(By Khalid Masood) On 18 August 2026, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif stood beside Wilson L. White, Google’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy, and unveiled the foundation plaque of the company’s first office in Pakistan. The ceremony at the Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad carried the weight of a nation eager to…
(By Khalid Masood) When the two-part docuseries Declassified: Operation Sindoor premiered on India’s 80th Independence Day, August 15, 2026, the Indian establishment hailed it as a triumph of transparency and military prowess. Broadcast on the Discovery Channel and streamed globally, the series meticulously details the 88-hour cross-border kinetic operation launched in May 2025. Yet, beneath…
(Quratulain Khalid) The Dichotomy of August 15 Today, as India marks its 79th Independence Day with elaborate military parades, flag-hoisting ceremonies, and sweeping declarations of its rise as a global power, a radically different narrative unfolds just a few hundred kilometers away in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. There, August 15 is not…
(By Quratulain Khalid) The Warm-Water Obsession For over a century, the Kremlin has harboured a singular, unyielding geopolitical ambition: to reach the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. It is a dream that has shaped empires, triggered wars, and redrawn the map of Eurasia. In December 1979, that dream drove the Soviet Union to send…
(By Khalid Masood) I. The Internet Shutdown Rebellion In late 2025, Hibatullah Akhundzada did what he had done a hundred times before. From his compound in Kandahar, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan issued an edict. This one was sweeping: a nationwide internet shutdown. The reasoning was characteristically theological. The digital realm,…
(By Khalid Masood) I. Background: From Aid Recipient to Defence Partner The United States-Israel Defence Technology Cooperation Initiative did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the culmination of a seven-decade military relationship that has evolved from arms sales and financial aid into something approaching structural fusion. Understanding this trajectory is essential to grasping why…
(By Khalid Masood) 1. Introduction & Background On 7 August 2026, the geopolitical landscape of the Muslim world shifted perceptibly when the Makkah Al-Mukarramah Summit for Joint Defence culminated in a trilateral defence pact among three of the most consequential Sunni-majority military powers: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Republic of Türkiye, and the Islamic…
Youm-e-Istehsal-e-Kashmir | 5 August 2026 (By Khalid Masood) I. The Night the Lights Went Out On the evening of 4 August 2019, Srinagar fell silent. Not the gentle silence of a winter snowfall, but the suffocating, terrifying silence of a prison. Within hours, telephone lines were severed. The internet was switched off. Television screens went…
(By Khalid Masood) In the perennial search for governance reform in Pakistan, a new constitutional blueprint has emerged that promises nothing less than a root-and-branch restructuring of the state. Titled “Pakistan ke Liye Naye Subay aur Naya Intizami Dhancha”—New Provinces and a New Administrative Structure for Pakistan—the proposal envisions twenty administrative units, a powerful directly…
Riyadh has assembled a maritime alliance to secure the world’s most critical oil chokepoint. The Houthis have declared “full escalation.” And 8,000 Pakistani troops, fighter jets, and air defence batteries are already inside the kingdom — bound by a defence pact that could drag South Asia into the Middle East’s widening war. (By Khalid Masood)…
