Pak Affairs

The South Asian region has always been under the influence of extra-regional powers. The interplay of their strategic and economic interests considerably marred bilateral relations between states in South Asia, particularly Pakistan and India. The international security scenario has long been under transformation due to major shifts in political, economic and strategic interests of states. In a contemporary era, incidents …

‘Jiay Bhutto’, ‘doctrine of victimhood’, and above all ‘democracy is the best revenge’ with a theory of political rapprochement as followed by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) top leadership Panch Ka Tola (the gang of five): the PPP, PML-N, PML-Q, MQM and ANP (and of course a ‘friendly opposition’) lay exposed as those at the helm of affairs stay put. With …

How did Imran Khan manage to gather such a large crowd on October 30, 2012? How did Dr Tahirul Qadri manage to gather such a large crowd on December 23, 2012? And, how did Dr Tahirul Qadri manage to keep tens of thousands for four wintry nights in the open? The mother of all questions? Islamabad’s ‘million-man march’ can be …

The situation in Pakistan is no different. We too witnessed the Athenian scene being enacted in our capital with a lot of political ferment and frenzy. On a day in 399 BC, philosopher Socrates stood before a jury of 500 of his fellow-Athenians accused of ‘refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state’ and of ‘corrupting the youth’. If …

The Soviet failure in Afghanistan due to Pakistan’s active support for the Afghan Jihad kept both the states locked in a state of continuous hostility, with the result that their relations were far from being normal for a long time. In the inter-state relations, politics has made national interests dominant all other considerations. The same was true about the China-U.S. …

The rift may be threatening South Asia’s peace This article discusses the institutional mechanism established by the treaty True to the remark, the next-century war will be fought over water, not over oil. The Indus Basin Treaty, 1960 envisaged the resolution of the long-standing water dispute between Pakistan and India, which emerged right after the independence in 1947. Water is …

The causes of corruption are contextual rooted in a country’s political development, legal development, social history, bureaucratic traditions, economic conditions and policies. Corruption means moral perversion, depravity, dishonesty — especially bribery — and putrefaction or decay. Corruption is defined as ‘the abuse of public office for private gains. It involves the seeking or extracting of promise or receipt of a …

The institutional strength is not gained in a day. However, the institutional decay begins when a sense of responsibility among institutions fades away. The institutional development is an evolutionary process that consists of a lot many troubled troughs. The political horizon in Pakistan has never been clear and desirable during the last five years. There have always been dark and …

Unfortunately, inordinate delay in civil, criminal, rent, administrative, accountability, revenue, corporate and regulatory matters in Pakistan is raised on the edifice against substantive justice. The two interconnected conceptions of justice may be traced in legal literature: the substantial justice and the procedural justice. For instance, Clause 40 of Magna Carta or the Great Charter of the Liberties of England (1215) …

Will naming decades’ old Shadman Chowk after Bhagat Singh immortalize the legendary figure? The renaming of Lahore’s Shadman Chowk as Bhagat Singh Chowk sparked a spontaneous controversy over distortions of history that led to this ill-advised decision. There were many reasons against this decision. As if already there were not enough governance worries at home, we recently saw the Lahore …