“War is uncertainty, characterized by friction, chance and disorder”. Clausewitz From 2003 to 2008, for a variety of reasons, the Pakistani state gradually lost control over the federally administered tribal areas. The reasons were more related to strategic myopia at the highest level rather than strength of the militants. It took a while before the…
General John W. Nicholson Jr. took command of U.S. troops in Afghanistan on 02 March 2016. His father General John Nicholson also served as general officer of United States army. John’s career in the U.S. army followed the usual path of other fellow general officers; however, he has some qualities which put him above his…
“With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents”. General Omar Bradley Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), commonly known as drone is the most open secret of modern warfare. UAV is primarily an intelligence platform but use of armed drones for target killing generates heated…
Bruce Riedel’s book What We Won is brief history of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) support of Afghanistan’s rebels in the 1980s. The book is divided into several chapters on major players of the last battle of the Cold War. The chapter on Afghan communists is very light with no serious inquiry about the background and…
The Last Warlord by Brian Glyn Williams is the life story of Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former Afghan warlord and current First Vice President of Afghanistan. Dostum is an excellent case study specimen for any researcher who wants to understand the sanguine history of Afghanistan of the last three decades. No actor has performed so…
On August 16, 2015, Punjab Home Minister Colonel ® Shuja Khanzada was killed in a suicide attack in his hometown of Shadi Khan in Attock. He belonged to a military family and several family members served in the British Indian army and junior civil service; his grandfather Subedar Major and Honorary Captain Ajaib Khan had…
‘Being a friend of the United States is like living on the banks of a great river. The soil is wonderfully fertile, but every four or eight years the river changes course, and you may find yourself alone in a desert’. Pakistan’s Army Chief and President General Muhammad Zia ul Haq to CIA director William Casey,…
August 04 was the fifth death anniversary of Safwat Ghayur. An army officer who met Safwat first time described him as “a lean man, with loosely fitted clothes, a hint of pattas (a pushtu word for hair coming down over the neck) peeping out from behind his beret, with a swagger in his gait, a…
Since 2002, the Pakistan army is involved in a rapidly evolving struggle against terrorism. When the first shots of this new war were fired, the Pakistan army was neither trained nor prepared for the conflict. Confusion, complacency and utter incompetence at all levels gave an upper hand to the extremists all over the country. First,…
Brian Cloughley’s A History of Pakistan Army is the fourth edition of a book originally written in 1999. This edition adds many new chapters especially tenures of General Pervez Musharraf and General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. The author is one of few foreigners with long association with some senior Pakistani officers going back to early 1980s…
