ZURICH: Five weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did something few would have expected from a former KGB spymaster. He voluntarily conceded a long-standing American demand. Upon his orders, the Kremlin closed down its Cold War-era listening post at Lourdes in Cuba. A facility which may have […]Read More

ZURICH: The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan must be pleased. The spy agency has patiently waged a 20-year proxy war against a superpower to a favourable outcome. Its earlier success against the Soviets (1979-89) had been gradually fading from memory. Its subsequent foray against the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir did not yield […]Read More

ZURICH: Pakistan does not sponsor terrorism against India because of the Kashmir issue. It sponsors terrorism because its own people cannot hope for a better future. Their destructive energies must be deflected outward rather than allowed to fester domestically, in snowballing resentment at the commercial depredations of a mafia-like military officer corps. Kashmir only helps […]Read More

ZURICH: The latest reiteration of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan should be noted, not hyped. True, it offers a momentary respite for Indian troops along the Line of Control (LoC). This should normally be welcomed at a time when New Delhi has had to redeploy four divisions eastward to face aggression against Ladakh by […]Read More

ZURICH: The United States is losing in Afghanistan because it lied to itself. Its war against the Taliban was never driven by a vision of fighting terrorism through nation-building, even though that was what policy debates implied. Rather, the conflict was a two-level engagement: an instinctive reprisal against Al Qaeda to exact vengeance for 9/11, […]Read More

ZURICH: If the name ‘China’ were deleted from ‘China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’ (CPEC), nobody except terrorism-watchers would pay attention to the country that remains. CPEC is projected by Islamabad as a ‘game-changer’ but it might only be a Pakistani reputation-laundering exercise that although strategically important is economically less than crucial to Beijing. The corridor provides a […]Read More