Tariff crossfire By Khurram Husain
BY all accounts a world is ending and we don’t know what is going to replace it. For Pakistan this …
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Navigating trade barriers By Ali Tauqeer Sheikh
IN today’s complex global trade environment, Pakistan finds itself navigating between two competing demands: the Trump administration’s protectionist tariffs and …
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Trumpian delusion By Mahir Ali
PRELIMINARY judgement on any new US administration usually involves waiting for at least 100 days before holding it to account. …
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Hard or competent state? By Maleeha Lodhi
THERE are several aspects to the debate that has been going on in the media about a ‘hard state’. Why, …
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Will US attack Iran? By Touqir Hussain
IRAN is at its weakest moment externally since the Iran-Iraq war. Israel’s aggression in Lebanon and Gaza has critically wounded …
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A hard state? By Shahab Usto
THE recent in-camera civil-military huddle at Parliament House once again unfolded three conceptual cleavages that have rent apart the polity. One, the …
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From hard to harder By Sakib Sherani
‘There is no use of running on the wrong road’ — Turkish proverb ELITE misrule in Pakistan has scarred the …
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Losing the plot By Khurram Husain
YOU can tell when a government in Pakistan has lost the plot when they turn to the bureaucrats for ideas …
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First line of defence By Maleeha Lodhi
IF foreign policy is the country’s first line of defence it is disconcerting how successive governments have left the foreign …
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Neighbourly cooperation By Muhammad Amir Rana
PAKISTAN is an active member of the UN, with a track record of supporting the peaceful resolution of conflicts worldwide. …
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Coercive approach won’t work By Asif Durrani
IMAGINE Afghanistan and Pakistan becoming enemies, each seeking to undermine the other. However, history shows that the two nations share …
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Where’s the water? By Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
ON March 27, a report in this newspaper quoted an unnamed official of the irrigation bureaucracy as saying: “There is …
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New world order By Ali Tauqeer Sheikh
THE Trump administration has attacked the liberal world order, built on multilateral alliances like Nato, the EU and Bretton Woods …
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A predator state By Zahid Hussain
PAKISTAN appears to fit the definition of a ‘predator state’ which, according to economist James K. Galbraith, is “a political …
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Hard state, soft state By Ashraf Jehangir Qazi
Recently, the army chief addressed parliament after the Jaffar Express train attack in Balochistan. He said Pakistan had to become a “hard state” to …
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Frozen relations By Maleeha Lodhi
TWO recent developments have reinforced the fraught relationship between Pakistan and India, which makes the prospect bleak for any thaw …
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Political audit of Afghan policy By Rafiullah Kakar
THE latest clashes between Pakistani and Afghan security forces are yet another sign of the deepening rift between the two neighbours. Just …
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Time to come out of denial By Asif Durrani
THE question arises: why are the Afghan Taliban critical of the arrest of IS-K terrorist Sharifullah, alias Jafar, if they have …
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