17 February 2011

EXCERPT: "The floods that swept across vast tracts of land from July to September 2010 covered many fields, houses and roads in a sea of swirling water - but they also played a part in exposing the depth of existing poverty and deprivation in Pakistan. 'The malnutrition we are seeing is not new. It has nothing to do with the floods; it is just that we are seeing it now as people come into contact with medical teams,' Shershah Syed, a gynaecologist...

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17 February 2011

EXCERPT: "Largely unremarked beyond in South Asia, last weekend marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of the death of Maqbool Butt. One of the first prominent leaders of the Kashmiri liberation struggle, Butt's execution almost three decades ago was expedited as a result of events on the other side of the globe in Birmingham, England when a group of Kashmiris kidnapped and executed an Indian diplomat. A set of connected events that while anomalous...

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17 February 2011

EXCERPT: "It would seem that Machiavellian politics have finally won out in the Pakistani tribal agency of Kurram; last week, leaders from Kurram's Shi'a Muslim community (located mostly in Upper Kurram) finally came to an agreement with their Sunni Muslim rivals (located mostly in Lower and Central Kurram) - through the intervention of the powerful insurgent network led by famed mujahideen Jalaluddin Haqqani - to put an end to the four-year-old sectarian...

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17 February 2011

EXCERPT: "This U.S.-Pakistan dispute comes at a time when Pakistan is increasingly challenged by growing violence, a teetering economy, political factionalism, large numbers of displaced people from last year's floods, high rates of inflation and unemployment, and widespread corruption. Strained relations with Islamabad add to problems the United States already faces in trying to ensure stability in Pakistan - a nuclear-armed country crucial to the...