S M Hali

It is no secret that India aspires to be a regional power. However, ambition must be backed by responsibility.A spate of accidents in the sensitive Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), have left Indians wondering whether its scientists can be trusted with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). According to Indian media, on June 19 2018, a blast took place while workers were … [Read more...] about DRDO: A liability for India

Pakistan signed the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) with India under the aegis of the World Bank (WB) in 1960 in good faith. Unfortunately, India has not kept its end of the bargain and has repeatedly violated the IWT and constructed numerous hydroelectric power (HEP) projects, which have infringed on Pakistan’s water rights. Pakistan has made two mistakes in this regard. Firstly, it did not plan and … [Read more...] about India: The water bully

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Justice and Development (AK) party and their nationalist allies have won the 24 June 2018 elections by securing 52.6 percent of the votes cast. President Erdogan's main rival, Muharrem Ince, was able to secure only 30.76 percent of the votes. The results preclude the requirement of a second round of polls. Simultaneously, in the parliamentary vote, AK … [Read more...] about Erdogan’s pyrrhic victory

Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS. The terrorist group is known all over the world for the havoc it wreaked in Iraq and Syria. It is a Salafi Jihadist terrorist organisation that follows a fundamentalist, Wahabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. Daesh gained global prominence in early 2014 after evicting Iraqi government forces from key Iraqi cities and capturing Mosul … [Read more...] about Countering Daesh in Pakistan

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which just concluded its summit at the eve of 17 years of its formation in China's progressive metropolis Qingdao, appears to have come of age. The Shanghai spirit continues to guide the SCO member states, which now include Pakistan and India as well. The need to establish cooperation institutions has been reiterated as well. It was heartening to note … [Read more...] about SCO-from Shanghai to Qingdao

Today, the entire world faces an acute water shortage. According to some analysts, it is global warming which is to blame for this. There is a universal consensus that this catastrophe has been brought about because of the impact of humans on the environment. Sensible nations are adopting measures to conserve scarce water resources. Unfortunately, Pakistan has been caught on the wrong foot, it has … [Read more...] about Water scarcity in Balochistan

On May 27, 2018 the Federally Administered Tribal Areas merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), creating history. The KP Assembly adopted the Constitutional amendment that made this all possible through a two-third majority, meaning the move was quite popular. However, not everyone was happy. There were protests against the move by Fazlur Rehman's Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F) and the Pakhtunkhwa … [Read more...] about Flaws of the FATA-KP merger

The election of Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Narendra Modi as Prime Minister (PM) of India has allowed the extremist Hindutva ideology to disturb the country's social order. The ideology's origins can be traced back to a secular, diehard Hindu named Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who in his 1923 essay 'Essentials of Hindutva' presented a new, distorted version of Hinduism, and what it meant to be … [Read more...] about Sikhs in the Hindutva crosshairs

There is no denying the fact that India perceives China as its arch rival when it comes to gaining supremacy in the region. China's meteoric rise has made the United States (US), the world's sole superpower and largest economy, to also bewary of China's economic progress. It therefore seems natural that the US and India have teamed up to put impediments in China's path, which suits India very well … [Read more...] about Rising China and the Indian quest for power

Xinjiang is a province in Western China. It is the country's largest province, occupying 16 percent of China's surface area, and has the country's largest population of Muslims. In the past, China's eastern provinces enjoyed greater opulence and a higher rate of development, perhaps because they are closer to the coastal region and ports. However, this disparity caused Xinjiang's population to … [Read more...] about How Xi Jinping tackled radicalism in Xinjiang