The Acorn

Archive for April, 2009

Vote!

04.14.2009 · Posted in Public Policy

The necessity of voting The manifestos are unappealing. The rhetoric is worse. The candidates are not to your liking. Don’t let this hold you back from going out there and voting. Voting is a necessary step to change things. So go out and vote. Tweet ...

Robert Kaplan continues to miss the plot

04.13.2009 · Posted in Foreign Affairs, Security

It’s not about “lines of communication” Q: What do you get when you take Realist doctrine and apply it without regard to ground realities? A: This article by Robert Kaplan (linkthanks Pragmatic Euphony). He writes: No matter how much leverage you hold over a country, it is rare that you can get it to act ...

The Italian militants in Waziristan

04.12.2009 · Posted in Aside, Foreign Affairs

Managing cognitive dissonance, the Rawalpindi way In Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, Alice Albinia’s chronicles her journey from the mouth of the Indus in Pakistan’s Sindh province to its source in Tibet. It is part-travelogue, part-history book, part-commentary on contemporary society and completely readable. Here she is on the Pakistani side, ...

The absurdity of giving Predator drones to Pakistan

04.10.2009 · Posted in Foreign Affairs, Security

It’s the inclination, stupid! It is one thing for President Asif Ali Zardari to say it. It is entirely another thing to take him seriously. We are talking about Mr Zardari’s Archimedes-like statement: “Give us the drones and we will take out the militants ourselves.” Some visiting US officials and journalists have found this demand ...

The Pakistan that can say No

04.09.2009 · Posted in Foreign Affairs, Security

Actually, the military establishment that can say No “Pakistan,” Hamid Mir writes, “suffered a loss of more than US$34 billion and received only US$11 billion as aid in the last seven years for participating in the war against terror.” Ahmed Quraishi, another commentator, contends that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Baitullah Mehsud is really a proxy ...

General Pasha will not see you now

04.08.2009 · Posted in Foreign Affairs

Did he snub or was he scared? In another sign of new strains in the relationship, the head of Pakistan’s intelligence service, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, refused to meet separately with Mr. Holbrooke and General Mullen, who had requested a meeting, according to Pakistani officials and an American official, who sought anonymity because he ...

A conversion course for Middle Eastern journalists

04.07.2009 · Posted in Security

On ‘entrenched military rule’ Western journalist moving from the Middle Eastern beat to the subcontinent must be put through a transition programme, mostly requiring them to read history and the daily news. Perhaps then, like a certain Graham Usher, they won’t write a sentence like “military rule in Indian-occupied Kashmir remained as entrenched as ever” ...

Modelling the armed forces on the railways

04.07.2009 · Posted in Security

Mountbatten, Ismay and their outdated legacy My article in this month’s issue of Pragati, on reforming India’s national security policy, is titled “Start by burying Lord Ismay“. But who was Lord Ismay and why does he need to be buried? Well, General Hastings Lionel Ismay was a British general and post retirement from the British ...

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