South Asia Investor Review

Who killed Pakistan's world famous sufi singer Amjad Sabri Qawwal last week? Why was he targeted close to home in MQM -dominated Liaquatabad neighborhood? Is the Sabri killing a failure of Sindh Rangers' Karachi operation? Who wants to see the Army-led Karachi Operation fail? India? RAW? TTP? PPP? MQM? Why? Why is India seeking full membership of NSG? Why has its effort failed so far? How did India succeed in getting the NSG waiver to allow nuclear trade in 2008? Did Pakistan's then ambassador Husain Haqqani recommend to then President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari to not ask China to oppose the India NSG waiver? Is the NSG waiver not enough to accomplish India's goal of growing both its civil and military nuclear programs? Why did the British voters vote 52% to 48% to leave the European Union? Do these British voters supporting Brexit have anything in common with Donald Trump supporters in the United States? Is this vote part of anti-establishment backlash again...

"The Pakistani establishment, as we saw in 1998 with the nuclear test, does not view assistance -- even sizable assistance to their own entities -- as a trade-off for national security vis-a-vis India". US Ambassador Anne Patterson, September 23, 2009 Pakistan has the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal today in the midst of a fierce insurgency waged against the Pakistani state by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. How should the world respond? Should the response be to further isolate and sanction Pakistan as argued by some Indian and western scholars? Or, should the US and its Western allies engage with Pakistan by accepting it as a legitimate nuclear state and admitting it as a full member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group? The first response, as advocated by the likes of TV Paul , a scholar of Indian origin at McGill University, has clearly not worked nor likely to work as explained well by former US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson. The alternative, as advocate...

As the Indian parliament gets ready for a confidence vote this week, the fate of the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the US-India nuclear deal hangs in the balance. The Indian government is pulling out all stops to win this vote to salvage the US-India nuclear deal. In addition to the Indian people, the international community and the nuclear suppliers group (NSG) are also watching the vote closely. The NSG's interest lies in the estimated $100 billion worth of nuclear business in India over the next two decades. U.S. companies hope to capture as large of a share of that business as possible. Private studies suggest that if U.S. vendors win just two civil nuclear reactor contracts, they would create 3,000–5,000 new direct jobs and 10,000–15,000 indirect jobs in the United States, according to US International Trade Administration. It has now been three years since the signing of the historic agreement between President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh....