India and Pakistan are among the most important countries in the 21st century. The two nations share a common heritage, but their relationship remains tenuous. The nuclear rivals have waged four wars against each other and have gone to the brink of war several times. While India is...
Pakistan’s Eco...
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Pakistan is a country beset with political difficulties, but they could be of secondary importance to its economic woes. While much attention has been devoted to the dramatic Supreme Court move to order the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on charges of corruption and recent...
Pakistan’s Battle fo...
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Last week, tens of thousands of protestors descended into the heart of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, demanding that the federal government make sweeping electoral reforms and then give way to an army and judiciary-endorsed caretaker government that would oversee general elections. The...
You Say Pakistanis All Hate the Drone War? Prove I...
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According to the latest Pew research, only a slim majority of them are aware it even exists. Observers of Pakistani politics say Pakistanis universally loathe the American drone strikes against Islamist militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt. The view is based on anecdotal accounts of Pakistanis, but not the ones most affected by the strikes who live in the tribal areas where the drones fly. Most of these informants have no personal knowledge of the tribal areas and the political situation that prevails there. Despite these limitations, observers such as Murtaza Haider confidently avow that “if there is a consensus in Pakistan on...
Pakistan’s Sinister Use of Prisoners
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The Taliban have always had a one point agenda in their peace strategy: to get the maximum number of prisoners released as quickly as possible from Pakistani jails and US lockups at Guantanamo and inside Afghanistan. To their mind, only after a steady stream of important, battlefield-hardened prisoners is being freed, thus strengthening the insurgency in the field, can a serious discussion of ceasefires and other confidence building measure be held. And no one knows that better than Pakistan, which is beginning to exert its considerable influence over any Afghanistan endgame as the US and other coalition forces prepare to withdraw from the...