Study Kit

By: Paul Krugman Authoritarians with an animus against ethnic minorities are on the march across the Western world. They control governments in Hungary and Poland, and will soon take power in America. And they’re organizing across borders: Austria’s Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis, has signed an agreement with Russia’s ruling party — and met with Donald Trump’s choice for …

By Syed Mohibullah Shah Over the last 100 years, the world has lived through four different world orders. It has arrived at the same multi-polar order that prevailed in the beginning of the 20th century and is filled with uncertainties. For much of the first half of the 20th century, a multi-polar world was shaping events that affected the rise …

By S M Naseem The focus of this year’s 32nd annual meeting of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists (PSDE) was almost exclusively on the recently-launched China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a $46 billion infrastructure development project that is being funded primarily by China. The focus on the CPEC was driven by the fact that, despite constant drumbeat and noise …

By Bashir Hussain Shah According to scientists and hydrologists, water-related climate change impacts in Pakistan are melting glaciers, frequent floods, frequent droughts and changes in precipitation patterns. Hydrologists say glaciers will be exhausted in the next 60-75 years since they have been melting at high rates due to continuous rise in temperatures. Pakistan will face an acute shortage of water …

By Adnan Adil The death toll of civilian and military casualties in cross-border firing along the Line of Control (LoC) is on the rise. The casualties and injuries resulting from the attack on a school van in the Nakyal sector on December 16 are the latest spell of bloodshed. The 2003 ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan lies in tatters. …

BY Sam Ben-Meir America’s Weimar Moment This month commemorates seventy-five years since the attack on Pearl Harbor by the forces of Imperial Japan – an attack in which 2,403 Americans were killed and directly led to the United States’ entry into World War II. By December 11th, the United States was officially at war with Japan, as well as Germany …

Pakistan may have climbed to the top of the ICC’s Test rankings this year, but none of their players managed to secure a place in the ICC Test Team of the Year 2016 announced on Thursday. Same is the case in the 50-over format, with Pakistan’s struggles in the one-day game meaning the ICC ODI Team of the Year 2016 …

By Shahzad Chaudhry When Nawaz Sharif won the 2013 elections but had not yet been inducted in the government, the then army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, called on him at Lahore one  Sunday. This was to be as much an introductory session of the chief to the new prime minister as it was an advisory session on what seemed …

By Ali Sarwar Naqvi The annual plenary session of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) held in Seoul in June this year failed to achieve a consensus regarding the entry of non- Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory countries. This was followed by an informal session in Vienna in November which also failed to agree on the criteria to be applied for …

By Ayaz Amir A dictator, Gen Musharraf, gave us the regulatory bodies – bodies to act as a check, in the public interest, over various ministries. A democrat – for that’s what we must call him – is doing away with them, because they were irksome and restrictive and not allowing the government to do as it wanted with the …