As John Kerry circumvented Islamabad, Special Representative James Dobbins and Prime Minister David Cameron strived to wear his shoes. After a pro-India statement in New Delhi asking India to play a central role in Afghanistan, and with no tangible proposals with regard to Drone attacks, Kerry hardly had a chance of meaningful engagement with the…
In the past decades, PAF aviators have regularly taken off for assigned duties – both combat and routine – with the knowledge that, if they bailed out, especially in hostile territory, their comrades would not hesitate to risk their own lives in an effort to rescue them. PAF has ample experiences of its own from…
Vali Nasr’s latest work The Dispensable Nation is a tour of the back alleys of diplomacy with all the cat fights of bureaucracy as well as a broad review of U.S. policy and some prescriptions about the future course. Part of the book is based on his experience of working inside the tent, he was…
Historical BackgroundThe Israelites while settling in the blessed land of Palestine ruled for a very long time and extended their kingdom to immeasurable boundaries. Allah, the Almighty had chosen many Prophets from among them and gave them a Holy Book, the Torah to follow. Hazrat Dawud and his son Hazrat Solomon were very famous and…
IntroductionSomething that suggests the presence or existence of a fact, condition, or quality is called ‘sign’. Sign could also be in the form of miracle as evidence of the existence of a supernatural power or authority. Miracle is an extraordinary event attributed to a supernatural power. The ancient people considered Miracle as an event in…
IntroductionLove stories of army officers have often ended in tragedy but then whosoever wore the uniform he accepted the risk of being killed. Between January 1944 and March 1944, my battalion lost 8 officers (Lt Col ROUSE, Maj UWINS, Maj BURFIELD, Maj OAKES, Lt TAREEN, Lt BROWN, Lt GRAHAM and Lt TOWERS), the rest were…
The newly formed government led by Muslim League (N) announced its first budget recently and as usual it rated it people, business and investment-friendly. On the other hand, the Opposition, business community and trades at large habitually labeled it anti-people, anti-business and anti-trade, etc. The tug of war about the merits and demerits of the…
Pakistan is writing a classic military history of the blow-by-blow fighting against insurgents. Military law enforcement operations in Waziristan, Swat, Dir, and recently in Tirah valley make an irrefutable case for where the laurels lay for the victories and where the blame lies for the retreats. Lack of Civil-military coordination and gap of communication or…
Participation of overwhelming majority of the people of Balochistan in the electoral process indicates that the province is back to the flock of Pakistani nation-hood. Now it’s a matter of consolidating these political gains and converting them into a viable plan of action; indeed a task easier said than done. Political gains achieved through the…
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently visited China and had very meaningful interactions at many levels. He met with his counterpart Li Keqiang and the Chinese President Xi Jinping and thoroughly discussed the matters of mutual interests. Pakistan and China enjoy an all-weather friendship. It is trustworthy and above all, time-tested too. Their multi-dimensional cooperation is…
