Category: Pakistan

Read Teresita Schaffer’s interview in Dawn, September 9, 2011, on Pakistan’s “three marriages and two divorces” with the United States, the challenge of the two countries’ strategic gap, the impact when one country withholds information from the other, and some of Pakistan’s negotiating successes with the United States.

August 17, 2011: In South Asia, as in many other parts of the world, national independence days are a time for editors and other commentators to reflect on their country’s state of affairs, spell out what’s going well and what’s going badly, and offer some — hopefully original –ideas about what can be done to set things right. We’ve made it a practice to check out these commentaries. We’ve found that they can often help us and other outsiders get a better idea of the national mood in these countries, or at least of their elites. With this goal in mind we went through the editorials and other commentaries in Pakistan’s English-language press that “celebrated” the 64^th anniversary of the country’s independence on August 14.

Continue reading “Pakistan’s Gloomy Anniversary”

July 22, 2011: It has been almost three months since a U.S. SEAL task force killed Osama bin Laden at his Abbottabad hideaway, gravely aggravating the worst crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations since 9/11.  Since the raid, there has been a continuing flurry of diplomatic activity as officials of the two countries sought to deal with immediate issues and to establish the “operating rules” for fruitful bilateral relations.

Continue reading “Dealing with Pakistan: Conflicting Views”