State-building efforts in Pakistan have been increasingly come under challenge from ethno-national movements. The current spate of insurgency in Balochistan is a product of repressive policies coupled with historical grievances that have led to increased alienation amongst the Baloch and a general perception that they are being exploited. The continuing violence has the potential to destabilise not only Pakistan but the entire region.

Emergence of radical and extremist Islamist movements has proved to be a major source of instability in South and Central Asia. Radical Islamist groups emphasise that political power is indispensable to the establishment of an Islamic state. Though Muslims like non-Muslims have multiple identities – religious, ethnic, tribal, linguistic or territorial, the emphasis by the Islamists on the Islamic communal identity puts them in collision course with the state and other communities.

Muslims comprise the second largest population after Hindus in South Asia. They are, however, not a monolithic community. The rise of religious fundamentalism in Pakistan and the official patronage it has got has an enormous political and security impact on the region. The terrorist campaign, sponsored by Pakistan and waged by Islamic fundamentalist groups in Jammu and Kashmir and Afghanistan, has wide implications and poses a major threat to the region. Setting up an Islamic state and Jihad are the two objectives of all fundamentalist movements.

India’s September 24 vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supporting the resolution moved by Britain, France and Germany (EU-3) on Iran’s nuclear programme has a raised a significant debate within the strategic studies community on the value and wisdom of the policy stance.

Four times since Pakistan’s creation, the Baloch, who never wanted to be part of Pakistan, have rebelled, demanding autonomy or an independent state. After three decades, Balochistan is in turmoil again; the Baloch rebels have been targeting the government institutions with impunity. The insurgents appear well versed in military craft as well as appear to be flush with arms and ammunition. An insurgency of this magnitude cannot be sustained without any external assistance. This paper attempts to analyse the foreign hand in Balochistan.

Pakistan seems to have realised that with the silting of Tarbela Dam (it has lost more than 30 per cent of its storage capacity), it needs to build at least one, if not two, mega dams on the Indus at the earliest. President Musharraf has made an impassioned plea for the construction of new reservoirs and canals to ensure sustainable agricultural development

The conceptual discourse, contributed to in the main by Western scholars, on the security and strategic stability of new nuclear weapon states like India and Pakistan seems alarmist. In reality, however, India and Pakistan have been mutually deliberating on various aspects of nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs). This article is an effort to identify the issues of nuclear security concerns in two spheres – academic and policy formulations. The emphasis is more on the nuclear thinking of the two countries and the diplomatic challenges ahead particularly on the nuclear CBMs.

The paper seeks to study the challenges faced by the Pakistani state from the perspective of its vast ethno-cultural diversity which problematises the process of-nation building attempted by the Pakistani leadership since its very inception. The paper starts with a rudimentary definitional view of the concept of ethnicity and nationalism, and isolates the areas of friction in the way the Pakistani nation has been conceptualised and the way diverse ethno-cultural groups have evolved their identity through history

Iran-Pakistan relations have had a distinct characteristic over the past five decades and Islamabad’s clandestine transfer of nuclear technology and materials to Iran underlines its significance. Political and strategic imperatives have formed the basis of their close relationship despite divergence of interests and political outlook on regional and global issues. Both the countries have tried to reconcile the differences and consolidate their ties.