Study Kit

By: Muhammad Amir Rana DESPITE billions of dollars spent and diverse efforts made, including multiple military campaigns, political strategies and reconciliation efforts, peace and stability in Afghanistan remain a distant dream. It’s more than one and a half decades that the world has been trying to solve the Afghanistan puzzle but in vain. Now China has entered the theatre, probably …

By: Saif Asif Khan Ian Talbot is rightly regarded as one of the premier historians working on South Asia. In his latest book, A History of Modern South Asia: Politics, States, Diasporas, he documents the histories of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan from the advent of British rule in the mid-18th century to the countries’ contemporary politico-economic conditions. The introduction explains …

By: Mushtaq Rajpar Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington only reinforces the deeper bilateral relationship between the world’s two largest democracies and economies, with the US standing number one with an $18 trillion economy and India standing at number six with a $2.1 trillion economy. In the post-liberalisation period, the two countries have seen a widening trade, investment …

By: Shahzad Chaudhry Though it is premised on some serious options of hot engagement as well, as is happening in Syria when US planes took down an entirely bona fide Russian aircraft on a mission against Isis in Raqqa. But it’s happening right before our eyes. The detente is over. Twenty years of hard work began in the 1970s under …

By: Asim Bashir Khan KARACHI: Despite a consistent decline in agriculture’s contribution to Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP), the sector has kept its prominence in the national economy and continues to ensure food security. Agriculture constitutes one-fifth of the national economy with nearly 60% share in exports and provides means of living to 42.3% of the labour force. However, public …

By: Parvez Iftikhar ISLAMABAD: During my recent house renovation work, it was pleasing to see my semi-literate contractor using WhatsApp to remotely get my approvals for various small items that he had to procure for me. Normally, he would have brought some samples to choose from and then gone back to procure the selected ones; this has become quite a …

By: Shahid Javed Burki These days Pakistan finds itself precariously placed. In order to deal with its geographic location, Islamabad needs to show some deft handling of its external relations. In a book published by Macmillan of New York earlier this year, I went into some considerable detail on how the world was changing rapidly. The book appeared with the …

National 1. The Companies Act, 2017, has replaced the Companies Ordinance ______. (a) 1979  (b) 1984 (c) 1988  (d) 1992 2. On May 16, Pakistan signed an MoU with ______ to promote country’s worldwide exports by SMEs through e-commerce. (a) Google (b) Alibaba Group (c) BidPay (d) Amazon 3. On ______, the ICJ restrained Pakistan from executing convicted Indian spy …

When President Trump began taking a wrecking ball to some of America’s traditional foreign policies, going so far as to threaten the country’s long and sturdy relationship with its Western European allies, many hoped that the other branches of government would provide a counterweight to the executive branch, and restrain his worst impulses. The federal courts helped by slamming the …

By: Hasan Khan On June 12, the US Defence Secretary James Mattis said that Washington was adopting a new strategy – a ‘regional strategy’ according to him – to resolve the lingering Afghan conflict. This new regional strategy for the Afghan conflict will be based on the “geographic reality of where this enemy [Taliban/Haqqanis] is fighting from. As you know, …