Tayyab Siddiqui A favourite pastime of our politicians is to call foreign policy a failure and accuse the diplomats abroad of not projecting the image of Pakistan and its interests. Quite often, parallels are drawn with India’s conduct of diplomacy and our diplomats are pilloried for their inefficiency and incompetence. There is little realisation that a country’s foreign policy and image is the mirror of its domestic policy and circumstances. No envoy is a magician, nor can he afford to be a con man, particularly in the present age of information explosion. It is now a fashion in Pakistan to … Continue reading Our image abroad

Zafar Hilaly It is a pity that neither Delhi nor Islamabad has ever acquired the faculty of imagining the suffering and joy of the other, to say nothing of their respective concerns and limitations, and the two governments are all too ready to lapse into recriminations at the drop of a hat. They attribute evil and devious motives to each other and reach for whatever is at hand to threaten the other. This is all the more surprising because civil society in both countries is strongly averse to conflict. A fact repeatedly ascertained by polls and people-to-people exchanges. If this … Continue reading The Indians are coming!

Charles Ferndale When I read Dr Khalid Saifullah’s analysis of the war on terror (February 8) I could find so little fault with it that I felt compelled to manufacture some. But, try as I may, I failed. So, instead, I fell back on looking for omissions in his arguments. Dr Saifullah omitted to mention a few other threats to the continuance of the war on terror that might result from misguided values. One is the publication of articles such as his. The world of international politics is nowadays an unpredictable place and, slim as the chances may be, there … Continue reading Without the war on terror

Munir Attaullah Start with the scientific concept of ‘work’. Fortunately, it is not far removed from its everyday usage, but we need to be a touch more rigorous. So think of ‘work’ as the orderly and collective motion of atoms against an opposing force To write a short column on a scientific subject in non-technical language is no easy task. Einstein’s guideline, ‘keep it simple but don’t simplify’, sets a high standard. Regardless, from time to time, I enjoy this challenge. So, today I will discuss what is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of a handful of … Continue reading The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Jean-Jacques Rousseau I assume that men have reached a point at which the obstacles that endanger their preservation in the state of nature overcome by their resistance the forces which each individual can exert with a view to maintaining himself in that state. Then this primitive condition can no longer subsist, and the human race would perish unless it changed its mode of existence. Now, as men cannot create any new forces, but only combine and direct those that exist, they have no other means of self-preservation than to form by aggregation a sum of forces which may overcome the … Continue reading The social pact

Dr Manzur Ejaz After the Afghan war ended, the US left in haste, leaving behind the mess of several hundered thousand jihadis. The Pakistani establishment, intoxicated by the routing of the Soviets, undertook ventures to conquer Afghanistan and Kashmir, and destabilise India. The mullah-military nexus was further strengthened The rise of the right wing conservative religious forces in Pakistan was due to a combination of factors. A changing economy, military adventures and backward state institutions played a main role in giving rise to jihadism, etc. It was not dictator Zia or other military rulers who were the only players in … Continue reading The rise of extremism