Vikram Sood

Aug 25, 2010

The Baloch battlefield

The killing of Zamur Domki along with her 13-year-old daughter Jaana on January 31 in Karachi was a new low in that violence-prone city. It may have been routinely described as yet another criminal act except that Zamur was the granddaughter of slain Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and the sister of Brahamdagh Bugti. Brahamdagh is wanted by the Pakistani authorities for rebelling and waging war against Pakistan. This brutal murder was a ruthless message to Brahamdagh. There was immediate retaliation by the Baloch Liberation Army, which killed 15 Frontier Corps men and injured 12 others in attacks on four posts.

Confused on Kashmir

It has been said so often by so many but it still bears repetition that Pakistan’s foreign policy agenda has only one item on it — India.

The ‘jihadi’ upper cut to Pak polity

The famous Pakistani bridge player, Zia Mahmood, in his engagingly written book Bridge My Way, describes the perils of playing this card game in his native Pakistan in 1975. He wrote that a bridge club was opened in Lahore, but it lasted a week because that was how long it took for the religious groups of the area to have it closed. He adds that “simply visiting the club was nerve-racking with the constant worry that at any time violent neighbours might turn up with their own brand of eviction notice.” And this was before Gen. Zia-ul-Haq turned on the Islamic screws on the people.

Put Siachen on table last, not first

As the United States gets into an Arab quagmire without extricating itself from the AfPak theatre there must also be pressure to find a foreign policy success in Washington D.C., with election year approaching. Consequently, the discourse on AfPak has begun to change. The good and necessary war has become unnecessary and futile as it drains the US treasury and America suffers 500 casualties annually.

Politics of a revolt

According to the latest disclosures from WikiLeaks, in a remarkable display of unemotional national interest, the United States agreed to supply details of every Trident nuclear missile they had given the British to the Russians as a bargaining chip for the America-Russia Arms Control Treaty that US President Barack Obama will sign soon. The fact that the Americans also spied on British foreign ministers for gossip on their personal lives is par for the course. All intelligence agencies do this to all their friends.

Diplomatic tai chi

When Lang Lang, a resident of New York, was invited by the White House for a piano recital at the banquet for Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington DC on January 19, no one really bothered to chec

Hopeless solutions

THE DISCOURSE heard most loudly in New Delhi is that it would be magnanimous to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), as if this were the cause of the trouble, overlooking the fact th

China asserts itself

For decades China pretended to be modest and Deng Xiaoping’s successors followed him as they couched their ambitions in soft idioms. The “sons of heaven”, as the Chinese traditionally consider themselves, also consider those on their periphery as rebellious barbarians who had to be tamed or conquered. So the discourse

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