india/pakistan

To what extent is India’s foreign policy driven by the democracy factor? Yogesh Joshi reviews S.D. Muni’s latest book India’s Foreign Policy: The Democracy Dimension

The Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad made both friends and enemies in the course of his detailed reporting of Islamist groups and insurgencies in the country. An official report on his abduction and murder in May 2011 may leave key questions unanswered, says Nick Fielding, but read carefully and in context it brings the truth of his end closer.

The Afghan Taliban and the United States have begun talks, advancing prospects that coalition forces can withdraw from Afghanistan. But there are many potential pitfalls on the road to peace: a real risk of a political and military stalemate in Afghanistan, forcing the United States to leave the region under uncertain and possibly dangerous terms.

The government of India’s decision to roll back legislation that would allow FDI in multi-brand retail is ill-advised. However, in the grand scheme of things it is but a hiatus that at worst merely derails the momentum of reforms.

It is about time that saner heads in the Indian national security establishment mull over the implications of the continuation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Kashmir, says Wajahat Qazi

Islamic militancy in Pakistan appears to be mobilising women suicide bombers as part of its religious trope. This trend unsettles the conservative divide between the public and private roles of women in traditional societies, and also attracts an anthropological defense of Islamist women's agency. The question remains: what's in it for women?

It is easier to excuse "collateral damage" if you believe the victims are your sworn enemies. But Pakistan is not anti-American

Pakistan is too often portrayed in flawed and reductive ways that flatten its complexity and offer misleading guidance to policy-makers. This makes it all the more important to acknowledge some difficult truths about the country, says Anatol Lieven.

An accelerating nuclear arms race between a fragile Pakistani government aiming at a strategic balance with India and an Indian state that ignores its neighbor's security concerns is on the verge of spiraling out of control, says Yogesh Joshi

In India, the existence of deep religious diversity has ensured a conceptual response not only to problems within but also between religions. Without taking it as a blue print, the west must examine the Indian conception and learn from it, regarding peace between communities, community-specific rights, the rights of minorities, the porous divide between the modern state and religion, and the skills to accommodate the latter. They might begin by jettisoning the preoccupation with ‘equal treatment’.

The roots of fundamentalism in Pakistan lie in the education system and school curricula, which need to become more liberal and tolerant in order to stem the steady stream of potential terrorists, argues Saroop Ijaz.

The democracy uprisings in the Arab world hold a lesson for New Delhi, says Meenakshi Ganguly: the need for a foreign-policy stance that matches India's global ambitions.

That the guardians of women's virtue should present a direct threat to it, encapsulates the essential paradox of popular opinion about the Taliban movement in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, says Sana Haroon.

India needs to drastically reformulate its policy in Afghanistan and adopt a more long-term political strategy based on the principles non-alignment, democracy and development, argues Jamal Kidwai

During Zia’s years, liberal forces presented the most radical opposition to the theocracy-military collusion and oppression. Today, we witness a liberal democratic government, with a secular alliance that is paralysed and besieged by its lack of vision and inability to govern, says Afiya Shehrbano Zia

Pakistan’s society and government are under intense pressure from the growing influence of extreme religious movements. In the absence of enlightened and unifying political leadership the prospect of a great regression remains alive, says Marco Mezzera. 

Declining political morality and increasing moral policing are suffocating the rule of law in India, shrinking spaces for civil dialogue and threatening freedom of speech, says Vijay Nagaraj

Collaboration between western academia and Pakistani women at home and in the diaspora has established a body of donor-funded research with an exclusive focus on Islam. Will development policies based on such research lead to any kind of liberation?

The case of Aasia Bibi, a Christian farmhand who was sentenced to death in Pakistan, teaches us how difficult it is to bring law, democracy and an end to extremism to the country

Drone attacks that kill innocents are a sure way to multiply enemies