2013

The skirmishes between Pakistan and India in the wake of alleged killing of five Indian soldiers near the Line of Control (LoC) have brought the spotlight back on the bilateral trade relations. As the tensions grew, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar told television networks that the ‘government isn’t currently considering granting most favoured nation (MFN) trading status to India’. This was …

Back-channel diplomacy is one of the oldest forms of diplomatic interactions and its antecedents can be traced back to the time immemorial. At the outset, it signifies negotiations between states that takes place in secrecy, is removed from public examination and sometimes can even occur in the presence of front-channel negotiations. Back-channel diplomacy, in essence, is a sort of official …

The recent visit to Pakistan by US Foreign Secretary John Kerry’s saw the resumption of Pak-US strategic dialogue that was stalled after the Salala Check Post incident, in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were martyred after the bombing by the US fighter jets. Besides, the Raymond Davis issue also ignited public anger in Pakistan and led to heightened diplomatic tensions. The …

The recent visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to Pakistan, after initially raising hopes of a thaw in Kabul-Islamabad bilateral relations, cut no ice in finding a solution to the Afghan problem. The statement by Afghan President Office at the conclusion of President Karzai reads: ‘The Pakistani side is expected to take specific and practical steps in accordance with the …

Nearly 200 years ago, most people travelled as caravans on land routes while ships and boats were used to travel in the water channels. A famous English civil and mechanical engineer George Stephenson made the steam locomotive, in 1825, weighing nearly 90 tonnes. Later, he went on to build the 25-mile (40 km) railway between Stockton and Darlington that was …

National institute of Management (NIM) Quetta Jahangir’s World Times (JWT): You had served in both federal and provincial domains of bureaucracy, please tell us in the light of your experience what sort of reforms we need today in our bureaucratic setup? Mehfooz Ali Khan (MAK): Well, we, basically, don’t have a proper system of human resource development in place at …

There is a reason to be cautious. Both sides in the Syrian civil war have committed atrocities and both sides have misrepresented photos and falsified reports. But the burden appears to be on the government’s side. Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), which is above partisanship as well as devoted to saving lives, has reported that the hospitals, it supports in Damascus, have treated …

The United Nations was founded with the stated aim of maintaining peace among nations, but the reality is that not only has it consistently failed to thwart international conflicts, but it has also played no small part in causing them. One instructive case study was its role in its early years of helping to create the still-unresolved Israel-Palestine conflict. According …

It was not long ago when political pundits predicted a ‘new beginning’ of relationship between the US and Russia in the wake of efforts towards rapprochement. The predictions were based on interaction between the leaders of the two countries with reference to New Start Treaty. US President Barack Obama was believed to have been pursuing a policy of conciliation towards …

In the recent past, it was assumed that the age-old question of the very existence of international law has been fully settled; however, the current Syrian crisis has shaken the foundations of this assumption. The question now being posed is whether the international law is part of world order or the world order is part of the international law. The …