Pak Affairs

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) failed to achieve the tax revenue target for the fiscal year 2017-18. According to the data released by the FBR on 9 July 2018, the provisional ax collection stood at Rs. 3,751 billion, which is Rs. 184 billion less than the revised tax revenue target of Rs. 3,935 billion. The original tax revenue target …

By: Abdul Rasool Syed Where character does not matter “How do we know who to chose?” This was a question posed to a great Greek philosopher and a political sage Plato. He answered that rulers should be chosen according to their character – their honesty, reliability, probity, disinterestedness, sense of justice and moral uprightness. “The community suffers nothing very terrible …

By: Elenoire Laudieri The best way forward to tackle Afghanistan’s never-ending plight Until the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was little known outside Asia. In the West, it mainly attracted the interest of scholars of history and archaeologists as a landlocked country roughly coinciding with the ancient region of Central Asia called Bactria, which was invaded by Alexander the Great …

How to deal with our myriad challenges? A little more than a year ago, while addressing at the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Chinese President Xi Jinping termed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as the ‘Project of the Century’.  “Over 2,000 years ago,” observed President Xi, in an attempt to provide blueprints for the …

Why is Pakistan running dry and how to manage the situation? Pakistan is approaching the scarcity threshold for water. What is even more disturbing is that groundwater supplies — the last resort of water supply — are being rapidly depleted.  And worst of all is that the authorities have given no indication that they plan to do anything about any …

Need for Making Tax System Equitable Income tax is the major levy in almost all the developed countries, which, therefore, have direct tax collection as the largest share in their overall national tax collection. In these countries, income inequalities are minimal and the living standards of the people are high, yet almost similar. A stranger hardly finds poor people in …

A Promising Start or mere eyewash? On May 24, the long wait for full citizenship of Pakistan for the residents of Gilgit-Baltistan finally ended after the local government formally promulgated the Gilgit-Baltistan Order 2018. The piece of legislation, which received presidential assent on June 01, replaces the Gilgit-Baltistan Self-Governance Order 2009. While spelling out the provisions of the Order, the …

On May 29, the outgoing PML-N government unveiled the National Internal Security Policy (NISP) 2018-23 to address terrorism, extremism and other crimes effectively. The new policy, which is the continuation of the NISP 2014-18, has ascertained Daesh as the biggest national security threat to Pakistan by saying that “[t]he emergence of Daesh in close proximity to Pakistan has raised new …

Redefining the National and International Law Introduction Does the law constitute a state or does the state constitute the law? To this query, no binary answer can be proffered. Pakistan as a state, besides being a product of politics, was very much a product of constitutional law. Just days before the end of the constitutional period of the last PML-N-led …

A tool to expand India’s hegemony  Proliferation of military technologies and unremitting arms race between India and Pakistan are the outcomes of the divergent threat perceptions of both countries. These perceptions are based on their respective competitive security narratives and, more importantly, their track record of unending hostility between them. Missile technology is among the major military technologies that eat …