There are three types of faultlines in South Asia - the fractures resulting from the movement of tectonic plates (as shown by the September 24 earthquake), the geopolitical differences that have kept Islamabad and New Delhi in a perpetual state of rivalry, and deprivation, with over half a billion people living below the poverty line in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh together. The latter expresses itself in the form of various insurgencies and militant movements in all three countries - the Chakma tribes in Chittagong Hills, some 30 armed insurgencies that sweep across India (reflecting an acute sense of alienation of the people involved and sustained mainly by failure to attend to their grievances and human rights violations by the government), and the various shades of militancy in Pakistan (almost all disguised as Taliban, pretending to be working for a socio-economically just society, driven by Islamic Sharia). Geopolitical faultlines and state interests in certain cross-border groups also aid these militant movements, for example the alleged Indian support for the Bangladeshi tribes and for Baloch insurgents in Pakistan, and the ISI's nexus with major Afghan Taliban groups and its support for Kashmir militancy since 1988. These movements also exploit internal faultlines, such as governance weaknesses, economic inequalities and social injustices. Pakistan's faultline begins in Kashmir, meanders via the Himalayas and the Karakoram through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and branches off to Kabul and Kandahar via Torkham and Chaman. It is a deadly triangular faultline largely caused by India's paranoia and essentially rooted in a megalomaniac and misplaced Islamist ethos. The anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan provided the crooked General Ziaul Haq with the justification for peddling "jihad" in Afghanistan and eventually in Kashmir for "wresting Kashmir from India in the name of support for the right of self-determination." Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the...

In February this year, Pakistan finally handed over the operations of Gwadar Port, located in Balochistan province, to China. For both countries the deal was business as usual, but for India, the deal rang alarm bells, with Indian defense minister, A.K. Antony calling it amatter of concern[i]. In 2007, during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, the development and operating rights for Gwadar Port were handed over to the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) on a forty-year lease. Few had anticipated this decision, given that China had provided eighty percent of the total funding during the first phase of the port's development.However, Musharraf at the time was mindful of displeasing Washington by giving the lease to China[ii]. Along with the PSA deal came concessions in the form of tax and customs duty exemptions. Still, it took only five years for thePSA to back out of the deal, citing as primary factors a land transfer deadlock and Pakistan's failure to meet obligations[iii]. Gwadar Port sits just 200 miles from the strategically important Strait of Hormuz ´ one of the most important oil conduits in the world. Given this, China would have long pondered the possible utility of a port that could shorten its oil transport chain. But oil is not the only game here. India, Pakistan's arch rival and China's competitive neighbor, has voiced concerns on regional and global forums regarding the Chinese takeover. Soon after the Chinese takeover, the"China encircling India[iv]"and "China undermining Indian maritime security[v]" theories began surfacing, with media and analysts wrote scores of op-eds and commentaries, accusing China of having military aspirations for Gwadar.   Experts and geopolitical analysts in Pakistan believe the port still has a long way to go before it will be fully operational as an international transit facility. This analysis reflects certain realities on the ground. First and foremost, Balochistan province is experiencingan ongoing insurgency...

Dear Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, The shameful but scary Sikandar Saga that played out near the Red Zone of the capital on August 15 exposed the intellectual paralysis and the institutional inefficiency that is glaringly evident as the hallmark of our security apparatus. Your statement in the National Assembly (August 19) that an 'expert' who knew how to use a stun gun properly was not available when required offers a bitter reflection on the state of our preparedness. Your criticism of the behavior of senior media officials is also legitimate because most went over-board in getting and putting out the "exclusive inside information", but the fact that PEMRA did not spring into action at all explains the other paralysis too. Your admission of guilt and responsibility is also candid, when you say you never had the time to provide Standard Operating Procedures to police officials. This statement underscores another discomforting and bitter reality - the capital police of a country facing an intense, bloody religiously-wrapped insurgency for over a decade apparently has no SOPs for emergency situations. That is why a scenario which could have ended in 15 minutes without a single bullet shot dragged on for over 5 hours, stigmatizing the name of the country all over the world, which watched in awe a thoughtless, unplanned stupid intervention by Zamurd Khan - an act that could have taken his life too. One wonders whether repeated humiliations at the hands of criminals and terrorists have taught any lessons to our police, military and other security agencies. Dear minister, we hear that you are "burning the proverbial mid-night oil" to authoring a new counter-terror policy for the country (presumably this is what kept you and others from short-cutting the drama on the Jinnah Avenue). May we suggest that, following colossal human and economic losses, this country's security apparatus needs to be brought out of the paralysis of thought and action through a massive overhaul? We...