After some speculation about whether or not it would be included in the list of invitees to attend the global Summit for Democracy, Islamabad’s...
After an extensive policy review, the Biden Administration has begun the process of withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan.Pakistan had hoped that...
It’s early days yet, but after a period of protracted turbulence, the India-Pakistan relationship seems to be steadying.This steadying has largely...
Will peace with India ever be possible? Before the ascent of Narendra Modi, there were certainly a greater number of optimists in Pakistan who...
How do states signal credibility and believability to their allies, adversaries and neutral fence-sitters? Given Pakistan’s recently prepared...
The writer is a PhD candidate at Yale.As the dust settles on a closely contested presidential election in Washington, many Pakistanis are wondering...
Pakistan still has a long way to go in the fight against Covid-19, with almost 20,000 confirmed cases, and doctors and hospitals facing a harrowing...
A lot has changed in the six months since India’s unilateral annexation of occupied Kashmir.In Pakistan, both the appetite for dialogue with India...
The PM’s efforts to make Kashmir a live issue on the diplomatic stage have seen a surge in his popularity at home. But two statements by Imran...
India’s election is over, and the BJP has won in a landslide that is nothing short of historic. The Opposition has been delivered a crushing...
There are two ways to assess Prime Minister Khan’s first state visit to Iran. The first is to view the trip as a desperate bid to repair a...
With the PTI’s saddle-adjustment over and a debt crisis averted, it may be worth refocusing attention onto the guardrails of our democracy.Will...
It’s been an uneasy year for democracy in Pakistan. If there is a takeaway, it is that politics at the grassroots level continues to be an unequal...
The momentary goodwill rendered by Pakistan’s offer to India to open the Kartarpur Corridor has evaporated, reaffirming some of the bilateral...
Much has been said and written about the government’s handling of violent extremism. Recent events have made two things expressly apparent.The...
The region is once again in the spotlight. The only good news is that, during the US secretary of state’s visit to Islamabad, the two sides...
After months of regional stalemate, two events in June offer a potential roadmap for achieving a working peace.The first was the Taliban’s...
The odds that the PML-N was going to be remembered for having contributed meaningfully to Pakistan’s foreign policy and reputation-building abroad...
The foreign minister’s decision to criticise the national security adviser for meeting the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan in Islamabad last...
In a recent report, ‘Are India-Pakistan peace talks worth a damn?’, strategic expert Ashley Tellis questioned the utility of...
When Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, visited Kabul and Islamabad in 1989 to discuss a peaceful transition from the Afghan war, the...
What does it take to win a $23 billion-a-year war? With the DoD on the brink of recommitting up to 3,900 more US soldiers to the Afghan battlefield...
There’s no shortage of irony in the fact that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s diplomatic snub at the US-Arab-Islamic summit coincided with...
The picture is depressingly familiar: with another warm-weather fighting season upon Afghanistan, efforts to crowd-source an international fall guy...
As Islamabad grapples with the uncertainties of a new Trump administration, a recent timeline of Russian advances to Pakistan is not...
If there is to be a regional policy takeaway from 2016, it is that New Delhi’s apathy for a rapprochement with Islamabad has only served to...
As Pakistan looks to draw a line under 2016, the scar tissue from this year’s security miscarriages is unlikely to heal overnight. The success...
As Hillary Clinton moves into the Oval, the question in Islamabad is whether a fresh administration will bring with it the promise of a Pak-US...
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the chances of escalation to war were assessed to be ‘between 1 in 3 and even’. A decade and...
The writer works for the Jinnah Institute in Islamabad. The war in Afghanistan is showing little sign of a seasonal let-up. As a successful Taliban...
The writer works for the Jinnah Institute in Islamabad. As global players reorient their power calculus, Pakistan’s maritime rim land is...
Back in May the Punjab Assembly unanimously carried a resolution hailing anti-terror operations in the province. On paper, the numbers look...
As Tehran shakes off the morning-after effects of its international comeback, regional powers are lining up to cash in on the new Iranian moment,...
In what has been an erratic few months for an India-Pakistan relationship still grappling with how to steer clear of diplomatic reversals, the...
As large tracts of Iraq and Syria hover between Westphalian meltdown and militant takeover, policy pathways for Pakistan in the Middle East are...
For President Ghani, it’s been a harsh winter, and one that has laid bare the key capacity deficits and constraints of an Afghan state on the...
Two developments in early 2016 – the Punjab government’s move to detain Jaish operatives, and a high-profile Taliban attack on the Bacha...
A month ago, the odds of Prime Minister Modi surprise-landing in Lahore on Christmas Day to meet his Pakistani counterpart would have been next to...
As the dust clouds settle over Kunduz, Afghan peace builders once again find themselves pitted against domestic public opinion. President Ghani is...
There was always going to be a lot riding on the first direct meeting between the Afghan High Peace Council and the Afghan Taliban. Two years after...
When Indian Defence Minister Mannohar Parrikar spoke of ‘neutralising terrorists through terrorists’ on a private news channel last week, his...
The war may have been won, but Afghanistan’s warm-weather fighting season is just getting started. As the Afghan Taliban fan out into the northern...
