Posts published in “Day: June 7, 2016”

The writer is a retired brigadier and a former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute With the Taliban acknowledging that Mullah Mansoor — their last Emir Mullah Omar’s successor — died due to a drone attack close to Noshki, Maulvi Haibatullah, reputedly a non-combatant, has been hurriedly nominated by the Shura as his successor. When Mullah Omar’s death finally became public, there was considerable infighting among those competing to succeed him. Omar’s brother and…

The writer is a security analyst. WHO is a bigger enemy for Pakistan? The terrorists or drones? The answer to this question may not be as simple as it appears. The killing of the Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone strike in Balochistan has triggered a complex debate about different issues including sovereignty, regional stability, peace in Afghanistan and the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, etc. A negative impact on…

The writer is the co-founder of the Stimson Centre. There are no more illusions in US- Pakistan relations. Pakistan feels bitter about Washington’s embrace of India and the blowback from US counterterrorism policies. Washington feels embittered by Pakistan’s decisions and seeming incapability of changing course. In retrospect, the last stand of wishful thinking in the US was the 2010 Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation. Washington’s strategy then was to put more money on the table to incentivise a…

The writer, a development consultant and public policy expert, writes on policy matters, politics and international affairs. Long ago, someone asked professor Patras Bokhari, then Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, about elements of Pakistan’s foreign policy. Ever a sharp mind, professor Bokhari is reported to have said something broadly along the line that Pakistan has no foreign policy and that she has foreign relations at best, most of which are illegitimate. This remark fully…

The complex relationship between Pakistan and the United States has hit another low. The strain in ties was exposed when the Congress refused to finance the F-16 fighter jets that Pakistan had requested. Further severeness in the relation followed when a surprise unilateral drone strike in Balochistan killed the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor. Both episodes shattered the much-touted claim that the bilateral relationship is on a ‘positive trajectory’. This characterisation was used time and…

KHYBER AGENCY – After stringent measures taken by Pakistani officials at Torkham border, Afghan policemen also prevented Pakistani nationals from entering Afghanistan without having legal documents. According to reports, the Pakistani businessmen who cross the bordering area and enter Afghanistan hail from Mohmand Agency of Fata and other areas of the country. Aggrieved businessmen told this scribe that after off days, they intended to enter Afghanistan via Torkham border, but Afghan officials told them to…

After initially saying just the opposite, India has accepted that the Pakistan government had no part to play in the January 2 attack which killed seven Indian soldiers at the sensitive Pathankot airbase located close to the border. The incident, which triggered a two-day long gun fight, got 2016 off to a stormy start between the two countries, scuttling foreign secretary level talks. In the wake of the attacks Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had…

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s authorities with the help of Indian experts have completed the feasibilities and detailed engineering of 12 hydro-power projects with capacity to generate 1,177MW of electricity to be built on the river Kabul. If the 12 projects get completed, they will store 4.7 million acre feet of water squeezing the flow in the river reaching Pakistan. India, which also helped Afghanistan in repairing the Friendship Dam (Salma Dam) on the river Chishti-e-Sharif in Herat…

For more than half a century, Beijing has maintained an air of mystery over the so-called nine-dash line, leaving others to guess at the precise meaning of the cartographic marker of its sovereignty claims over the South China Sea. These decades of strategic ambiguity could be numbered, however, with many Western legal scholars expecting an upcoming Hague tribunal ruling to invalidate any legal import the line may have had. Yet China appears unmoved, and no…

The writer is an Islamabad-based TV journalist Why does a drone strike hurt so much? What did Mullah Mansoor’s killing represent? Does Pakistan have a plan ‘B’ if the quadrilateral mechanism fails to deliver in Afghanistan? These are a few questions being asked in Islamabad. And all of it begins with the Bollywoodish execution of Mullah Mansoor. Kindly notice that I have compared it with a Bollywood plot line and not a Hollywood one because…