Farhan Bokhari - The Japan Times

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Farhan Bokhari

For Farhan Bokhari's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY

May 18, 2006

Avert failure in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD -- A team of Afghan military officers who have just completed their first ever military exercises with Pakistani and U.S. troops in Pakistan represent Washington's hope for a new future for Afghanistan's beleaguered security apparatus. But the effort also promises to stir controversy because the architects of Afghanistan's new post-Taliban era are failing to oversee a transition to more representative politics and to rejuvenate the country's economy.

COMMENTARY

Oct 6, 2005

A lesson from Pakistan on proliferation

ISLAMABAD -- The controversy surrounding North Korea's nuclear program is a reminder of past miscues in Pakistan, whose disgraced nuclear scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, was accused last year of selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

COMMENTARY

Sep 24, 2005

Global help in Afghanistan remains vital

ISLAMABAD -- Uncertainty over Afghanistan's political future has finally begun to recede with the successful conclusion of the country's first parliamentary elections in years. Although violence continues to plague Afghanistan, its political progress is impressive. In the long run, however, its stability will rest on three vital conditions.

COMMENTARY

Sep 16, 2005

Pakistan's Israel diplomacy

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's opposition parties have chosen to renew their calls for President Pervez Musharraf to step down immediately following the first ever face-to-face meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel.

COMMENTARY

Jun 30, 2005

Blaming Pakistan won't help

ISLAMABAD -- The latest diplomatic rift between Pakistan and Afghanistan speaks volumes about the underlying frictions among both countries and the United States in the so-called war on terror.

COMMENTARY

Jun 5, 2005

U.S. security pledge buoys Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD -- The latest U.S. promise to enhance Afghanistan's security in the years to come raises more questions than it answers for the the war-ravaged country, although the so-called declaration of strategic partnership signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington has certainly pleased the Afghan government.

COMMENTARY

Mar 13, 2005

Bad time to take a chance on arms sales

WASHINGTON -- When China's National People's Congress convened in Beijing early this month, Premier Wen Jiabao highlighted his nation's military modernization campaign and breathed threats against Taiwan. It would be hard to find a worse time for Europe to offer China military aid.

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2005

Opium again driving Afghan economy

ISLAMABAD -- This month's warning by the United Nations' main drug-monitoring watchdog that Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a narcotics-driven state should hardly come as a surprise.

COMMENTARY

Feb 27, 2005

Let trade cement Indo-Pakistani peace

ISLAMABAD -- After more than 57 years, an agreement by India and Pakistan to allow people within the divided state of Kashmir to cross the border by bus, beginning in April, is the most important confidence-building measure yet achieved in the two countries' yearlong peace process.

COMMENTARY

Jan 7, 2005

Musharraf's penchant to stay in charge

ISLAMABAD -- The prospect that Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- who seized power in a bloodless coup five years ago -- will remain head of the military looms as a major setback in the political outlook for South Asia's second-largest nuclear-armed country.

COMMENTARY

Dec 11, 2004

More to winning than tackling the Taliban

ISLAMABAD -- A call by a senior U.S. official urging Afghanistan's Taliban fighters to lay down their arms in exchange for a promise that only those guilty of major crimes would be punished marks a departure from Washington's traditional hardline stance toward the group.

COMMENTARY

Nov 17, 2004

Bush's win doesn't mean Musharraf can rest easy

ISLAMABAD -- The re-election of U.S. President George W. Bush for another four years comes as a welcome development for the pro-American government of Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Relations between the two countries have been close since Pakistan became an ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, which Bush initiated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

COMMENTARY

Oct 21, 2004

Exacerbating Pakistan's democratic predicament

ISLAMABAD -- A decision by Pakistan's ruling party to push a bill through Parliament that would extend President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's tenure as head of the influential military establishment as well as give him wide-ranging powers marks a new setback for the nuclear-armed South Asian country's troubled democracy.

COMMENTARY

Sep 19, 2004

Indo-Pakistani relations: the next phase

ISLAMABAD -- The upcoming meeting between Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh marks another important phase in the nine-month-old peace process between South Asia's two nuclear-armed neighbors.

COMMENTARY

Sep 4, 2004

Afghanistan's volatile politics

ISLAMABAD -- A spate of attacks by Taliban forces on U.S. troops and Afghan government soldiers has intensified worries over the country's first presidential elections, which are scheduled to take place next month.

COMMENTARY

Jun 20, 2004

Kabul will need homegrown solutions

ISLAMABAD -- Renegade warriors who continue to mount attacks on U.S. military troops and Afghan government soldiers have effectively upset the runup to Washington-backed presidential elections scheduled in four months.

COMMENTARY

May 26, 2004

What of Afghan POWs?

ISLAMABAD -- Startling revelations of the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops in Iraq comes as a powerful reminder of the plight of prisoners of war in U.S. custody in other trouble spots, most notably Afghanistan. Indeed, the moral authority of the world's so-called lone superpower has declined further due to the many contradictions in Washington's policy.

COMMENTARY

May 20, 2004

South Asian peace can't wait

ISLAMABAD -- The surprise upset in India's recent elections, which saw the Congress Party take power, is unlikely to change the positive course Indo-Pakistani relations have taken. But given the two countries' long history of acrimony and the threat that hardline militants pose to the emerging peace process, there is no room for complacency.

COMMENTARY

May 13, 2004

Chinese nuclear deal buoys Islamabad

ISLAMABAD -- China's agreement to supply a second 300-megawatt nuclear power reactor to Pakistan encourages Islamabad's ruling establishment, which is eager to develop the country's nuclear energy potential in a significant way. The deal for the new reactor, to be located at Chashma in central Punjab -- next to the first Chinese reactor of a similar size already built -- follows recent reports of U.S. pressure on China to delay the agreement.

COMMENTARY

Apr 19, 2004

Karzai must address ethnic imbalance

ISLAMABAD -- The U.S.-backed regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which has been promised more than $8 billion in international economic aid over the next three years, is still struggling to consolidate its political position.

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