My friends in Pakistan tell me that careers of two key figures are at stake in their country:  President Asif Ali Zardari and Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. The latter’s future will be determined by the outcome of the South Waziristan operation and the former’s on the view Parliament and the judiciary take on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). Read more

I have known Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani since 1991-92 when he was spokesperson and special assistant to Nawaz Sharif. He performed similar duties for Benazir Bhutto when she replaced Sharif as Prime Minister after the 1993 polls. The first PM he served was Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi. Read more

Pakistanis spare none when it comes to making fun of their leaders. Their irreverence  for authority manifests itself in public discourse spiked with humor, parody and Urdu poetry lampooning the political class and military rulers. Read more

Many Indians, like many Pakistanis, do not trust Asif Ali Zardari. I do and for good reasons. After a long, long time somebody of consequence is willing to state upfront the unpalatable truth of Islamabad consciously waging a proxy war against India and in Afghanistan - the former for avenging Bangladesh in Kashmir and the latter for making up for the loss of strategic depth caused by Pakistan’s dismemberment in the 1971 war. Read more

No foreword to a blog on contemporary Pakistan can be complete without some mention of Asif Zardari, who promised to model himself after India’s Sonia Gandhi but fell to the lure of de jure power so assiduously shunned by Indira’s bahu. Read more

I  cannot  think  of  a better way of starting this blog than with personal recollections  of Nawaz Sharif whose triumphant long march drew the world’s attention  to the Pakistani civil society that yearns for modern democratic institutions—not the Qazi Courts the Taliban got at gun-point in Swat and elsewhere in battle-torn NWFP. Read more