The Pakistan Update

By David Hunt – Jacksonville

Pakistani Ambassador H.E. Husain Haqqani was in Jacksonville Wednesday to give a speech and accept several P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft for his nation’s military.

During his visit, Haqqani fielded several questions from The Times-Union. He said U.S.-Pakistani relations are, overall, getting better and the militaries are working better together to hunt terrorists in the hostile areas of Pakistan.

Do you think there is a better or worse perception the Pakistanis have of the U.S. under the Obama administration?

By and large, the Pakistani public does not follow day-to-day American political (more…)

Tags: Featured

Posted in News | 810 Comments »

By Ben Arnoldy – Christian Science Monitor

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan met today on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to talk about restarting a peace dialogue that was hobbled by the Mumbai terror attacks and their aftermath.

In the 75-minute meeting, the two sides agreed to work on arranging more engagements as soon as possible.

SAARC is generally regarded as one of the world’s least effective regional bodies. Its stasis is rooted in the bitter rivalry of its two largest members, India and Pakistan, and their moribund peace efforts over the decades. (more…)

Tags: India, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan, SAARC, South Asia, Yousaf Raza Gilani

Posted in Around, India, News | 600 Comments »

By Prof Ishtiaq Ahmed

An Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, has proclaimed a fatwa (ruling) that earthquakes are caused by women dressing immodestly. Why the earth should feel so excited and out of control by such provocation instead of men such as the high-level Shia cleric is a question that comes to mind rather immediately. However, Kazem Sedighi informs us that it is because God Almighty is very angry and hence the earthquake. Not very long ago, a terrible earthquake hit Iran. It claimed thousands of lives. As far as I know, the chador covering the whole body is a mandatory dress in the paradise of the ayatollahs, so why were pious Iranian men and women and indeed thousands of children annihilated in that earthquake?

I remember when a devastating earthquake hit northern Pakistan, (more…)

Posted in Blog | 1,177 Comments »

By Ali Imran -APP

The World Bank will administer a new multi-donor fund with an initial commitment of $ 110 million from donors for development in border regions of federally administered tribal areas, Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and Balochistan, Finance Advisor Abdul Hafeez Shaikh revealed.

Wrapping up a series of meetings with top World Bank and International Monetary Fund leaders, Dr Shaikh also said the country’s program with the IMF remained on track and that the next tranche of $1.3 billion would be forthcoming after the Fund’s review meeting scheduled for May 14.

Pakistan will honor its international commitments and retain the confidence of its development partners despite facing some stiff challenges, stated the finance advisor, who had some 40 meetings with leaders of finance institutions, his counterparts from other countries and American officials during the four-day visit. (more…)

Posted in News | 2,056 Comments »

By Trudy Rubin – Inquirer

After two weeks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I’m struck by how much hot air is expended on rumors of talks with the Taliban.
If you believe the tales, Afghan President Hamid Karzai (or his brother Qayum) was talking to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s No. 2 man, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, before the latter was recently arrested in Pakistan.

A second popular rumor has it that Pakistan arrested Baradar so it could control any talks between U.S. officials and Taliban leaders. A third says the United States is stopping Karzai from meeting Taliban leaders, or blocking a “peace jirga” in Kabul that has just been postponed until late May. (more…)

Tags: Afghan Taliban, AfPak, Al Qaeda, CIA, Featured, Hamid Karzai, ISI, Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar, Taliban Talks

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog | 2,142 Comments »

By Sanjaya Baru- Business Standard

Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani hold the key to South Asia’s progress

The world is convinced that the 21st century will be Asia’s century. The only question is whether it will be only East Asia’s century or South Asia’s as well.

China’s great moderniser Deng Xiaoping famously told the late Rajiv Gandhi that “the 21st century can only be the Asian century if India and China combine to make it so”. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can well tell his Pakistani counterpart this week that the only way South Asia can become a vibrant element of the new Asian century is if India and Pakistan combine to make it so. (more…)

Posted in Around, Blog, India | 2,439 Comments »

By Patrick Duplat and Renata Rendón – The Hill

Since Sept. 11, the United States has given large sums of money to Pakistan to gain allegiance and support in the global war on terror. In return, the United States hopes for cooperation on issues ranging from nuclear disarmament to cracking down on jihadist groups. As a result, President Obama is confronting questions over how to balance security concerns with humanitarian and human rights principles, the very choice he denounced as false in his campaign. Yet presidential candidate Barack Obama was right that demonstrating America’s values and support for human rights abroad will make us safer.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a well-respected watchdog based in Islamabad, reported between 300 and 400 extrajudicial killings by security forces during counterinsurgency operations in 2009. (more…)

Tags: Featured, HRCP, Pak US relations, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Swat Operation, US Aid

Posted in Blog | 930 Comments »

Pakistan’s pre-Islamic heritage is showcased in Paris in an exhibition of ancient Buddhist art that offers a fresh perspective on a country fraught with violence and religious unrest.
The Guimet Museum of Asian Art has gathered 200 works dating to the first to sixth centuries from Gandhara, an ancient kingdom that covered modern day northwest Pakistan but whose cultural influence reached India and Afghanistan.

Gandhara became more widely known in 2001 when the Taliban destroyed what were then the world’s biggest statues of Buddha, giant figures carved out of a cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. (more…)

Tags: art, budha, Education, exhibition, gandhara art, Pakistan, pre-islamic art

Posted in News | 1,428 Comments »

By Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain

I rarely write about US-Pakistani relations. The reason is that I have difficulty in being objective about either country. My problem, as I have said before, is summed up in the refrain from a song made famous by Mary MacGregor in the 70s, “Torn between two lovers, feelin’ like a fool. Loving both of you is breakin’ all the rules.”

When things seem to look up between the US and Pakistan, I do get a bit excited but sadly not for too long. The relationship between these two countries is rarely based on mutual respect. Almost always it is a matter of mutual need and unfortunately for Pakistan it needs the US more often than the other way around.

It all really started when in 1953 Bogra, our man in DC, was brought back to become prime minister of Pakistan. It was about getting US aid, wheat and money then, and in some way or the other that is what it is still all about. (more…)

Tags: AfPak, Al Qaeda, Bogra, Featured, George Bush, India Pakistan Wars, musharraf, Nuclear Arms, Pakistan Army, Russia, Taliban, US Pakistan, USSR, Ziaul Haq

Posted in Blog | 686 Comments »

By Prof Ishtiaq Ahmed

The shocking news that a senior faculty member of the Punjab University, Professor Iftikhar Baloch, was badly beaten up because the university disciplinary committee had expelled some goonda elements of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) is a sad reminder of the overall decay of Pakistani society. If I am not mistaken, it was in 1970 that the IJT and other right-wing students raided the residence of the then Vice-Chancellor Allama Alauddin Siddiqui and manhandled him. Allama sahib was a pious Muslim with quite outspoken sympathy for an Islamic revival. That even he was not spared because he had tried to establish a modicum of law and order meant that much worse was on the way.

That proved to be very true in the years that followed. The IJT simply captured the Punjab University. This happened even when the PPP was in power in (more…)

Tags: Jamat e Islami, JI, Punjab University, religious parties

Posted in Blog | 3,642 Comments »