Dr Qaisar Rashid

On June 17, in Berlin, the plenary session of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced that Pakistan fully complied with its conditions (34 action items) and comprehensively reformed its system. Now, the process of removing Pakistan from the grey list could be started after fulfilling the last prerequisite: an on-site monitoring visit from […]

On June 3, 2022, Prime Minster Shehbaz Sharif notified the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as the Special Vetting Agency (SVA) for the verification and screening of all civil servants from induction to promotions and postings. No one knows the reason for such a step. Per se, the decision is an expression of no-confidence in the civilian […]

On March 2, 2022, in a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and demanding that Moscow stop fighting and withdraw its military forces, Pakistan abstained from voting against Russia. The occasion was a rare emergency session called by the Security Council asking all 193 members of the UNGA to vote […]

Emerging from geostrategic location, geopolitics kept on determining Pakistan’s trajectory, both regional and international. Now, Pakistan feels trammelled and trapped and yearns for a switchover to the path of geo-economics. On the external front, Pakistan failed to notice that international dynamics had changed after the end of the Cold War in 1991. For instance, in […]

Stemming from geostrategic placement, geopolitics kept on dictating its terms to Pakistan, which has finally realized that it is lagging behind in development based on the economy. Pakistan remained infatuated with geo-politics, which it now intends to forsake. Pakistan’s cold war (1945-1991) engagement as a South Asian proxy to militate against the spread of communism […]

Though the year 2022 begins with some newly found fervor bordering on ambitions, it brings along certain challenges, especially related to Pakistan’s foreign policy. In this regard, three main challenges can be counted. The first challenge is that Pakistan is finding it difficult to balance its relations between the Afghan Taliban and the United States […]

On 14 December 2021, in a statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, United States (US) ambassador-designate to Pakistan, Donald Blome said that the relationship of the US with Pakistan remained extraordinarily consequential for the US’ core interests. Further, “Pakistan is pursuing expanded economic linkages with the United States as part of what it calls […]

On December 14, 2021, addressing the Margalla Dialogue Forum 2021 on “Foreign Policy Challenges of Future in changing Geopolitical Landscape,” a debate organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said, “Indeed, we live in times of uncertainty. The world order seems to be in a state of severe […]

On 4 December 2021, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi held a press conference in Islamabad to announce that Pakistan would host a session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers on December 19 to sensitise the OIC to commit to offering economic assistance to Afghanistan for humanitarian purposes. The effort […]

On 23 November 2021, the State Department of the United States (US) announced through its spokesperson Ned Price that under the stewardship of Tom West, the new US Special Representative for Afghanistan, the US would send its delegation to Doha (Qatar) to spend two days on talks with the Taliban next week. The last formal […]