Simon Denyer It was supposed to be the motor for the next phase of India’s economic resurgence, but the country’s manufacturing sector has hit a brick wall, according to new data released Thursday. Dragged down by a sluggish manufacturing sector, India’s economic growth rate slowed to 6.5 percent in the 2011-12 fiscal year, its slowest rate in nine years and well below the 8.5 percent recorded a year earlie ...

Shehzad Qazi The last calendar year was by far the most tumultuous in a decade of tense and mistrustful relations between Pakistan and the United States. It began with CIA contractor Raymond Davis shooting and killing two Pakistanis in broad daylight in Lahore, then only worsened in May when Osama bin Laden was found and killed in a US raid at a compound near the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad (an ...

Robert Wexler Editor’s note: This article is one of two debating the necessity of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear project. The other, by Elliott Abrams, argues “The Grounds for an Israeli Attack.” Israeli and American leaders are in full agreement on the need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The question, therefore, is not if we should thwart Iran’s illicit nuclear ambitions, but rather h ...

Judy Bachrach Sherry Rehman, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, wants the US to (a) apologize for a NATO attack on Salala and (b) halt drone attacks on her native soil, neither of which demands—let’s face it, Sherry—is going to happen anytime soon. Always a bad idea to apologize to governments and security agencies run by certain officials who want you dead, and besides, the really tall bearded ...

Domestic political pressure on the government persists, and the possibility  remains that the prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, may be ousted. Government effectiveness is also low, and it could worsen further as a consequence of the current political uncertainty. The likelihood of an early general election has increased significantly (the poll does not have to be held until February 2013). The killing by U ...

Obama's escalation of a war that's already caused thousands of deaths will only destabilise his own allies and bolster al-Qaida Seumas Milne More than a decade after George W Bush launched it, the "war on terror" was supposed to be winding down. US military occupation of Iraq has ended and Nato is looking for a way out of Afghanistan, even as the carnage continues. But another war – the undeclared drone war ...

By Michael Singh How Tehran is outflanking Obama We have failed to understand Iran's motives Last week’s talks in Baghdad between Iran and the P5-plus-1 — the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — yielded no agreement. Paradoxically, however, both Washington and Tehran are likely to view the negotiations as successful, but for vastly different reasons. There is an interest that both Ir ...

...