Pakistan
Pakistani Taliban turn on China
A deadly bomb blast rocked the Serena Hotel last month in Pakistan’s south-western city of Quetta, leaving five dead and 12 critically injured. The bomb exploded just as a VIP…
Pakistan’s extremist dilemma
Pakistan is at a crossroads, with a choice either to become hostage to religious groups or to take independent foreign policy decisions. After making an apparent shift away from…
Russia’s Asia diplomacy
Russia’s long-serving Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shuttled between Beijing, New Delhi and Islamabad in recent weeks, putting on a diplomatic display that could be described as…
A dilemma for Pakistan as UAE cuts off work visas
For the struggling economy of Pakistan, foreign remittances from expatriates are lifesavers, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is country’s second-largest source of…
Pakistan gets on the TikTok ban wagon
Pakistan has become the second South Asian nation after India to ban Chinese video-sharing app TikTok.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on 9 October banned TikTok…
Intra-Afghan talks and future of Pakistan-Taliban relations
The reshuffling of the Taliban leadership ahead of the intra-Afghan negotiations, which began this month in Doha, has underscored that the militant group is trying to emerge from…
For real peace, Afghanistan needs a Plan B
In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani outlined what he saw as the objective for his country: “a sovereign, united, democratic Afghanistan at…
Kashmir, a year on from the change
It has been a little over a year since the Indian government under Narendra Modi curtailed the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian constitution…
As Pakistan and Saudi Arabia drift apart, China moves in
Pakistan–Saudi Arabia relations are at a historically low ebb. In November 2018, Saudi Arabia announced a US$6.2 billion loan package for cash-strapped Pakistan. The package…
Obstacles remain for Pakistan dam backed by China
Over the last decade, the demand to build a new mega-dam intensified in Pakistan. The proposed Diamer-Bhasha dam, 320 kilometres from the border with China in the north, was an…