Daily Articles

China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative is carving out new pathways across the Eurasian continent, signifying Beijing’s ambitions to remake the world around it.  This project, if implemented, will fundamentally change China’s role and relationships in South Asia, perhaps in some ways that are not intended. In the Indian Ocean region, OBOR has two aspects. One is the Maritime …

One of the more striking developments of 2016 and its highly unusual politics was the emergence of a “post-fact” world, in which virtually all authoritative information sources were called into question and challenged by contrary facts of dubious quality and provenance. The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the 1990s was greeted as a moment of …

Tasneem Noorani The writer is a former federal secretary. DURING the Raj, the British ruled through deputy commissioners (DCs) for more than a century, while we in our effort to overthrow the ‘colonial’ yoke 70 years after independence are trying out the third hybrid administrative system in 14 years. At this pace we will be experimenting with a new system …

By Tahir Khan The three deadly attacks in Afghanistan on January 11 took the lives of nearly 70 people including five diplomats of the United Arab Emirates at a time when there was a traditional lull in the fighting in winter. But the attacks on the parliament staff in capital Kabul and Helmand, which were claimed by the Taliban and …

By Talat Masood The power of media has become so pervasive that it influences national policy, sets its own priorities on reporting events and above all constructs national discourse. Since several weeks matters connected with Panama Leaks have saturated the television and radio news and talk shows. Lately, the news of General (retd) Raheel Sharif’s possible appointment as commander of …

By Harris Khalique Part – II Side-effect In any state and society, tolerance for dissent is the first step towards making the state and society internally strong, safe and civilised. However, the word ‘tolerate’ has a certain degree of uneasiness latent in its meaning. That one tolerates this dissent from one’s own position out of some social, economic, legal or …

By Rizwan Asghar The successful test-firing of the submarine-launched, nuclear-capable cruise missile Babur-III has made many people in our strategic community feel proud. The missile, with a range of 450 kilometres, is being considered “a major scientific milestone” because it gives Pakistan a sea-based second-strike nuclear capability. Second-strike capability enables a country to absorb the first strike and still retaliate …

The truth may ultimately prevail about demonetisation, but the government might be able to maintain the loyalty of a large part of the public for a long time, says Amartya Sen More than two months after the demonetisation, Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen says that any proper “economic reasoning could not have sensibly led to such a ham-handed policy.” …

Joseph Dana Imagine sitting in a plane, flying high above the clouds when suddenly the passengers realise there is nobody in the cockpit. The plane is flying itself, but it is unclear where the aircraft is headed and whether it will land. This hypothetical situation, according to Polish socialist Zygmunt Bauman who died last week at the age of 91, …

Santiago Zabala We will remember 2016 not only for the return of populism throughout the West, but also for the blindness of those who could not see the difference between right-wing and leftist populism. This distinction is vital, and overlooking it further contributes to the degradation of a public discourse that is already in trouble. The rise of both kinds …