Once more, Pakistani politicians are in the news for all the wrong reasons. As if defections from the ruling PML-N or PTI were insufficient to provide material for deadlines, Nadeem Afzal Chan of the PPP also made headlines for defecting to the PTI. Afzal, in recent years, gave the impression to have upgraded his role […]
Pakistan: a Chinese colony?
China-Pakistan relations are simple and complicated at the same time. Though Pakistan became the first country to recognise communist China, the latter was more interested in India in the 1950s. It was the 1962 Indo-China war that brought China closer to Pakistan in terms of settling the border. Moreover, the 1965 India-Pakistan war brought Pakistan […]
Pashtun identity and geo politics
The US and its NATO allies have been fighting a protracted and presumptive warfare in Afghanistan since 9/11. Though the vast array of existing literature has significantly highlighted the material conditions of the war-stricken people of Southwest Asia especially Afghanistan and Pakistan, identitarian conception and concern of the majoritarian Pashtuns have been abysmally overlooked, both […]
Will the Sharifs survive the current crisis?
Four months ago, in these pages, I argued, “in the coming months, it is the PML-N that will either reconcile or lose. If it confronts the army in particular and the judiciary in general, the party will be over. We would then be discussing pros and cons of martial law regime.” The PML-N especially Maryam […]
The chances of martial law
In recent weeks, interesting but competing statements by the PML-N, the army, the opposition and the public on the (im)possibility of martial law consumed much of the prime time. The N-league led by Maryam Nawaz was and is going confrontational vis-à-vis the judiciary and, indirectly, the army. Indeed, the day after Shahbaz Sharif and his […]
Will the US help out Nawaz Sharif?
There is traditionally lot of literature available, mostly leftist, that points to the US role in Pakistan’s domestic politics. By and large, such accounts make one believe that the Pakistani army staged coups and imposed martial laws at the behest of the United States. From General Ayub to General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani military leadership played […]
US and Pakistan (dis)engagement
Having visited China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran in an effort to generate ‘collaborative’ diplomacy in the context of President Trump’s tough-on-Pakistan speech lately, the Pakistani authorities finally landed in the US last week where the newly appointed Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi met with the Vice President of the United States. In this […]
BRICS dropped bricks on Pakistan
The recently concluded BRICS Summit hosted by Beijing turned out to be nightmare for Pakistani authorities who were already in a state of shock over the withdrawal of the Chinese and Indian forces from the much hyped Doklam zone. The latter marked not only strategic and diplomatic maturity on the behalf of both Chinese and […]
US versus Pakistan: the way forward
The Trump Administration finally released its South Asia strategic policy that hinges on three elements: one, the centre of future geopolitics in South Asia will be Afghanistan due to its proximity with Iran, Central Asia (and Russia), China and, importantly, Pakistan. Two, India has been assumed as a strategic partner with a major role not […]
The deposed Nawaz reimposing himself
Nawaz Sharif, having been disqualified by the apex court, is still adamant and trying his best to stay within the political system as well as the country’s power structure dominated by the military for decades. Why is he still stubborn? Why hasn’t he accepted the Supreme Court’s verdict and what motivated him to stage a […]