India’s swift military victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war devastated the country: Pakistan lost half of its territory and a majority of its citizens. The defeat would also lead to one of the 21st century’s most pressing security challenges.  more

The man who came close to blowing up the Detroit-bound plane belonged to a well-heeled family in Nigeria: his father was a high-ranking banker and the bomber himself is an engineering student.  more

In 1971, assisted by 13 battalions of mujahideen, Pakistan’s soldiers slaughtered three million people over 9 bloodcurdling months.  more

No individual bears greater responsibility for the genocide in Pakistan in 1971 than Zulfi Bhutto, who refused all political compromises and maneuvered the government and army into civil war.  more

Pakistan’s 1971 civil war constitutes the single most terrible slaughter of Muslims since the founding of Islam – committed entirely by Muslims.  more

Pakistan’s relationship with America has always followed the same pattern: The army accepts American military aid while allying itself with the very enemies it had been paid and equipped by the U.S. to oppose.  more

The Pakistani army, the nation’s most powerful institution, has never been the modernizing force the West believed it would be. Instead, after seizing power in a coup, the army implemented a national program of Islamic indoctrination.  more

For decades, Washington has mistakenly believed that by funding Pakistan, it was propping up “Western-minded” leaders who would thoroughly oppose fanatical religious forces. Instead, since its creation, Pakistan has been a center for global Islamists.  more

From its foundation, the primary challenge to Pakistan’s sense of itself came from India. India’s success at forging a nationality out of its diversity stood as a towering repudiation of the very idea of Pakistan.  more

Today’s Pakistan is at war with itself, torn between competing ideas of what it means to be Pakistani. This failure to create a humane or liberal nationalism has its roots in Pakistan’s foundation.  more

With a stockpile of over 80 nuclear warheads, a rapidly collapsing state, and an army and intelligence service severely contaminated with Islamists, Pakistan represents perhaps the single biggest security challenge of the 21st century.  more

China is the generator of the nuclear problems that stare us in the face today – but it’s role has been generally ignored. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program, subsequently went about selling their technology to Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea.  more

Jamsetji Tata was 43 when, in 1882, he applied to the government in Great Britain for a licence to prospect in his own country, India. Tata had come across a report which claimed that Ritter von Schwartz had discovered a “hill of iron” in Lohara. To Tata this was an enormous opportunity; to the imperial   more

Not so long ago, Shirley Williams, a Liberal Democrat member of the British House of Lords, appeared on the BBC’s Question Time programme; when asked by a member of the audience if she thought Salman Rushdie should have been given the knighthood, she replied: “I think it was a mistake… This is a man who   more

One of the less talked-about ironies of recent times is that the India-US relationship was firmed up by a Republican President. Ironic because for many decades the things that defined India for Americans as unworkable ideas against unspeakable realities were liberal causes, not conservative concerns. I was once in the habit of leafing through the   more

One of the less talked-about ironies of recent times is that the India-US relationship was firmed up by a Republican President. Ironic because for many decades the things that defined India for Americans-unworkable ideas against unspeakable realities-were liberal causes, not conservative concerns. I was once in the habit of leafing through the index pages of   more