Tag Archives: Pakistan

Technicalities cannot hold Pakistan hostage. It must move to implement its “National Action Plan” in letter and spirit to defeat terrorism. This is the moment of truth. Preserving society and the nation must take precedence over everything else.

Private U.S. messages could use occasional public reinforcement, but Washington has been well trained by India and Pakistan to respect their sensitivities.

The Pakistani city of Peshawar continues to bleed and reel from consequences of willful neglect, bad governance and a poor security regime. The writing on the wall is clear: the rot began in Peshawar in the name of jihad and transformed into terrorism in and around its vicinity. The Pakistani establishment owes Peshawar residents an apology for sowing the seeds of dysfunction here.

The U.S. is starting 2015 with both a presidential trip to India and the approval of civilian aid for Pakistan.

One analyst thinks that Turkey's most successful foreign policy has been that practiced in Afghanistan during the past ten years.

Pakistan’s Army finds itself in familiar territory of a twilight zone, being asked by the politicians to make sacrifices while the politicians themselves simultaneously badmouth them, the Army’s patience is visibly wearing thin. Terrorism is an existential threat, our politicians excel in doublespeak, they cannot go scot-free while the national fabric is being destroyed.

The country needs to learn lessons from other crisis-stricken states facing the difficult challenge of insurgencies.

December 16 is celebrated as victory day in Bangladesh and mourned as Dhaka debacle in Pakistan. The two nations have remained trapped in narratives of their common history. These differing, and largely hostile narratives remain the main hurdle in mending the uneasy relations between the two countries. Here are glimpses from the histories preserved and propagated by the two sides.

From Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to Bangladesh and Indonesia in the east, a network of Arab charities is funding militancy and mayhem to coerce Muslims of diverse traditions to conform to the Salafi and Wahabi traditions. Bangladesh needs to be steered away from becoming a Pakistan or an Afghanistan, says one Bangladeshi analyst.

In the aftermath of massacre at a Peshawar school, one analyst suggests Pakistan must establish a single dedicated and effective single command and control mechanism. Internal security forces protecting strategic assets and countering terrorism, he suggests, must come under a “Homeland Security Command”.