N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Feb 7, 2012, 4:40 pm
One thing that bothers me about how Pakistan conducts its foreign policy is how narrowly it is focused on a few states. The four horsemen of Pakistan’s foreign policy are: the U.S., China, Saudi Arabia, and India. These states take an overwhelming and disproportionate level of our government’s i...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Feb 2, 2012, 11:58 am
There is a conventional wisdom out there – parroted often by the likes of Imran Khan – that the Taliban and their local affiliates act the way they do because they are solely and exclusively motivated by the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan’s alliance with the U.S...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 29, 2012, 1:13 am
There is a certain generation of Pakistani cricket fans — provisionally, we can say those born between 1975 and 1985 — that have grown up with a very particular worldview when it comes to cricketing miracles. In short, they believe that they are not miracles at all, mainly because they happened ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 28, 2012, 12:53 am
I think KG is trying to tell us all something: I can’t decide what it is about this interview that I love the most. Is it that KG started talking before Craig Sager had even asked a question, then realizing thirty seconds in that he was being asked a question? Is it that KG was swaying and shakin...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 21, 2012, 4:23 pm
“History does not repeat itself. It rhymes.” — Mark Twain The funny thing about England-Pakistan cricket is that is has essentially become a caricature of itself. Even when everyone, cognizant of the history between the sides, tries to turn the temperature down and take the steam out of relat...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 18, 2012, 1:42 pm
I’ve watched a number of Republican debates in this primary season. The first thing I would say about them is that they provide a very revealing window in a world I am very unfamiliar with. I don’t read right wing blogs (with the exception of Greg Mankiw’s econ blog) , I don’t really have ma...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 13, 2012, 1:30 pm
I remember when drone attacks first started. The right wing press and email forwards were filled with fantastical news about these American robot planes, unmanned, killing people from the sky in Pakistan’s border regions. Oh, how I laughed. Demented right wingers. American robot planes? Please sto...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 9, 2012, 6:38 pm
Quelle surprise. Leo Messi has won his third Ballon d’Or in a row. Who would bet against a fourth, or a fifth? I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that Cruyff predicted he’d win seven overall. Barring injury, or boredom on behalf of voters – the same boredom that saw Charles Barkley and Karl Ma...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 4, 2012, 2:41 am
I don’t have a great deal to say, to be honest. There is one point I would like to make, however. For me, the Taseer assassination symbolized the end of the game. It’s when I gave up hope. It’s when I sharply realized that even if Pakistan, the state and the society both, take forward steps o...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jan 1, 2012, 8:34 am
I spent New Year’s eve at a friend’s house. Luckily for me, this friend lives less than a five-minute drive from where I live, and that drive is on two fairly main roads. Many of Karachi’s residents, of course, did not quite have freedom of movement last night. The authorities made sure to bl...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 26, 2011, 7:44 am
There is a conventional wisdom story out there on how the PTI is becoming a big, bad, scary machine. The story goes something like this: Imran Khan is personally popular –> higher chances of success in elections for PTI –> more big-name turncoats join the party –> higher chances of success in...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 23, 2011, 6:44 am
Damn, it’s good to be home. Every time I come back for holidays, it’s amazing how little things change, except for the wedding season. The wedding season is a bit like Karachi landscape: every year it gets bigger, and every year it seems to get more grotesque, even though the intent is to make i...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 14, 2011, 11:26 am
Last week, Newt Gingrich said the following about Palestinian nationalism: Remember, there was no Palestine as a state — (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 9, 2011, 6:48 pm
Well, it’s here again. For the seventh time in 2011, Barcelona will play Real Madrid. It's on like donkey kong. Here are some thoughts: 1. Mourinho being quiet is scary I prefer a world in which Mourinho is whining and complaining about UEFA, Unicef, referees, schedule makers, and the flying ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Dec 5, 2011, 12:30 pm
Exhibit A: You would think that a country with an information technology sector with revenues in excess of $75 billion would have a government which knows how the internet works. But you would be wrong. Please check out what Kapil Sibal, India’s Telecom Minister, is demanding of Facebook, Google...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 21, 2011, 1:39 pm
Just a quick post, because I’m super busy and have a ton on my plate. We’ve just learned that Pakistan has won one of the ten non-permanent seats on the Security Council, by a grand total of one vote. Whatever else this may imply, the literature in the Political Economy world is quite clear th...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 16, 2011, 6:05 pm
I was reading this Yglesias post the other day and it really made me think, specifically this bit: The ridiculous thing about these Republican debates is that you keep needing to wade through this vast field of candidates who are essentially doing book tours in order to hear the actual presidenti...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 12, 2011, 1:06 am
After three tumultuous years, the words “Ijaz”, “Butt”, “good” and “news” were finally used in the same sentence today when the beleaguered nation that is Pakistan learned that Mr. Butt’s tenure as Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief ended. Whoever this Mr. Zaka Ashraf is, he surely...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 9, 2011, 8:39 pm
I spent the best part of a couple hours playing with Google Books’ Ngram thing. It evidently came out last year but I only just discovered it. For those unaware, it’s basically a tool that allows you to search for the prevalence or certain terms in Google Books’ entire catalog. You basically g...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Oct 6, 2011, 4:27 pm
It’s been six weeks — 44 days to be precise — since the Rangers and police operation in Karachi began. You will recall that the operation, as it were, was the last desperate throw of the dice by a government unable to stem the flow of violence in Karachi. Earlier this week, we learned that th...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 27, 2011, 11:22 pm
I could not believe when I read this news report (via @Omar Waraich). The report claims that an English language al-Qaeda magazine (?) is upset with Iran and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Why? Because Ahmadinejad, by claiming that 9/11 was a conspiracy, is taking credit away from al-Qaeda. In ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 25, 2011, 9:32 pm
Last night I watched Pearl Jam 20, a documentary by Cameron Crowe on Pearl Jam, marking their 20th year together as a band. Let me give you the bottom line up front: it was awesome. I really, really enjoyed it. I was positively giddy while watching it (the W made fun of me for the evidently goofy gr...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 23, 2011, 6:01 pm
I have a piece up on Foreign Policy’s Af-Pak Channel on the attack in Mastung this week: The brutal, execution-style attack on Shi’a Muslims in the Mastung area of Baluchistan this week was debilitating, shocking, and instructive all at the same time. Funeral prayers for the victims of the Mas...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 15, 2011, 10:43 pm
Perusing the Guardian’s football website this afternoon – as I am wont to do at lunch hour, or any other hour for that matter – I came across this quote from Cristiano Ronaldo. When asked why he was booed by fans of Dinamo Zagreb, Ronaldo said: I think that because I am rich, handsome and a g...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 13, 2011, 8:33 am
I’m delighted to have Rohit “Noompa” Naimpally use all his political economy wiles to talk about why the economy sucks, and what can be done about it. Rohit is someone I know from his time at Chicago, and he knows this stuff inside out. You can follow him on Twitter here, and read his blog her...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 11, 2011, 12:50 am
... out; you can read it here. The big story in August was ... be specific, this past month saw the second highest monthly civilian casualties ... 6 people die due to ethnic violence (note: as a simplifying assumption, ... I translate PIPS’ “political and ethnic violence” to mean Karachi). ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 7, 2011, 11:37 am
The suicide bombing that took place today in Quetta is very scary, not just tragic. It’s very scary because it shows the ease with which the Taliban and their local allies can inflict violence. Let’s piece together the timeline here. On Monday evening, the Pakistan military announced it had cap...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Sep 5, 2011, 12:58 pm
I just finished a really interesting book on Barack Obama’s two decades in Chicago and Illinois as a community organizer, lawyer, lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, State Senator, and Senator. The book is called Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President by Edward ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 30, 2011, 12:54 am
The United States Institute of Peace* and the Jinnah Institute have together produced a report titled “Pakistan, the United States, and the End Game in Afghanistan: Perceptions of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Elite”. The foreign policy elite that the report’s authors consulted are “retired ci...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 27, 2011, 12:34 pm
This story in Dawn from a couple days ago would be hilarious if the subject matter wasn’t so serious. Check out where the MQM and PPP are taking their troubles to: Former MQM senator and member of the party’s coordination committee Nasreen Jalil has written letters to the embassies of the Unit...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 25, 2011, 12:13 am
Without being too presumptuous, it’s fair to say that most readers of this blog share my belief that sending the Army into Karachi to quell the violence there would be absolutely disastrous. Furthermore, it’s also perhaps fair to say that most readers of this blog believe, as I do, that the mili...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 17, 2011, 2:22 pm
This past weekend, the interminable Cesc-to-Barcelona saga was finally over — a two (some would say three) year odyssey marked by recriminations, bad blood, offers, rejections, counter-offers, accusations of tapping up, classlessness, Arseblog trolls, Newsnow trolls, 40,000 bad headlines like “H...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 10, 2011, 3:15 pm
The PIPS monthly report for July is out. You can read it here. The basic story is that drone strikes were down, there was no major terrorist attack in Punjab, attacks on government installations and educational institutes decreased — and yet there was an overall increase in violence. This increase...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 8, 2011, 10:55 pm
I was reading Ejaz Haider’s latest column on the violence against Hazaras in Balochistan when I came across this bit: In June this year, about 170 people from the Hazara community were invited by the Iranian government to attend the death anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini. “They were feted by...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Aug 3, 2011, 6:20 pm
Over the last few days, I’ve become very depressed about the state of Karachi and the paucity of obvious “solutions” to the killings in my home city. It really does seem that no one has any viable or practical ideas of how to stem the momentum of violence. I think this is in part due to the fa...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 31, 2011, 2:39 pm
Obviously, the entire cricket world is debating with itself the issue of the Ian Bell “run out”. Read up here if you don’t know what happened. One thing that’s been underplayed, at least in the reaction that I’ve seen, is that Strauss and Andy Flower went to the Indian dressing room at te...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 25, 2011, 3:29 pm
A couple of people such as @shahidsaeed and @takhalus directed me to Radio Pakistan’s YouTube channel, which appears to be just getting off the ground. Let me start by saying how awesome a venture this is. Seriously, massive kudos to the people at Radio Pakistan. These uploads are not just super ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 19, 2011, 7:12 pm
I was reading Alice Albinia’s Empires of the Indus and came across this interesting passage. The context is that the author is on a fisherman’s boat around the Indus Delta, and explaining the larger history behind it drying up. Pakistan, in its turn, began building the Kotri barrage, just north...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 14, 2011, 5:51 pm
Last month I put up a post showing trends of casualties and violence in Pakistan from October 2008 to the present, courtesy the good people at PIPS. They’ve just released their monthly report for June, so I’ve updated the graphs. It’s basically a continuation of the downward trend since late l...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 13, 2011, 6:31 pm
I have a post up on Foreign Policy’s Af-Pak channel on the US aid suspension last weekend. You should check it out.
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 13, 2011, 3:48 pm
Apparently the men of Karachi are so terrible that their wives and girlfriends are having them killed by the dozen. Watch from 1:00 in (via @shahidsaeed). Remember that this is our Interior Minister. He has a real job (protecting the citizens of Pakistan) with real responsibilities. I’ll make a ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 9, 2011, 12:39 pm
Reviews of stuff I’ve read recently, in alphabetical order according to authors. As always, absolutely no poli sci books; this is stuff I read on the bus and subway and as such needs to be far away from the stuff I have to read. The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley Brearley is most well known i...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jul 7, 2011, 8:03 pm
I will mark my return to blogging with the writing equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. So I read this post on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, guest written by a man named Bruce Bawer. It is quite dumb. The basic premise of the post is that gays in Pakistan are horribly persecuted by both socie...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 26, 2011, 2:37 pm
First of all, a massive thank you to Shahid Saeed (tweets here, blogs here) for helping out in collating this data. Excel data entry can be very annoying. I feel your pain, junior analysts on Wall Street, I feel your pain. Anyway, the idea for this post started last night, when I got the feeling fo...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 23, 2011, 3:08 pm
Well, well, well. What have we here? (via Tazeen) Of course, Edhi is not a saint, he is a human being. He could be lying. He could misremember. He could be playing politics. But I’m inclined to trust his word. You may disagree. And since this post will invariably be overtaken by PTI trolls start...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 22, 2011, 1:14 pm
I was reading K.M. Arif’s Khaki Shadows for research purposes (thanks Shahid, for the tip), and came across this brilliant passage. Mr. Arif was a career military man and this is what he had to say about 1971: India invested in the creation of Bangladesh to promote her own national interest. The ...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 20, 2011, 4:43 pm
First of all, before reading any further, you should go read this excellent op-ed in Dawn by Adnan Rehmat. For me, this is the key section: The military early on crafted a national security doctrine that helped it manufacture a national security state (as opposed to a national welfare state). Thi...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 12, 2011, 7:01 pm
I’ve had my head in some IR/conflict datasets recently and came across something interesting (that I’m sure has been reported elsewhere but is news to me). According to COW, China is the most powerful country in the world. Let me explain that statement. The Correlates of War database – affec...
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 6, 2011, 11:17 pm
I have an op-ed in Dawn on why Pakistanis don’t (can’t?) conceive of the anti-militant war as their own, and when that might change. You should check it out.
Comment - Like

N B. posted an article on Five Rupees - Jun 1, 2011, 1:06 am
Over the last couple of months I’ve had the distinct pleasure of exchanging a bunch of emails with Tahir Naqvi. Tahir teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, his research addresses questions of st...
Comment - Like