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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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” ...
Sit up and take note when China doesn’t protest, not when it does There is no need to get too worked up about China registering its protests at President Pratibha Patil’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. As long as the border issue is not fully and finally settled, China will hold on to its position that ...
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 ...
What the new government should do in its first 100 days India goes to the polls in a few weeks’ time. A new government will be in place in a couple of months. The ‘honeymoon’ period of the first hundred days offers a new government the opportunity to implement important reforms that might otherwise face ...