Who Cares if Iran Gets A Nuke? (Lessons from Pakistan)

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Iran and world powers finally clenched a long awaited nuclear deal earlier this week. As The Diplomat‘s Ankit Panda points out, the deal is written quite well, enough to ensure Iranian compliance because sanctions can easily be reimposed if Iran cheats. In any case, it is highly unlikely that Iran will cheat, or cheat too explicitly. Why would Iran do so anyhow? Iran’s leaders agreed to negotiations because they are rational actors–contrary to what some American politicians believe–who value the survival of their governmental system and the national’s welfare enough to negotiate.

China Loves Pakistan … but Most Chinese Don’t

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to Pakistan, and the $46 billion infrastructure and energy deal announced between the two countries on April 20, have headlined Chinese state media websites for days. The trade deal is part of China’s ambitious “New Silk Road” strategy to create an economic corridor linking western China with South Asia and the Middle East, and it’s meant to further deepen a bilateral relationship that China is eager to promote. On April 20, state news agency Xinhua characterized the relationship as an “ironclad friendship.” Communist Party mouthpiecePeople’s Daily quoted people on the street in Pakistan exclaiming, “We would rather give up gold than abandon the China-Pakistan friendship,” with the news outlet stating that this was the “heartfelt wish” of the people there. Pakistan’s government, for its part, is no less effusive, with officials there previously having described its relationship with the East Asian giant as “sweeter than honey,” one rising “higher than the Himalayas.” China-Pakistan diplomatic relations have indeed been strong for decades.

What’s on Pakistan-based Militants’ Minds?

On 15 March, terrorists mounted suicide attacks on two churches in Lahore, Pakistan. While this was not the first attack on an institution or individuals related to minority communities in the country, this particular attack was indicative of an emerging trend.

That the minorities in Pakistan aren’t the most protected communities is not news. Over the past four decades, the persecution and/or lack of protection for minorities has resulted in ubiquitous violence, instability and almost-permanent uncertainty vis-à-vis social cohesion, national security, and economy. The religious and sectarian schism only widened with the emergence of armed radical religious insurgent groups. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, approximately 143 people belonging to minority communities have been killed in attacks targeted at minorities, in 2015 alone.

Pakistan: Will the Genie Want to Go Back?

Ever since the horrible attack on school children in Peshawar, there have been a series of measures within Pakistan in responding to militancy. A National Plan has been prepared; military courts have been constitutionally set up to deal with the militants; groups have been banned, and recently the government has also decided to freeze the funds of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).

There is a general perception within Pakistan, that today, the nation does not differentiate between the “good” and “bad” Taliban, leading to a new paradigm involving the State, society and militants.

As the Taliban Fragments, IS Fights for Influence

The establishment of the Khorasan chapter of the Islamic State in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region strengthens the Islamic State's image as a phenomenon with global reach. But the new chapter's links to the Islamic State are fragile, and it owes its existence more to the fragmentation of the cross-border Taliban movement than to anything the Islamic State has done.

The Khorasan chapter, like other Islamic State affiliates beyond the Syrian-Iraqi battlespace, will be met with local resistance from jihadist forces and al Qaeda who see groups friendly toward the Islamic State as a challenge to their authority.

Pakistan: The Counter-productiveness of Military Courts

Of all the coups, overt and covert since 1947, the military in Pakistan should be smiling at the invitation by the Parliament to set up military courts. As a phenomenon and institution, the military courts are not new in the democratic history of nations; numerous countries have gone through this process in establishing them for a specific purpose at a particular time in their history.

Will the military courts that are being set up in Pakistan with the passage of 21st Constitutional Amendment Bill 2015 along with Pakistan Army Act (Amendment) Bill 2015 by a two-third majority in the Parliament lead to further erosion of democratic hold over governance? Or, will it only result in addressing the militancy in Pakistan, as it is being projected by the powerless government in power? Is this a right strategy for Pakistan?

Iran-Pakistan: Can Rouhani Resolve the Tensions?

Iran and Pakistan have been facing issues on the border relating to terrorism and drug trafficking for some time now. This has raised tensions between Tehran and Islamabad, resulting in clashes. The recent clash in October resulted in casualties for both sides and the Pakistani ambassador in Tehran was summoned by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Iranian officials state that the terrorists and bandits use Pakistani territory as a base to attack Iranian border forces, and Pakistan categorically rejects the allegations. Iranian officials allege that Pakistan has no control over its own borders and Pakistan says that Iran should not justify its internal problems with external reasons.

Islamic State: Prospects in Pakistan

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of activity taking place in various parts of Pakistan in the name of the abominable, but also ineluctable, Islamic State (IS).

Apart from some senior commanders of the Mullah Fazlullah-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) faction who have announced their allegiance to the IS’ Caliph Ibrahim a.k.a. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, there are reports of other smaller groups of militants who have cast their lot with the pestilential IS. Graffiti and posters of the IS have appeared in Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Bannu, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Wah, Hangu, Kurram, Bhakkar, Dera Ismail Khan and other towns and cities of the country.

Pakistan Army and Its Pakistan

Pakistan and its behaviour, often in the past and now more increasingly, are hyphenated with its ‘Deep State’. The latter is left open to readers’ interpretation and understanding.

With the arrival of new dispensation in governance, and the urge to exhibit a fresh, better and more effective policy towards Pakistan, the subject as such is being consumed and debated by all and sundry, with revived interest. I would like to raise a question and then respond to it. The question is 'what is the Deep State in Pakistan and how is Pakistan Army orchestrating it?’.

Pakistan’s Dangerous Game of Brinkmanship

Insecure Pakistan in the backdrop of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is faced with the twin dilemma of international marginalization as part of fast receding regional relevance and political and economic instability.

These fears are heightened by India’s rapidly developing economy, political stability and fast paced modernization of its armed forces. For Pakistani fed on the belief, as Christian Fair puts it ‘accepting the status quo with India is a defeat’, such a scenario is an anathema that it is loathe to accept. This ideological perspective remains the driver that is forcing the Pakistani army in taking calculated military risks as a manifestation of its continued struggle which it must continue and persevere. According to Fair this behaviour of Pakistan is a result of it being fundamentally a dissatisfied state which seeks to increase its prestige through spread of its ideology and religion in pursuit of its revisionist policies.

In dry Pakistan, deaths from toxic liquor continue

In a dry country such as Pakistan, it can be hard to find a drink. And those who can often turn to bootleggers for concocted brews of who knows what.

Relatives on Wednesday stand beside an ambulance transporting the body of someone who died after consuming toxic liquor in Karachi, Pakistan. (Shahzaib Akber/European Pressphoto Agency)

This week, that search for a buzz during Eid celebrations led to deadly consequences.

Pakistan: Under the Shadow of the Military Jackboot

Like Pakistan, the nation, its army has been passing through turbulent times. The army’s counter-insurgency operations in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (erstwhile North West Frontier Province) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have not been going well; its establishments have been repeatedly attacked with at least some attackers coming from within; its relations with its NATO allies had plummeted to an all-time low after the spectacular US raid to kill Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad in May 2011; the morale of the rank and file is low; and, its senior leadership is once again at loggerheads with the political leaders of Pakistan.

Despairing at the role played by the Pakistan army in meddling in the country’s politics and governance in the context of the ‘memogate’ scandal in December 2011, then Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had called the army a ‘state within a state’. Though this phrase has been in use for long, many analysts are of the view that the Prime Minister got it wrong because, in Pakistan, the army is the state. In fact, the army and the ISI (the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate) together form the ‘deep state’.

3 priorities for Pakistan's new government

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Nawaz Sharif speaks to members of the media at his residence in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 13. The Pakistani politician is poised to become the country's next prime minister. He said Monday that Islamabad has 'good relations' with the United States, but called the CIA's drone campaign in the country's tribal region a challenge to national sovereignty. (K.M. Chaudary/AP)

After 14 years, Nawaz Sharif is back at the helm in Pakistan. The center-right politician’s herculean exertions to claw back from exile and resurrect his political party from collapse leave little doubt about his desire for power. But even Mr. Sharif could be forgiven a few pangs of buyer’s remorse when confronted with the welter of looming problems.

US Drones killing innocent Pakistanis, U.N. official says

(CNN)

 -- Farmers are on their way to tend their crops when a missile slams into their midst, thrusting shrapnel in all directions.

A CIA drone, flying so high that the farmers can't see it, has killed most of them. None of them were militants.

Pakistani president’s pipeline deal with Iran seen as effort to aid party, burnish legacy

Raising their fists triumphantly on a remote patch of border, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad broke ground this week on a natural gas pipeline, hyping it as a conduit to prosperity for their cash-strapped countries. But the deal also is widely seen here as Zardari’s latest grasp for legacy in the final days of his five years as a deeply unpopular leader.

Vahid Salemi/AP - Iranian workers weld two gas pipes together at the start of construction on a pipeline to transfer natural gas from Iran to Pakistan, in Chabahar, southeastern Iran, near the Pakistani border, on March 11.

The United States has long discouraged the pipeline with threats of economic sanctions against Pakistan. U.S. officials, as well as most Pakistani analysts, say the multibillion-dollar project — meant to ease Pakistan’s severe energy shortages by tapping its neighbor’s gas fields — is largely a pipe dream, pursued for 18 years and still fraught with uncertainties over financing.

Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline defies US

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have inaugurated a controversial gas pipeline linking the two neighbours.

The US has warned that the project could incur sanctions connected with Iran's nuclear programme.

After border killings, India says it cannot go back to ‘business as usual’ with Pakistan

Nine days after a fatal cross-border incident involving Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said ties between the two neighbors cannot be “business as usual” and described the reported beheading of an Indian soldier “unacceptable.”

JAIPAL SINGH/EPA - Indian border villager children study in a school at Dhallan village near the Line of Control in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) near Poonch, India on Jan. 15, 2013. India's army chief General Bikram Singh accused Pakistan of planning a recent clash in which two Indian soldiers died and directed his commanders to respond aggressively to any provocation from Pakistani troops in the disputed region in 

Army officials say Pakistani troops crossed the border into Indian territory in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and killed two Indian soldiers, mutilating the body of one and cutting off the head of another.

In Pakistan, Mixed Results From a Peshawar Attack

The Pakistani Taliban continue to undermine Pakistan's government and military establishment, and in doing so, they continue to raise questions over the security of the country's nuclear arsenal. On Dec. 15, 10 militants armed with suicide vests and grenades attacked Peshawar Air Force Base, the site of a third major operation by the Pakistani Taliban since May 2011. Tactically, the attack was relatively unsuccessful -- all the militants were killed, and the perimeter of the air base was not breached -- but the Pakistani Taliban nonetheless achieved their objective. 

The attack began the night of Dec. 15 with a volley of three to five mortar shells. As the shells were fired, militants detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device near the perimeter wall of the air base. Reports indicate that all five militants inside the vehicle were killed. The other five militants engaged security forces in a nearby residential area and eventually were driven back before they could enter the air base. The next day, security forces acting on a report of suspicious activity confronted the militants, who all died in the resultant shootout.

Pakistan says it successfully test-fired nuclear-capable missile

Pakistan’s military says it has successfully test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

A military statement says the Hatf V or Ghauri missile was launched Wednesday from an undisclosed location.

After attack on Malala, Taliban threaten journalists who cover it

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Taliban sought to silence the teenage education activist Malala Yousufzai by shooting her in the head. They're also trying to stifle the widespread criticism of the attack in the news media by threatening journalists in Pakistan.

The militant group's menacing statements have intensified fears among reporters in a country that is already one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist.

The attack on Malala, 14, in the northwestern district of Swat last week has left her battling to recover from her injuries in a hospital in Britain and generated a wave of shock and anger in Pakistan and around the world.