#Pakistan

1) Speculation in Pakistan is increasing over whether President Asif Ali Zardari will survive in office much longer. The constant threat of military coups is the elephant in the room, especially after Zardari attempted to place the ISI under civilian control. Moreover, Pakistani politics are riddled with ever-shifting alliances and corrupt political actors lacking any […]

1) To nobody’s surprise, Somalia is the most corrupt country on earth—followed closely by Iraq and Afghanistan. Transparency International wrote in its report, “When essential institutions are weak or non-existent, corruption spirals out of control.” The task, then, for America is institution building—but is it willing to spend the time and effort to create civil […]

If the United States is going to criticize Pakistan for not securing their border with Afghanistan, maybe we should be making sure that the other side of the border is sealed, too.

1) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s State of the Nation address sounds good—but Julia Ioffe is skeptical in the pages of Foreign Policy. 2) A free trade agreement between the United States and Pakistan would be a welcome boon in bilateral relations. 3) This is an example of an exceedingly dry headline. 4) Netanyahu decries potential […]

To the Pakistani military and Internal Services Intelligence: You are reaping what you sowed. But it is not too late to give up the obsessed, crazed determination to retain ‘strategic depth’ vis-a-vis India that has wrought such terrible destruction upon the peoples of South Asia. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the continuation of the […]

So says Gustavo De Las Casas, in an article for Foreign Policy. Basically, the argument is that if the West were to totally decimate the Al-Qaeda network, the global Jihadist movement would disperse, and the local cells that emerged would be that much harder to accurately track, and stop. It’s an intriguing thesis, and certainly […]

با دوستان هایی از این دشمنان ما نیاز ندارد. The meeting between Pakistan’s ‘super anchors’ and Hillary Clinton was, well, disastrous, not for America or Clinton, but for these talk show hosts. Hillary was calm, controlled, measured and she answered all sorts of questions thoroughly and intelligently. And unlike most of the panel, she was […]

Musharaff gives an interview using unkind words for Zardari and Ch. Nisar defends Zardari. Really? Ch. Nisar has two passions (if you read what he has been saying after he became the opposition leader): attacking every Zardari and attacking everything America. Therefore, it was very strange to read that Ch. Nisar huffed and puffed about […]

Zainab Jeewanjee covers Fareed Zakaria’s interview of General Musharraf on CNN’s show GPS. Musharraf talks to Zakaria about the Pakistan army’s role in defeating terrorism and whether Pakistan truly has an interest in defeating cross border terrorism in Afghanistan given that the situation is rooted in a ’60 year old geopolitical rivalry at play between India and Pakistan” .

Now that our quiet and uncomfortable introductions are out of the way, I’d like to point to another article that follows up on the one I wrote about yesterday.  The Daily Star reports that : “The Detective Branch of police produced Mufti Harun Izahar, son of Islami Oikya Jote leader Mufti Izaharul Islam, Shahidul Islam […]

I look at the news of the day as either a sign or a signal.  A sign is a piece or stream of data that serve as declarative propositions about the world. Signs describe the world contemporaneously, as true or false through argument, news, video, photographs or–for that matter– blog posts.  Signs carry no prescriptions […]

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has been very visible lately. First, she publicly expressed frustration that al-Qaeda militants have been allowed a sanctuary inside Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan. This vocal admonition surprised many Pakistani officials, but they really shouldn’t be surprised. Pakistan continues to play a two-way game with the United States on […]