After months of to-ing and fro-ing on a clear, cogent and coherent policy and strategy to combat the ‘Mother of all Problems” in Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pulled yet another surprise on his countrymen by announcing a last ditch attemp
With the US drawdown (perhaps even complete withdrawal) from Afghanistan looming large over the horizon, there is growing pessimism (a lot of it unwarranted) over the prospect of the Afghan state’s ability to survive without the crutches of foreign
A police escort was killed and another wounded when militants attacked a team of polio vaccinators on the outskirts of Peshawar on 30 November.1 Earlier on 23 November, militants in Pakistan kidnapped eleven teachers involved in a polio va
Out of all the names being tossed around as the possible replacement for Gen Ashfaq Kayani, it is the dark horse – Gen Raheel Sharif – who has finally been appointed as the Pakistan Army’s 15th chief. Apparently, Gen Sharif’s name
It certainly cannot be the cooler days in Delhi that has attracted, in recent weeks, so many concerned western ‘experts’ to the capital, to discuss the abstruse-to the Indian public-subject of “strategic stability” in Asia/ in the sub-contine
What is to be made of a society, people and country whose political leadership erupts in anger and weaves bizarre conspiracy theories because its self-declared ‘enemy no. 1’ is eliminated in a drone attack by a country which has not only accorded
On 25 October 2013, the Iranian State News Agency reported that fourteen Iranian border guards were killed and five wounded in clashes with “armed bandits” near Saravan on Iran’s southeastern border with Pakistan. There were also reports of thr
In the dynamics of history and the variables which govern the course of political sociology, historians do not make history. They only record its course and describe the forces and narrate the events, which are a reality that the historians cannot di
Mentioning toned down expectations from his meeting with his Pakistani counterpart at New York, Shri Manmohan Singh gave an advance signal that nothing substantial would emerge from it.Until almost the last moment, we let uncertainty hang over the de
The run-up to the summit between the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers had seen a serious debate on the wisdom or otherwise of such high-level contact. The way events have unfolded, it is clear that the sceptics had it right. But this is too serio