(By Khalid Masood) Pakistan’s military is making headlines for ramping up its modernization drive and the numbers are hard to ignore. Defense spending has jumped by 17 percent with a staggering Rs2.55 trillion ($9 billion) earmarked for the next year alone. Big defense deals and stealth jets might sound like old news but wait. The real surprise…
(By Khalid Masood) Introduction In the covert world of espionage, the most dangerous weapons are often not guns or missiles, but charm, trust, and conversation. The curious case of Catherine Pérez-Shakdam, a French journalist-turned-Islamic convert, is not merely a tale of betrayal — it is a piercing indictment of the modern vulnerabilities in national security….
In the dim-lit halls of London on June 10, 2025, U.S. and Chinese negotiators forged a truce, prying open China’s chokehold on rare earth exports while exposing the crumbling facade of India’s global pretensions. As U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hailed a framework to ease triple-digit tariffs, India—self-styled as a $4 trillion titan—stood sidelined, its…
(By Khalid Masood) In the smoldering aftermath of the April 29, 2025, Pahalgam attack, where 26 lives were snuffed out in Kashmir’s verdant valleys, the specter of war loomed over South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals, India and Pakistan. As India’s airstrikes in Operation Sindoor and Pakistan’s fierce retaliation pushed the region to the brink, U.S. President…
(By Khalid Masood) In the blood-soaked lush green meadows of Pahalgam, Kashmir, on April 29, 2025, a horrific attack claimed 26 innocent lives—tourists seeking solace in India’s alpine paradise, gunned down in a brutal assault that shattered the region’s fragile peace. India, reeling from grief and rage, pointed an accusatory finger at Pakistan, expecting a…
(By Khalid Masood) Abstract The Seven Sister States of Northeast India—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura—have remained marginalized, militarized, and methodically silenced under the colonial-style occupation of the Indian state. Since 1947, these lands have witnessed relentless waves of armed resistance and civil defiance against a union that annexed them without consent,…
(By Khalid Masood) On June 3, 2025, at a United Nations press conference in New York, Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari unleashed a biting quip, labeling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the “Temu version” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The remark, invoking a Chinese e-commerce platform known for affordable replicas, was more…
(By Dr. Atique Rehaman) The ascendance of Asia can be attributed to Sir Halford Mackinder’s 1904 essay, which proposed the concept of the world as a “World Island” and identified the “Heartland.” Nonetheless, Mackinder’s viewpoint on geopolitical power has been criticized for its Eurocentric disregard for America. Unlike Halford J. Mackinder’s European concerns about a…
(By Khalid Masood) In a landmark contribution to South Asian geopolitical analysis, the Pakistan-China Institute (PCI), a premier non-governmental think tank founded by Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, has released a groundbreaking report titled “16 Hours that Reshaped South Asia: How Modi’s Miscalculation Led to Pakistan’s Primacy.” Launched on May 24, 2025, in Islamabad, this 25-page…
(By Khalid Masood) The grim shadow of ethnic violence continues to haunt Balochistan, where tragedy struck again in the Naukshi area as four workers from the province of Punjab lost their lives to a targeted shooting. This latest atrocity is not a tragic anomaly, but rather a chilling addition to a long and troubling series…
