The Bonn Conference – History and Impact

From a review by Ahmed Rashid (”Afghanistan: On the Brink” in the New York Review of Books) I turned towards another assessment by Barnett Rubin – his pragmatic comments on the targets set by the US and during the Bonn conference, written in 2006 but already addressing many points some pundits pretend to have invented only recently.

Quest for the European Perspective – I

I have argued earlier, that the intellectual contribution from Europe on the AfPak situation was very limited. It is hard to find contributors to the ongoing discussions who

(a) have a profound insight and
(b) are publishing on a platform that is accessible via the net or newspapers/magazines.

Pakistan’s “Other-People’s-Money” Problem

Mosharraf Zaidi’s second part of commentary on Kerry-Lugar Bill from the prevalent perspective amongst Pakistani people: http://www.mosharrafzaidi.com/2009/10/10/pakistans-%E2%80%9Cother-peoples-money%E2%80%9D-problem/

Pakistan’s Attempted Overhaul of its Educational System

A short piece on the attempts of HEC to improve Higher Education in Pakistan since 2002 was published by Athar Osama in Nature this month. It gives a quick insight which fields did manage to catch up and which did not.
Politically speaking it was an initiative that can be credited to former President Musharraf, or [...]