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Water wars is a phrase used to describe increased competition for water resources, due to drought, climate change, or increasing populations; controversies over and reduced access due to privatization of water services; or the role of these tensions in leading to physical conflicts, within or among nations. This century would be an era in which rivers, lakes and aquifers will …

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a Eurasian security organisation, which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Except for Uzbekistan, the other countries had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; but after its inclusion in 2001, the members renamed the organisation. During the SCO’s June 2002 …

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometres) from our sun. Voyager 1 has been travelling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, …

Until the recent past, wars were fought to pursue oil interests. But, now the era of wars for protection of energy interests is over. The world is fast moving towards a new kind of wars and that is wars over water. The way water security has emerged as a key theme in overall national security frameworks underscores the importance of …

The All Parties Conference (APC) convened by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on September 9, 2013 to discuss the national security crisis, called upon the Federal Government to initiate the dialogue with all stakeholders to bring peace in Pakistan. The APC authorized the Federal Government to take all necessary steps, including development of an appropriate mechanism and identification of interlocutors. The …

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 …