The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat  Fawad Alam played a masterful innings in the first innings of the first Test match against South Africa in Karachi . He scored 109 runs, played 245 balls and stayed on the wicket for 353 minutes in a mammoth effort to bring Pakistan back into the Test match at Karachi cricket stadium . There were no fans in the stadium to enjoy this innings live but Fawad Alam proved yet again that his exclusion from Pakistan Cricket Team for last ten years was a big mistake and that Pakistan wasted a major talent by pursuing wrong selection policies. Fawad Alam is now 35 years old and can only serve Pakistan like Misbah for another few years if he stays fit and keeps scoring but he has been successful in at least doing one thing and that is to prove that he is an international level talent who should never have been dropped from Pakistan after one series in which he scored a big hundred against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka.  Fawad Alam was ably support by Muhammad Rizwan and especial

By Sikander Hayat Kashmir is slowly being gobbled up by India by ethinic cleansing and population transfer from the rest of India to Kashmir. Pakistan’s options are limited in terms of taking it back from India through an open armed conflict given the disparity between the two countries in terms of economy and resources. Pakistan can only play a long game by improving its economy, get richer, have good relations with richer/influential nations and wait for the Kashmiris to fight for their right of self determination .  Pakistan has made some good progress in terms of constitutional clarity for the people of Gilgit Balistan and Azad Kashmir both of which are effectively now fifth and sixth provinces of Pakistan. Azad Kashmir is now a semi autonomous region with its own President ( Masood Khan ) , Prime Minister ( Raja Farooq Haider Khan ) and Supreme Court. Azad Kashmir has its own constitution to provide international clarity in terms of status of Indian occupied Kashmir vis a vi

  By Sikander Hayat  The urge in the US these days is to delegate everything to do with South Asia to India and make India a defence wall against Chinese aspirations . President Trump wanted to leave Afghanistan fully and to that end he was supporting and sponsoring talks between President Ghani’s government in Kabul and the Taliban . Trump drew down American troops in Afghanistan to put pressure on Ashraf Ghani's government to talk to the Taliban. Trump wanted to concentrate on the United States as the debt mountain continues to reach new heights as the  current US debt is $27.3 trillions as of January 2021. The United States needs to get its own house in order, keep its currency as the reserve currency of the world and to do that it needs to bring down the debt levels to manageable levels and cut deficit spending.  Right now the Biden government is doing exactly the opposite by doubling down on deficit spending, spending trillions on cheques to people who in some cases don&#

By Sikander Hayat Under President Trump , the United States of America did not invade any country. On the contrary, the US army started drawing down its operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria along with other engagements around the world. Afghanistan saw the biggest drawdown with now only 2500 troops in Afghanistan .  The big question now is if the Biden Presidency will go back to previous years and start again the policy of invading far away places to help cement its imperial role which was reversed by Trump’s America first policy .  Mr Biden supported the Iraq invasion by voting for the war and by supporting President Bush . When Mr Biden was a vice president to President Barack Obama , he supported increasing troop numbers in both Iraq and Afghanistan . Clearly, there is a tendency where Mr Biden tilts in favour of foreign wars .  If there was one good policy pursued by President Trump, that was to stop engaging in foreign wars and concentrate on America and Americans. If cov