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Pakistan

For nearly three decades, India and Pakistan have engaged in a maddening conflict over Siachen Glacier in the Himalyan peaks of the disputed Kashmir region. The “world’s highest battlefield” has claimed thousands of lives due to hostile weather conditions—frostbite, avalanches and blizzards—along with over a hundred soldiers killed in sporadic combat until 2003, when the two countries agreed to a ceasefire across the Line of Control in Kashmir. The weather’s latest victims are 139 Pakistani soldiers who were buried deep in snow after an avalanche hit their Gyari battalion headquarters on April 7. Since then, the worsening weather has prevented the rescuers to gain access even to their dead bodies. Sustaining a conflict for so long at an altitude of …

Ahmed Rashid, the veteran Pakistani writer on the conflict in Afghanistan and Central Asia, has authored another book, titled Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan. A sequel to his four earlier books on the subject since mid-90s, especially Descent into Chaos (2008), the study underlines the precariousness of the Pakistani state’s chances for survival and the urgent need for policy resolutions. It also explains the causes of the recent deterioration in US-Pakistan relations and how they can be rectified; pinpoints factors responsible for the failure of the Obama Administration’s approach towards Pakistan and the Afghan war; and suggests ways to stabilise Pakistan and achieve a lasting peace in Afghanistan, amid the withdrawal of US and …

The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar, was hosted on 20th February for a talk at the Oxford Union by the Oxford University Pakistan Society and the Oxford Union Society. As the young female foreign minister of a country embedded in popular media imagination as a haven for all sorts of retrogressive elements, Ms. Khar’s visit was bound to generate a lot of interest among the student body. And so it proved as around 200 students attended Ms. Khar’s address which was covered by Pakistan’s major media outlets. The content of Ms. Khar’s speech was quite broad and overarching wherein she not only covered her own domain of Pakistani foreign policy but also set out what she believed …

Compared to the Taliban era of the 1990s, Afghanistan has made impressive gains in the sphere of human rights, especially women’s rights. The Afghan constitution prohibits discrimination between citizens “whether man or woman”. Consequently, Afghan women have a visible presence in parliament, cabinet, civil administration and media. As pillars of civil society activism, they have played a crucial role in expanding female education across the country. For the moment, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission keeps the government under scrutiny and the country’s vibrant media promotes a culture of free enquiry in what is still a predominantly tribal society. What Afghanistan has been able to achieve in the middle of a war, with international help, was virtually unthinkable over a …

For three days (February 3-5) Oxford University was the venue for the Pakistan Future Leaders’ Conference (PFLC), attended by some 300 student-delegates hailing from around 50 universities and colleges in the United Kingdom. This major event was organised by Oxford University’s Pakistan Society, in collaboration with the Oxford Union, and the Pakistan societies of Cambridge University and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Such a large gathering of young Pakistanis in Oxford was reflective of an emerging ‘youth moment’ currently setting the course of politics in Pakistan. Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who is also an Oxonian, has already tapped into this phenomenon. His recent political rallies in Lahore and Karachi attracted exceptionally large crowds of younger people, forcing the country’s …

Pakistan and Bangladesh are separately traveling in the same direction, toward erasure from the political maps of the future. Pakistan ceased to exist 40 years ago. The secession, in 1971, of East Pakistan on the grounds of being Bengali rather than Muslim conclusively disproved the Two Nation Theory—even for those who had believed in it in the first place. If Pakistan wasn’t the homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, what was it? After the war, Pakistan could have rethought the basis of its existence as a political entity but didn’t. Instead, the Pakistan which remained tried to carry on, pretending that it was still the land of South Asia’s Muslims, just smaller … It never figured out why it should exist …

Whichever way you look at it, the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden in a comfortable house in Abbottabad within walking distance of Kakul (Pakistan Military Academy) and a short drive from the nation’s capital Islamabad, constitutes an abject humiliation for Pakistan. The options are limited. Either the Pakistani authorities did not know that bin Laden was there, apparently for several years. In which case their incompetence is so colossal that it should cause widespread panic, except that it beggars belief. Or the Pakistani authorities knew of bin Laden’s presence in their midst. In which case the worst cynics have been proved right. There are some tell-tale pointers as to which of these is more likely to be true. …
Pakistan flag

Amidst a depressing assessment of the ruin wrought by Pakistan’s floods, The Economist nevertheless pronounced a vote of confidence in the country’s survival: “Pakistan is not about to collapse: a prospect first aired at its bloody creation and dusted off for every war, coup and calamity that has followed.” (Leader, 18-24 September 2010). Indeed, India, now much feted as an “emerging power” had also been written off by many at its amputated start. So had Bangladesh when it came into being in 1971, famously dismissed by Henry Kissinger as a “basket case”. All three have managed to survive endless conflict, poor governance and natural disasters, and some of their citizens have notched up world-class achievements in a variety of fields, …