Pakistan and the TTP on January 12, 2023On January 7, an Islamabad-based think tank, the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), released its annual “Pakistan Security Report 2022.” The report compared the security situation in 2021 and 2022. The report noted that the TTP remained rooted in Afghanistan and that this factor alone gave the organization the requisite leeway to be a […]
US Aid for Gender Equality on December 29, 2022On December 22, for the fiscal year of 2023, the Senate of the United States (US) passed a $ 1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, including $200 million for promoting gender equality in Pakistan. This amount is 20 times more than the amount allocated for Pakistan in December 2020 ($10 million) for the fiscal year 2021. […]
Germany’s Skilled Immigration Act on December 20, 2022On March 1, 2020, Germany enforced its new Skilled Immigration Act, which claims to extend opportunities for qualified professionals and skilled workers from outside the European Union to come to work and live in Germany. Currently, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), in coalition with the Green party, has been […]
Promotions of Bureaucrats on December 13, 2022Politics has ravaged almost every system. The process of the promotion of bureaucrats is no exception. Playing politics to promote favoured bureaucrats is akin to playing with the administrative future of the country. On December 9, Prime Minster (PM) Shehbaz Sharif approved the recommendations of the Central Selection Board (CSB) for the promotions of officers […]
Military Diplomacy on December 1, 2022On November 27, the Gulf News published the interview of Pakistan’s outgoing Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Related to foreign policy, the interview is quite revealing of an important facet, which spurns the necessity of bringing Pakistan’s Foreign Office in the loop. The aspect is that military diplomacy complements Pakistan’s foreign […]
Freedom of Expression: Dimensions on November 17, 2022Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, besides a fundamental human faculty to subsist in the world. Freedom of expression comes with four dimensions. The first dimension is that freedom of expression gives liberty, though under certain reasonable restraints, to express oneself by speaking or writing. The availability of freedom of expression nudges one […]
The Srinagar Highway on November 3, 2022One of the easiest ways the Pakistanis have learnt to resolve the Kashmir issue is to substitute the name of the Kashmir highway for the Srinagar highway. This happened in the capital Islamabad in August 2020. The renaming was done to express solidarity with the Kashmir cause. Solace was found in the fact that the […]
FATF Unshackles Pakistan on October 25, 2022On October 21, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global money laundering and terrorism financing watchdog, removed Pakistan from its grey list, which was meant for increased monitoring of a suspected, non-compliant country. With that, Pakistan’s international politico-economic credibility has improved. It had been an appalling reality that madrassas begged for alms from society […]
What Biden Says! on October 20, 2022On October 13, at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Reception in Los Angeles, while talking about the changing political dynamics in the broader region of Asia, President of the United States (US) Joe Biden vented his thoughts on Pakistan. Biden said that Pakistan might be “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” as […]
Rebuilding Pak-US Ties on October 12, 2022On September 29, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited the embassy of the United States in Islamabad to celebrate the completion of 75 years of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and the US. The US Ambassador Donald Blome hosted the occasion. The event was a recognition of the fact that bilateral relations remained in cold storage, […]