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...

We are back to gauche brinkmanship. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for "a new beginning" in relations with India on August 13. No way, came the brash snub from New Delhi within a couple of hours. "India will not hold talks with Pakistan until matters of cross-border firing and army are not fully resolved," declared the Indian Foreign Office spokesman Syed Akbaruddin. He also demanded action against Hafiz Saeed. Hafiz Saeed, who is a relentless opponent of talks with India, and is perennially thankful to the Sharif brothers "for their monetary benevolence towards his educational institutions" (he made statement in his interview with Dunya TV shortly before Eid), stands at number two in a January 2002 list of the people most wanted by India. Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of the Bahawalpur-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, topped that list. After the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Hafiz Saeed may have upstaged Masood Azhar. He is the founder of the defunct Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which now operates under the name Jamaatud Dawa. This singular focus on Saeed and the LeT is the primary reason for gridlocked India-Pakistan relations. In fact, the predominant Indian narrative on Pakistan revolves around Saeed and his organization's "nexus" with the Pakistani military establishment. Both are inextricably linked, so believe most Indians, and thus demand punitive action against the army. Most Indian parliamentarians and retired officials insist that the Pakistani army or the ISI orchestrated the execution of Indian soldiers in the Poonch sector. Without khaki support, they implied, such attacks were not possible. That is why the incident has practically brought all the back channel talks to a grinding halt amid deafening noises and protests against Pakistan. Participation in three live debates on two mainstream Indian TV channels left me in little doubt that if left to the media and the opposition members of Lok Sabha, they would already have declared war on Pakistan. Almost every...