Yousaf Rafiq

Of course New Delhi had calculated the aftermath of test-firing the Agni-IV intercontinental ballistic missile well ahead of time. Pakistan would object — naturally to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which Islamabad promptly did — and there’d be talk of an arms race in the continent all over again. India’s policy doesn’t only focus […]

Finally Pakistan, too, has taken its gloves off with the start of the New Year as far as the equation with India is concerned. There’s nothing new, really, to back the charge that ‘Pakistan has suffered state sponsored terrorism at the hand of India’ at least as far as intrinsic evidence goes. The trump card […]

Some pictures are truly worth a thousand words. Especially the one not too long ago showing the prime minister meeting the four chief ministers – the Sharifs on individual big sofas and the other three tightly huddled together on one. Not that the seating arrangement has any influence on the political state of affairs, but […]

The outgoing year turned out very different than expected, to say the least. There was hope and optimism going in. The country had, after a long time, finally lifted itself from the shadow of the Peshawar tragedy. The main reason was the continuing success, or so we were told and thought and believed, of Zarb-e-Azb. […]

Forty-five years since Bangladesh and the national narrative is still anything but clear. The main reason, of course, is denial. We are still not able to digest the breakup of the country so soon after independence. The result is just as simple to understand. Since we never debated the real reasons, we never understood the […]

Seemingly Islamabad has done the smart thing by opting to go to the Heart of Asia conference in Amritsar next week. It shows that Pakistan is sticking to the position it has held since Nawaz came back to power this time; that even in the face of hostilities it is stressing that only dialogue can […]