Making war is easy, finding peace is hard; and, all wars are fought to find peace. There isn’t a bigger conundrum than what faces Afghans, the...
I have returned home after a two-month sojourn to Trump’s country. I last visited there in 2016. That was election year and halfway down it seemed...
In 1998, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met to set in motion the ‘Comprehensive Dialogue’ process as a part of the bilateral...
Politically, Narendra Modi has played his cards. He has used his near two-thirds majority to remove the charade of Article 370 in the Indian...
August 5, 2019 will haunt the memory of the people of India and Pakistan forever. India has decided to upstage itself with a presidential order...
Donald Trump and Imran Khan have us all in a spin. What seemed to be an expedient meet-up without associated diplomatic frenzy or driven by an...
As Imran Khan prepares for Washington there is something he must know. President Trump, IK’s host for the visit - which will include a tete a tete...
If one was to summarise the state of governance in the country, the following will make a comprehensive list: The Budget has been passed and if...
This is a public-service column. It was inspired by a recent event on Celiac disease where the PTI’s Shafqat Mehmood presided with specialists,...
At a recent deliberation of a group of opinion-makers and thought-leaders – many with experience in governance and policy formulation – there...
Modi 2.0 is a journey which began as Modi 1.0. There are things which he has achieved and things still left to be done. The saffronisation of India...
The Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party – the political wing of whose Prime Minister Narendra Modi...
The deed is done, or will be shortly after the IMF board has approved the staff-level agreement with the government of Pakistan for a structural...
Prima facie, it is a useless debate. The matter is settled in the constitution and forms part of the basic structure which remains unalterable per...
The opposition led by the Sharif brothers is effectively pacified given their specific challenges, personal and legal, as indeed their absence from...
Transpose Ishaq Dar in place of Asad Umar with the same set of economic challenges that Asad Umar faced eight months back when he started off as...
Pakistan is in the midst of a unique experiment. Unbeknown we have marched into an era where our political journey as a society has evolved to the...
Little over five years when the Ayub martial law struck, I was too young to know the difference. All it did was disrupt my most favourite moment of...
Had Balakot and the next day gone per the plan, Modi would have been in his starry heavens. It did not. Instead, it brought grief to the entire...
When Samuel Huntington first published his thesis of ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order’ in 1996, he was laughed...
Whoever conceived and enacted Pulwama did no favour to Pakistan or the Kashmir struggle – despite recent talk that the Kashmiri fight for freedom...
When India first decided to launch its terror doctrine, pre-Doval, it used freelancing terror assets in Afghanistan to attack some key bases in...
Mumbai was a reality. It needed a more pervasive investigation to connect the dots but the facts were lost in irrational emotion. We, India and...
For starts, we have depreciated the overvalued rupee to encourage exports and limit imports. That’s an apprentice approach to control the current...
A promise for peace in Afghanistan can be blunted by two principal and two tertiary factors. The principal ones include the sitting Afghan...
A sentence that Imran Khan spoke when addressing his party convention on the government’s 100-day performance may be the most telling if indeed...
Pakistani society and its constituent institutions displayed their most macabre traits this past week. A couple, which had young children, was mowed...
The Afghan war is whimpering to an end because of natural causes. The Americans have exhausted their patience to sustain an outpost of little...
So what trick is Imran Khan missing in his first opportunity to bat as the government? These are transition times the world over. Global economy and...
So, what’s the year’s lasting lament as 2018 fades out? That the government, the military and the judiciary, all seem to be working in...
Here is what I wrote a week before Imran Khan was sworn in: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes something out of it more for the sake of the...
The PTI has landed itself into this dysfunctional economic mess which is surviving only on borrowed money. The indigenous economy around basic...
Equanomics is what this nation might need to address its woes. However, what has sustained over decades as the economic order of this society can...
This is what I got from the PTI’s first hundred days in power: that Imran Khan is a sincere, well-meaning and honest person who has reached the...
A spread view of the world’s map is most revealing and may help understand better how the new world is turning out. The Pacific Ocean acts as the...
It helps to realise that religion is underwritten in the purpose of Pakistan. At least, that is how the country was first imagined. The fact that...
Despite Barelvis being the dominant sect – almost fifty percent – they had been overwhelmed by the Deobandi-Salafi brand since independence....
It actually began way back before the country was formed. After the Quaid and his cohorts had determined that the parting solution was unlikely to...
This is the crux of governance, the difference and complementarity of which must come early to any person in a position of leadership. Actually, it...
These are Trump’s times, as of the many right-extremist political start-ups which are cashing in on the politics of culture and identity.There...
The tremors from the by-polls may have been mild but should have registered on the PTI’s Richter scale. The loss of Imran Khan’s two seats has...
All politics is for power, which in turn gets driven by the allure of influence or lust. Exceptions exist and that is when history gets made but...
Begin with the economy, a perpetual and deep pain: so the State Bank raises the interest rate by one percent. This made for a two-and-a-half percent...
To most Pakistanis, it is an enigma. One can never tell what an Indian mind may be thinking. And it doesn’t speak well of the two people.Surely,...
We are such big-brother aficionados that in the 70 years since the country was first formed we have always had one looking over our shoulder. Even...
The year 1979 was geopolitically seismic. America’s permanent haunt, Iran, and its sovereign, Raza Shah Pehlavi were overthrown in days by a rare...
Let’s face it, PTI, there has been more pain than plaudits in the first few weeks of the government. This has less to do with how matters may have...
These three words will define how the US and Pakistan develop their relationship in the foreseeable future. The structural domain is already...
On August 18, Pakistan’s newest prime minister, Imran Khan, will wake up to the reality of a live western border with Afghanistan. One hopes that...
This shall be the second time in his life that an era will be known by Imran Khan’s name. The first was when he led the Pakistan cricket team and...
