FROM time to time in the last four years there have been reports indicating that the Taliban were becoming war-weary and looking for an opportunity to seek reconciliation.
Published18 Jul, 2012 12:15am
THE long-awaited Tokyo Conference designed to elicit international pledges of assistance for Afghanistan during the ‘transition’ had quite obviously been well prepared in advance.
Published11 Jul, 2012 12:15am
WHILE it is easy to identify the US and its Nato allies and Pakistan as the principal external actors in the Afghan imbroglio, history shows that it has often been other external players who have prevented what Afghanistan most needs — reconciliation as t
Published04 Jul, 2012 12:15am
ACCORDING to the latest statements from official spokespersons Pakistan wants a peaceful, stable Afghanistan. It no longer maintains that it wants a ‘friendly’ government nor does it make any reference to its reservations about the role India is trying to
Published27 Jun, 2012 01:08am
IN my last article I had concluded that Pakistan and the United States have more areas of convergence than divergence on what they want to see in Afghanistan.
Published20 Jun, 2012 12:15am
IN assessing the current state of US-Pakistan ties and determining their future direction, what is one to make of the reports over the last week?
Published06 Jun, 2012 01:06am
THE sentencing of Dr. Shakil Afridi by an assistant political agent under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), and the Pakistani demand that a transit fee be paid for the movement of Nato trucks, have provoked near hysteria in some quarters.
Published30 May, 2012 12:15am
THE hoopla is over. President Obama can congratulate himself on having presided successfully over the largest Nato gathering ever arranged and on having won an endorsement for the ‘irreversible’ departure of all Nato troops from Afghanistan by Dec 31, 201
Published23 May, 2012 12:15am
SUNDAY was the day on which President Karzai and his team had hoped the focus of media attention would be on the progress Afghanistan had made in developing its security forces.
Published16 May, 2012 12:15am
PERHAPS there has been little in recent years in Sino-US relations that has caused as much of an international furore as the case of the blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.
Published09 May, 2012 12:15am
THE deadly avalanche that buried 139 Pakistani soldiers has once again brought Siachen into focus as not only one of the issues that bedevils relations between India and Pakistan.
Published02 May, 2012 12:20am
THERE is ferment in the Muslim world as the people seek a more democratic dispensation. There is also a dangerous turbulence.
Published25 Apr, 2012 12:15am
WHAT is one to make of the coordinated attack that the Taliban launched on seven sites in Kabul and three sites in Paktia, Logar and Nangarhar?
Published18 Apr, 2012 12:15am
IN my last column I had suggested that Pakistan needed to be careful in awarding contracts for the Pakistan part of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline.
Published11 Apr, 2012 12:15am
AT a time when Punjab’s cities are witnessing violent demonstrations against power outages, when the Supreme Court has declared all RPP contracts void ab initio and when each fortnight we see a fresh ‘circular debt’ crisis, it is understandable that every
Published03 Apr, 2012 11:35pm
AS parliament begins its debate on the resetting of US-Pakistan relations and presumably insists on laying out transparently the parameters for the relationship it should bear in mind the recent dramatic changes in the Afghan situation which are an import
Published20 Mar, 2012 11:35pm
THE calls by Israel’s belligerent prime minister for launching an attack on Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear-weapons capability has been a source of alarm for all thinking people.
Published13 Mar, 2012 11:40pm
FOREIGN Minister Rabbani Khar’s recent statement to journalists rubbishing, in the words of one journalist, the concept of ‘strategic depth’ and maintaining that if this were being sought it could not be obtained
Published06 Mar, 2012 09:52pm
IF any evidence was required that we have succumbed to mass hysteria and paranoia, we need go no further than the reaction to the hearing that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher conducted
Published28 Feb, 2012 09:30pm
