000 people dead. The killers didn’t even spare young babies. South Asia is really …

From the Geneva recommendations to the six-point peace plan proposed by Kofi Annan, nothing was endorsed with consensus. It is interesting to highlight that both the drafts had a common agenda which favoured a democratic transition at the cost of dismantling authoritarian rule. For this purpose, the notion of a government of ‘national unity’ (which allows the opposition and those …

General Ne Win, who assumed power in 1962, nationalised all businesses and Muslims were the biggest losers. He also purged the armed forces and the civil bureaucracy of Muslims. Many fled to neighbouring East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Thailand and Saudi Arabia. Anti-Muslim riots took place in Mandlay in 1997 and again in 2001. The current rioting in Rakhine State began …

These lines are an effort to understand if the CM’s habit of re-tweeting-Chomsky has any relevance with his actions or he merely uses the dissident voice of Chomsky to assert that he too is fashionable enough to meet the social demands of the elite, for appreciating Che or Chomsky or the likes of him (Manufacturing Dissent, Revolt Slogans, Overt Dictionary …