I am visiting abroad and not able to keep up with the 24/7 television news which would sink a day into an unending cycle of how great we are doing, how insidious the enemy is, and how PTI continues to be the anathema to our collective drive to greatness. But I do catch glimpses here and there to know where the rest of the world is going — not great places, I can assure you, and how I have found my relative freedom from such imbecile engagement.

Two things though still caught my eye: Qasim and Suleman, Imran Khan's kids, are the new threat and they need to be closely monitored for they may upturn the system of power in Pakistan.

And second, in continuation of how intimately we are waltzing with the new US administration in Trump's repeated infatuation with power, even if it emerged from the F-10/PL-15 combo — China brand — there was better sense and a promise when Ishaq Dar spoke to a Washington think-tank and suggested Pakistan can and may be ready to look at out-of-box solutions on Kashmir, such as moving away from the UNSC Resolutions which are binary and do not per se provide the option to expand the list of options where Kashmiris can have the right to seek a third option other than the zero-sum choice of India or Pakistan as their homeland.

What if they now, after seventy-eight years, seek a country of their own? The interpretation and the argument are entirely mine. No politician worth his salt would risk being seen with these words. All he reportedly said was that it doesn't have to be one or the other — India or Pakistan — but what the Kashmiris want. There is enough plausibility for denial built into this 'official'........

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