It’s encouraging that India and Pakistan continue to talk. But while they engage, they’d have to be careful about each other’s sensitivities on issues influencing popular support for peace between the two sub-continental rivals. Read more

Much is happening in Pakistan. Self-exiled Pervez Musharraf is threatening to join politics back home, Asif Zardari says he isn’t under the army’s pressure to quit, Nawaz Sharif’s struggling to hold his own and Imran Khan going great guns in his quest for power. Read more

A careful reading of President Barak Obama’s speech announcing the death of Osama bin Laden raised more questions than it answered. He said little about the Pakistani involvement in the US-led operation except the passing mention that “our counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding”. Read more

I aren’t the least surprised that the Prime Minister’s Office has contradicted reports of there being any contact with Pakistan Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani in the run-up to Manmohan Singh’s Mohali meeting with Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani. Read more

Mohali is for optics. The real match between India and Pakistan is across the negotiating table. And in that, there aren’t going to be any winners or losers. Not at least in the visible future. Read more

An invitation to speak at a seminar on Future Directions in India Pakistan relations has left me at my wit’s end. The question defies easy answers even while agreeing that dialogue’s the only option. Read more

Pakistan is a land of compulsive talkers and conspiracy theorists. People with the least understanding of issues manage to come across as the best informed. Read more

General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani will be Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff till 2013. But the three-year extension he has been given in the name of “continuity” in the war against terrorism on the borders with Afghanistan shows the PPP-led government as weak and subservient when it comes to dealing with the Khakis. Read more

About time India and Pakistan resorted to quiet diplomacy away from the media glare. Or else they’d keep repeating Islamabad where Shah Mehmood Qureshi beat all records of bad diplomacy. Read more

I’ve often wondered as to who runs this country: the big business, the intelligence fraternity, the lunatic political fringe, the media or the government mandated by the electorate? Read more