Gilgit-Baltistan: 'Final Annexation' Accelerated
Islamabad has accelerated the process of imposing a provisional-provincial status on Gilgit-Baltistan. Pakistani media reports claim that between February 7-14, 2022, a number of meetings were held among the stakeholders, in Islamabad. During these meetings, the draft of the “26th Constitutional Amendment Bill” was discussed.
Protests against MCC in Nepal: A chapter from Chinese debt trap playbook
China’s protracted lobbying efforts aimed at blocking international development assistance to smaller countries exposes its bullying behavior. For firming up its iron grip over such countries, China lures them with debt financing linked with superfluous and unviable infrastructure projects. After these projects get stuck or shelved because of their inherent problems or motivated approach of the financer, the leftover debt imprint is too overwhelming for the vulnerable client countries.
There was ample reason this past week to recall the title of the Commentary of 08-01-2021 – Nepal’s self-centered political leadership has repeatedly failed its people – and conclude that the situation has, expectedly yet regrettably, not changed much one year down the line.
Hijab row in Karnataka: Handiwork of people using religion for political mobilisation
The ongoing protest in Karnataka around ‘hijab’ is quite contrary to the general peaceful environment in the schools, colleges and universities in India.
Covid-19 cases in India continue to rise albeit now at a slower pace in the Omicron led third wave. Yet we need to be extra careful as many people are contracting the virus while traveling – by rail, bus or air. The current guidelines and rules on preventing the spread of this deadly epidemic are focused around masking, hand-washing and social distancing. Decision makers and civic authorities seem to have completely ignored travellers who test positive during their sojourns out of their home town.
On January 20, 2022, three persons were killed and over 33 were injured in a bomb explosion near Pan Mandi in the New Anarkali Bazar area of Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab. The Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA)’s spokesperson Mureed Baloch claimed that the target of the blast were the Habib Bank employees. The BNA was formed earlier this month when two separatist groups — Balochistan Republican Army and United Baloch Army — merged.
Tibet was hit fiercely with the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s island hopping in the Indian Ocean this past week has raised eyebrows, as his visits to the Maldives and Sri Lanka came at a time when the raging Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has caused much of the rest of the world to grind to a near standstill.
Pakistan in general, and the province of Balochistan in particular, has been no stranger to demands by vast sections of its population for basic rights that have either been denied to them or snatched away from them.
Islamabad: The two major setbacks that Pakistan suffered on 16 December – first the country’s inglorious dismemberment and the birth of the sovereign Bangladesh in 1971, and then the grisly and repugnant massacre of over 130 children of an Army-run school in Peshawar by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2014 – both trace their roots to the oppressive, intrinsically flawed, and largely self-serving policies pursued by the country’s military.
The value of Indo-Bangla ties in contemporary times
Dhaka/New Delhi: In the last decade, Bangladesh and India’s ties have grown stronger than ever before.
DSA: Silencing Dissenting Voices
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
Afghan Women: The Endangered Sex
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management
Islamabad: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has, for quite some time, been going through a difficult phase due to the litany of woes, mainly self-created, that has befallen him and the nation that he has been entrusted to lead by the country’s all powerful military establishment.
On October 15, 2021, the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM) accused the Government of India (GoI) of violating the historical and political rights of the Naga people for more than six decades and alleged that GoI was engaged in flattery and a divisive policy in the name of finding a political solution for the Naga issue. The NSCN-IM asserted