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Pakistan

Field Marshal State

There is no officially published change in the numerical position of Pakistan’s Asim Munir in the Warrant of Precedence by virtue of his elevation to the rank of Field Marshal.

Asian roulette

There was time left yet ~ and there still is ~ for Zaka Ashraf to take the Pakistan Cricket Board over, with political assistance which in turn was reliant on martial blessings, when, with one salvo, the former bank executive turned the Asia Cup upside down.

Indo-Pak ties

A commentary in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper notes “Today, the power imbalance between Pakistan and India has rendered Pakistan almost irrelevant in India’s strategic calculus. A failing, fragmented state ~ if not a ‘twice failed state,’ as former diplomat Ashraf Jahangir Qazi puts it, begging the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the revival of its deal is hardly a threat anymore to a rising giant like India.”

Harsh Truths

Seemingly, living in denial is a Pakistani specialty, considering the defiant front that it continues to put up in the face of unprecedented socio-economic desperation, societal implosion and a civil-war-like situation when conflated with the reality in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Baluchistan etc. Even Pakistan's ostensible 'backyard' and progeny in the form of Afghan Taliban is up in arms against it, while the sectarian dissonance with a Shi'ite Iran is a permanent problem