Basic Democracy 2.0 on June 22, 2018Pakistan’s history with military rule begins with Ayub’s coup of 1958. While several coups have happened since, it has become progressively more difficult for the military to rule directly. As Lt-Gen (retd) Asad Durrani noted in Spy Chronicles, generals are shy of seizing the reins of power even in banana republics in the current political […]
The Bronte Parsonage in England on June 19, 2018I was standing in front of a plain dining table in the Bronte Parsonage in the village of Haworth, in Yorkshire, England. The Bronte sisters, arguably England’s most famous literary family, had written all their great novels and poems on that table. I was awestruck at the simplicity of their lives. The site is visited […]
Why the West shall never win Afghanistan on June 14, 2018The British campaign in Afghanistan, from 2006 onwards, was focused on the province of Helmand. It is the largest province, which covers nine percent of the country’s area, but houses only four percent of the Afghani population. For centuries, armies have marched through Helmand from Iran to India. Unsurprisingly, the capital city of Helmand is […]
Durrani’s book warrants a revisit of Osama Bin Laden’s death on June 9, 2018On the May 1, 2011,Americans learned that US Special Ops had found and killed Osama bin Laden in the dead of night in Pakistan. He was hiding in “plain sight,” less than a mile from the military academy. The US released a picture showing President Obama, Secretary Clinton and other cabinet members glued to a […]
An epic drive through the Congo on June 4, 2018My bucket list gets longer by the day but there are some places that will never be on it. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one such place. The Congo has been the subject of many books and movies. There is Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. As legend has it, it was the inspiration […]
The ghost of Kargil on May 31, 2018“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner once said. And that is why Kargil matters because it could happen again. Sometime in the early summer of 1999, the news broke that Pakistan had launched an incursion in Kargil and achieved tactical surprise. Just as abruptly, the news came one day that […]
Exploring the Parisian grandeur on May 30, 2018Few cities evoke the word grand with such passion as Paris. In the City of Light, the storied capital of France, history has been made. The city has been featured in countless novels, plays and movies by Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and Woody Allen, among others. Paris is home to the iconic Eiffel […]
The duplicitous nature of US-Pakistan relations on May 26, 2018From 1947, the dynamics of US-Pakistan relations have been decided behind closed doors. The military and intelligence officials have been calling the shots, not the political leaders or the career diplomats. Thus, what is said in public between the two countries is often contradicted in private by their actions. And what is agreed to in […]
A visit to Lincoln’s majestic tomb on May 25, 2018On one nice April day in Springfield, the capital of Illinois, my business finished early. I had a few hours before the flight home so I asked the concierge if there was a must-see destination in town. He named Lincoln’s tomb. I had always thought he was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. […]
The magic of Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 21, 2018I had seen enough of Santa Fe’s beauty on business trips to want to come back and tour. So one December, we arrived there to spend our year-end holidays. The adobe exterior of the hotel mirrored that of the pueblos in the old town. We tasted the local cuisine in the town plaza the next […]