How Pakistan Works

As Pakistan prepares to hold elections in the autumn, while facing its worst economic crisis in decades, with dwindling reserves and a stalled $6.5 billion IMF programme that is expiring soon, Pakistan's volatile politics comes to a boiling point that involves, the government, the opposition, the army and the supreme court. Historically after the independence, it appears that the captain of the Pakistan Cruise Ship forgot to retrieve its anchors from Kashmir mountains! Pakistan has been anchored to Kashmir mountains and stuck there for 76 years. Its time to left the anchors and let Pakistan cruise, as did Indonesia de-anchored from Malaysia in 1966 and the dispute ended peacefully. At this moment in history, Pakistan needs brave and visionary politicians to change the tide, beat the vicious circle of misery bought about over 76 years by the corrupt politicians, wrong strategic priorities, the disastrous grip of power by the army and as a result change the course of history for Pakistan.

Contemporary South Asia, 2012

Over the past 10 years, Pakistan has passed through some of the most turbulent and difficult times in its history. The war in Afghanistan post 9/11 has put Pakistan on the front line of the war on terrorism and provoked violent Islamic militancy within Pakistan and some grave policy choices for Pakistan itself. Riven in addition by the natural disasters of earthquakes and floods and hobbled by political instability, economic woes, and deep social, religious and ethnic divisions, Pakistan has reached a point of great flux with important national and regional changes imminent. This collection of six essays focus on critical elements of this flux -political Islam, militancy and religious minorities, political patronage and democracy, the economic impacts of the floods and Pakistan's relations with the US and its regional foreign policy -to identify key trends which will shape Pakistan's future.

Contemporary South Asia, 2016

1 | P a g e he Arab spring has begun a difficult transition towards more plural politics in the Middle East. Yet other parts of the Islamic world, Pakistan and Afghanistan in particular, stand on a very different prerevolutionary precipice, at the end of a process of politicisation of the majority that has been misunderstood and condoned by the increasingly remote and self-obsessed Pakistani state. Widening gaps in state-society relations are usually a recipe for longer term instability. While these chasms have opened-up in Pakistan to benefit the ruling class, they have also unwittingly created space for a populist but divisive sectarian and militant mass politics -a theological totalitarianism.