For the last several years, India’s ruling elite and its cheerleaders in the strategic community sold one grand idea to the world: that India was no longer merely a South Asian state, but the central pillar of a new Indo-Pacific order. Washington, especially during Trump’s first term, appeared willing to indulge this imagination. The renaming […]
The Man in the Middle
There are hours in history when a country’s importance is not measured by the noise it makes, but by the danger it helps avert. In the latest round of US-Iran tensions, Pakistan found itself in precisely such an hour. At that moment, Pakistan did not posture. It performed. This was not diplomacy for applause. It […]
The Strike Question
There is no doubt that the people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir have genuine concerns. No responsible government, political party or commentator can dismiss public anxiety over flour, electricity, prices, jobs, health facilities, schools, roads and governance. In fact, the first duty of any state is to listen when people complain. A citizen who asks […]
Pakistan, Palestine and the Honour of a Nation
There are some questions in international politics on which silence becomes complicity and neutrality becomes cowardice. Palestine is one of them. For Pakistan, Palestine has never been a fashionable slogan, a seasonal outrage or an issue to be remembered only when Gaza burns on television screens. It has been a matter of principle, law, faith, […]
PTI’s Muzaffarabad Reality Check
In politics, rallies are not simply events arranged for optics or media coverage; they are carefully staged demonstrations of strength, organisation, and public connection, where every banner, every chant, and every face in the crowd contributes to a larger narrative about a party’s relevance and reach. Sometimes this narrative is shaped by powerful speeches and […]
What Mutasim Jan’s Arrest Tells About Taliban Politics?
By all official accounts, the brief detention of Mullah Mutasim Agha Jan was a minor disciplinary matter–a misunderstanding, quickly resolved. But in Afghanistan’s current political order, such explanations rarely tell the full story. In tightly controlled movements like the Taliban, actions speak in signals, not statements. And this episode, far from routine, offers a revealing […]
Selective Accountability
Pakistan does not suffer from a shortage of scandals. It suffers from a shortage of consistency. The latest allegations surrounding Dr Fazeela Abbasi have once again exposed that fault line. According to investigators, around Rs25 billion moved through 22 bank accounts linked to her, with funds allegedly routed to Dubai and the United States and […]
Jailed Not Erased
On March 24, a Delhi court sentenced Asiya Andrabi, the founder of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, to life imprisonment under India’s anti-terror law, years after her 2018 arrest and months after her conviction in January. Two of her associates, were also handed long prison terms. Andrabi, known for her pro-separatist views and advocacy for women’s rights within the […]
Exposing Faultlines in India
Valentin Hénault’s new memoir matters not because one foreign filmmaker had a bad experience in India, but because his story collides head-on with the image India has carefully sold to the world: a rising power of spirituality, democracy, innovation and civilisational confidence. Hénault’s account, now published in French as J’avais un rêve indien. Dans l’enfer […]
Kabul’s Diplomatic Enclave and the Question of Responsibility
Recent reports suggesting that senior militants of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are residing in Kabul’s diplomatic enclave have reignited an old but unresolved debate: whether Afghanistan under Taliban rule can assure the world that its territory will not be used for militant activity. According to diplomatic sources, figures such as Noor Wali Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur […]