Pakistan

While scientists all over the world are working tirelessly to find an antidote to COVID-19, the narratives doing the rounds in Pakistan – pushed and peddled by the Urdu media, accuse them of conspiring to turn this virus into a weapon to not only kill but also to alter the human psyche.

• Nazir Ahmad Mir
• April 20, 2020
• Comment

Over the past year i.e. 2018–2019, Pakistan has been facing challenging macro-economic conditions that include a ballooning fiscal imbalance and a weak external position with gross reserves at $8 billion, equal to 1.7 months of imports. On June 19, 2019, Reza Baqir, the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan wrote to the Managing Director of the IMF, seeking assistance under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), on grounds that Pakistan’s international reserves had touched critically low levels with a large balance of payments gap, in an environment of limited market access.

• V. Srinivas
• January 2020
• Strategic Analysis

Although the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement has been able to mainstream the Pashtun issue and has inspired popular empathy, its anti-establishment thrust has made it a soft target for the pro-establishment media and political actors.

• Zainab Akhter
• January 28, 2019
• Comment

With the ever increasing support and swelling number of protesters, Pashteen changed the name of the organisation from the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement to Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, a Movement for the Protection of Pashtuns.

• Zainab Akhter , Yaqoob-ul-Hassan
• May 04, 2018
• Comment

Pakistan’s desperation to keep itself off the list of defaulting countries maintained by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) underlines the increasing effectiveness of the organisation, which has become the spearhead against global efforts combating the financing of terrorism (CFT).

• Vivek Chadha
• February 26, 2018
• Issue Brief

Pakistan’s determination to build the Diamer Basha Dam (DBD) project with indigenous funding may prove even more difficult than obtaining foreign funding.

• Priyanka Singh
• January 23, 2018
• Comment

Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, by C. Christine Fair, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 343, £27.99

Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War, by Myra MacDonald, London: Hurst & Co., 2017, pp. 328, £25.00‘

• Abhay Kumar Singh
• October 2017
• Journal of Defence Studies

The idea of abolishing FATA as a distinct administrative entity and merging it with KP led to a country-wide debate, with some commentators pointing to the futility of the merger and others advocating its early implementation in the interest of peace and stability in the region.

• Zainab Akhter
• August 29, 2017
• Backgrounder

The revival of Jaish indicates that Pakistan will continue to utilise terrorism as an instrument to advance its geo-strategic agenda in South Asia.

• Raj Verma
• May 15, 2017
• Comment

Nuclearisation of the Indian subcontinent limits conventional military options available to India for punishing Pakistan’s employment of terrorism as a tool of state policy. While India has rightly balanced the use of diplomatic and limited military means over a period of time, even as these remain relevant, the option of economic sanctions deserves deeper analysis for its efficacy and impact. Economic measures can be undertaken both in the form of direct and indirect actions against a target country, individual or an organisation with varied degrees of impact.

• Vivek Chadha
• April 2017
• Journal of Defence Studies