Abdul Hadi Mayar

Pakistan and Russia have done a lot in recent decades to mitigate their bitterness of the Cold War era when Pakistan was pitched as a frontline state to block Moscow’s headway to warm water. Islamabad’s grave experiences with Washington in the post-Afghan war period and its subsequent isolation pushed it closer to Russia. Though initially […]

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s disclosure that Pakistan and India had gotten closer to a ‘nuclear conflagration’ in February 2019 and that only Washington’s intervention prevented an escalation between them makes it more urgent for the two nuclear states and the international community to pre-empt any future outbreak of the catastrophe that is […]

The game of power has intensified in the country. Leaders of both the PML-N-led Pakistan Democratic Movement and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf appear desperate to unnerve each other. At the same time, both sides continue to express the fear of ‘political engineering.’ This is strengthening the apprehensions that contrary to claims in public the sponsored game of […]

The International Monetary Fund and Pakistan are locked in such a fraught relationship that neither can completely rely on the other. Pakistan’s precarious economy always stays at the mercy of external support, and the IMF has never disappointed it. But the subsequent conditionality always leaves mistrust between them. While every Pakistani government says it was […]

Terrorism is set to transform Pakistan and Afghanistan into Syria and Iraq, endangering regional peace and stability if they do not live in peace and harmony with one another. Both would be very misled if they forgot what they have been through over the previous several decades. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated unequivocally in […]

Ukraine conflict has certainly posed tougher geopolitical and economic challenges to Europe and the world. However, it has also provided some opportunities in the process, which, if tackled judiciously, can go a long way to foster regional and global unification. As soon as the war broke out, Russia blocked its energy supply to Europe, causing […]

Back in 1964, just 15 years after Chairman Mao’s Communist Revolution, progressive Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmad, had resembled Beijing with Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. In a poem captioned after the city’s old name, Peking, he wrote: “I feel as if I have arms six hundred million in number.” He referred to China’s population at that time. […]

If Pakistan objects to Afghanistan’s bilateral relations with India, it will be tantamount to its sheer meddling with the internal affairs of an independent neighbouring state. But if Afghanistan holds its relations with Pakistan hostage to its interactions with India, or any other country for that matter, it will be equally unfair on its part. […]

As connectivity of Southeast Asia and the Middle East with Central Asia and the Caucasus hinges on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Trans-Afghan Railway Line, if completed, will serve as a lifeline for an integrated Eurasia. Initially, a conception of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to diversify trade and supply routes of his landlocked Central Asian country, […]

Secular and liberal activists in Pakistan were always dejected by the jingoistic rhetoric of jihadist hawks at home. Now the outshining firework by the Indian brand has totally dampened their dreams for a peaceful and prosperous South Asia. Groomed under Mahatma Gandhi’s secular ideology, the Indian intelligentsia had traditionally been liberal and pacific. They remained […]