For long, I have observed the discourse on the war on terror from the sidelines, but this needs to be said. (Excuse my insistence on using an inaccurate catchal. David Miliband being the first and perhaps the last notable observed that the idea of war on terror implied a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. However my impression is that such a perception has not structurally changed, hence its fallacious use here.)

A very interesting dialogue...

Pakistan is reeling from terror attacks. Since my last entry two weeks ago, things have begun unfolding at a dizzy pace to the worst tune possible. There have been attacks on prominent places, from International Islamic University in Islamabad, to attacks on police stations in Lahore, to sucide attacks in Peshawar, to an attack at the heart of the military itself, at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Yesterday, the Sudan Peace Mission head  was shot dead in Islamabad, triggering the...

(Image of Pakistani soldiers beating up a man- Video Grab)

A video showing Pakistani soldiers beating up a man in an investigation about Taliban has made waves on youtube and facebook, prompting the Pakistan Army's spokesperson to assure an investigation into the matter. The abuse perpetrated while conducting criminal investigations is old practice in Pakistan, so it merits no raised eyebrows, atleast to cynics. Pakistanis have seen dark days and witnessed worse. This incident though got caught...

So, in our previous blog conversation we figured that it is an established policy truth now that fragile states need to be fixed so there are limited spillovers in the form of crazy trigger happy non state actors, epidemics, refugees and other such destabilizing factors. Through this really shallow study of reports written by actors as World Bank, DFID, USAID, OECD and others, the promising fact that emerged was the openness of thought process/nuanced thinking and at least avowed willingness to...

No I am not a broken record. Seriously. I just get distracted and jaded, time and again. Who wouldn't though, with all the talk on armed nation building in Afghanistan? Foreign Policy launched a channel on Af-Pak today, there is an interesting debate going on at the Abu Muqawama blog at Centre for New American Security sparked by Prof.Bacevich's poke at 'people centric idea of security'. There is also a great post under the category of Afghan Mission Creep Watch by Michael Cohen that mentions...

Fragile/failing states, those places where economies are a mess, institutions and governance are poor, and non state actors have the propensity to challenge the state, and create instability, have attracted attention of policy makers for some time now. Increasingly, there seems to be a consensus on the dangers posed by transnational threats emerging from the world's most poorly governed countries to world security.

These countries represent serious concerns of humanitarian catastrophes; mass...

The progress since the Sharm-el-Sheikh declaration has been promising. Pakistan has showed responsibility by owning up that the Pakistan based group- Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was involved in last year's Mumbai attack. For the first time, Pakistanis are being tried by the Pakistani judicial system for carrying out acts of terror on foreign soil. According to news reports, Pakistan handed over a dossier based on Pakistani investigation to India, that outlines the nature of training, finances and...