Daily Current Affairs

That there are few limits to Pakistan’s capacity to act as a regional trade hub is not something that is in doubt. It has always been a question of whether the will was there at the top of the government to push this vision into reality. So it should come as no surprise that Pakistan is central to the Asian …

THE recent oversubscription of the foreign loans sought by the Pakistan government, and the relatively favourable rates on which these were obtained, indicates that lenders seem to have shrugged off this year’s sharp (20 per cent) fall in the Pakistan Stock Exchange and concerns about widening trade and budget deficits, domestic political turmoil and threats of US sanctions. The market’s …

THE Nov 26, 2017, six-point agreement between the Faizabad protesters and the government/military was a major setback for the reputation and image of Pakistan. There are still unanswered questions. Was it the disqualified boss of the ruling party who engineered this episode to target the military boss? Or was it the other way around? Whatever the answer, the government finally …

While President Trump has followed in few of his predecessors’ footsteps, his administration has done the expected in at least one respect: It has undertaken a Middle East peace initiative in its first year. Most recent administrations have done the same, and all have failed. Will Mr. Trump do any better? The specifics of the initiative are still being hammered …

In the mid of 2014, the Imran Khan-Tahirul Qadri duo cultivated the crop. Towards the end of 2017, Tehreek-e-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLRY) leadership has reaped it. During these three-and-half years, Pakistan’s democracy, no more than a house of cards as it has always been, has degenerated into a mobocracy. The question of whether such theatrics, which put the nation …

WASHINGTON — When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis declared on Tuesday that North Korea now had the missile capability to “threaten everywhere in the world, basically,” he hinted at a long-running debate inside the United States government: Can the same strategy that worked against the Soviet Union — mutually assured destruction — also work against a far smaller adversary? The answer …

If there was a message in North Korea’s launch of a new missile capable of reaching anywhere in the United States, it was that America’s strategy toward that country is failing — and that war may be looming. The American public is far too complacent about the possibility of a war with North Korea, one that could be incomparably bloodier …

HISTORY attests that the conclusion of military alliances often leads to military conflict. Indeed, alliances are often formed for the purpose of waging war. It is thus ominous that several new alliances, formal and informal, are emerging currently in various parts of the world. In South Asia, America’s new alliance with India has emboldened the Modi government to adopt a …

Why people come out on roads to protest against the system? People ‘come on roads if the (political) system is in danger in other countries,’ observed Senate Chairman, Mian Raza Rabbani, while addressing the Sindhi Literature Festival in Karachi on October 28, 2017. He called upon the civil society to stand against unconstitutional measures to keep the country on the …

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — I never thought I’d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style. Unlike the …