Elusive India-Pakistan Peace  Shamshad Ahmad With a lingering suspicion that India had never reconciled to Subcontinent’s partition, Pakistan has been living, since independence, in the shadow of India’s hostility and belligerence. This fear was not exaggerated when Pakistan saw Sikkim, Goa, Hyderabad, Junagadh and Kashmir falling to Indian avarice. This fear is not exaggerated today as Pakistan faces India’s continued …

Modi, a born Chanakya disciple, never spares an opportunity to be truly himself – as he was two years ago in his visit to Dhaka where he gloated over the role his country played in the 1971 dismemberment of Pakistan. He cannot also resist being spiteful of Pakistan as he was at the last BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and …

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November this year led to what is now called the 11/9 of America’s history. In a shocking surprise and contrary to most media projections and pollsters’ surveys, Americans chose a known playboy, a billionaire real estate developer-turned-reality television star Donald Trump with no government experience or exposure, as their next President. Democracy, …

Irrespective of Modi’s claims of its isolation, Pakistan has managed in recent months to place Kashmir high on the global radar screen as an outstanding issue warranting world community’s attention for its solution sooner rather than later in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people. In a clear departure from his earlier known position of urging the two nations …

The Occupied Kashmir is aflame again with Kashmiri people facing the worst-ever brutalities by the Indian security forces. This time nobody can blame any foreign hand in the volcanic eruption of popular anger and frustration against India’s military occupation of their State. It is the killing of Burhan Wani, a social media icon who never shot anyone but gave a …

Despite Washington’s full-throttle support all around, India’s application for membership in the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has again been filed for the ninth consecutive year without any decision. Though it was not on its agenda, some of India’s supporters did raise the questionable question of its entry into the exclusive nuclear trading club at the NSG’s latest annual plenary …

In the 1980s, once driving on a busy New York street, I was struck by a popular bumper sticker that read: “One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.” On surface, this thought looked childish, if not frivolous, but if taken literally, that bumper sticker did speak the ultimate truth. Indeed, it only takes one, just one nuclear weapon, to …

Alas! We are today like motionless wooden marionettes singing opera with flapping mouths which somehow fits with the bizarre dark humour of the medieval ages. Our wooden faces do express the most dramatic of human emotions; lust, jealousy, fear, anger, greed and despair, but with a surrealist, weirdly hilarious quality. We are endlessly lost in what could pass for a …

“On 23rd March, 1940, a group of valiant and fiercely determined individuals gathered at Manto Park, Lahore, and resolved to give their fellow countrymen a new homeland.” This is the lead line of a soul-jerking ad I happened to go through in a newspaper of a renowned media group inviting ideas from its readers on what in their view our …

“Who is our leader” is a question easier asked than answered in today’s world. Nations are not led by leaders any more. Countries, including those considered mothers and champions of democracy are no longer governed by moral or ethical values. Misfortunes of our world today come not from excess but from total absence of leadership at national and global levels. …