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MUNIR AKRAM   —  PUBLISHED on Oct 18 2015 PRIME Minister Nawaz Sharif will be in Washington next week for a ‘working visit’. Normally, this would be a good opportunity for him to secure official and private-sector American cooperation to accelerate Pakistan’s economic development. With improved security and a relatively stable macro-economic environment, Pakistan is well placed today to promote rapid, investment-led growth. Unfortunately, after recovering from the crisis created by America’s ‘kinetic’ actions in 2011 (Raymond Davis, the Abbottabad incursion and the Salala attack), the Pakistan-US relationship appears to be headed for another showdown. The first ominous signs emerged during US National Security Adviser, Susan Rice’s visit to Islamabad several weeks ago, during which threats of halting reimbursements for Pakistani counterterrorism operations were held out unless Islamabad acted more forcefully against the Haqqani network. Simultaneously, proposa...

Former president Pervez Musharraf has been offered a job in Washington as scholar-in-residence on Pakistan at the prestigious Middle East Institute. Musharraf, who arrived in the US earlier this month for a lecture tour, spent three days last week in Washington and attended a reception hosted by the Middle East Institute. The Institute's head, former US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain, urged Musharraf, a former commando, to be the next Scholar-in-Residence on Pakistan. The Middle East Institute is willing to create a special Pakistan chair should Musharraf accept the offer, The Dawn newspaper reported today. Sources close to Musharraf said the former military ruler "seems interested in the offer, which will give him the chance to write another book on his experience as the head of a country considered key to US security". Only a few Pakistanis were invited to the reception hosted by the Middle East Institute. Musharraf did not address the gathering and the...

Israel ' s Next War: Today the Gaza Strip, Tomorrow Lebanon? by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya In the Middle East, it is widely believed that the war against Gaza is an extension of the 2006 war against Lebanon. Without question, the war in the Gaza Strip is a part of the same conflict. Moreover, since the Israeli defeat in 2006, Tel Aviv and Washington have not abandoned their design to turn Lebanon into a client state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, in so many words, during his visit to Tel Aviv in early January that today Israel was attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that tomorrow it would be fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon .[1] Ehud Olmert and Nicolas Sarkozy Lebanon is still in the cross-hairs. Israel is searching for a justification or a pretext to launch another war against Lebanon. Washington and Tel Aviv had initially hoped to control Beirut through client political forces in the March 14 Alliance . When it became apparent that thes...