Undoubtedly, the strategic landscape of South Asian hydro-politics is undergoing a dangerous transformation. I visited the Jinnah Convention Center in Islamabad to attend an international seminar on the Indus Waters Treaty on 30th June. The event brought together global thinkers, international legal experts, and state practitioners to dissect a shared crisis: India’s unilateral decision to […]
Op-Ed
Terrorist Propaganda Strategy Unmasked!
The Afghan Taliban’s intelligence-linked outlet, Al-Mirsad, and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) Umar Media operate in tandem to drive a sophisticated digital propaganda war. Together, they weaponise religion, leverage digital platforms, and exploit ethnic fault lines to target the Pakistani state. Concurrently, the banned TTP has revamped its official communications branch, Umar Media, transforming it from […]
Indus Waters: Pakistan’s Quiet Diplomatic Strike
There are moments in diplomacy when the real success is not in the speech delivered, the resolution passed or the photograph released. It is in the discomfort created on the other side. By that measure, the international seminar on the Indus Waters Treaty held in Islamabad was not a routine policy event. It was a […]
Prof Waris Mir: The Champion of Free Expression
In Pakistan’s political history, some thinkers and writers are remembered not for the age in which they lived, but for the enduring relevance of their ideas. While time consigns most men of letters to history, a rare few transcend it, becoming lasting points of reference. Their thoughts outlive their era, continuing to illuminate the path […]
Pakistan’s Greatest Challenge: Not Population, but Unplanned Population Growth
Every nation, at some point in its history, is confronted by a question it can no longer afford to postpone. For Pakistan, the question is not how many citizens it has, but what kind of citizens it produces. We have spent decades diagnosing our afflictions as inflation, unemployment, debt, and political instability, when in truth […]
Al-Mirsaad and the Art of Selective Scrutiny
The struggle for influence between states is no longer confined to border posts and military deployments. It now unfolds daily in the quiet machinery of digital platforms, state-linked outlets, and the clever arrangement of selected facts. A narrative repeated often enough can harden into truth. A missing detail can leave a permanent scar on public […]
Beyond Hospital Gates: The Wrong Number
June in Quetta marks summer in its most oppressive sense as daytime temperatures start to soar. The month also marks the end of the Government fiscal year. Businesses are busy reconciling their accounts, bureaucrats are buried in ledgers, politicians line up outside Finance offices, and influentials can be seen trying to get a piece of […]
Pakistan Should Get Rich Before It Gets Old
In the quiet corridors of power and the loud arenas of prime time talk-shows in Islamabad, a convenient consensus has taken hold. Whenever the conversation turns to Pakistan’s compounding economic troubles, country’s population growth is invariably blamed for its underdevelopment. This view, shared by politicians and commentators alike, frames an expanding population as liability. It […]
America’s Independence Day: Lessons for Pakistan!
The United States recently celebrated its Independence Day on July 4. Nearly 250 years ago, in 1776, the thirteen American colonies declared their independence from the British Empire. At the time, the American leadership adopted a historic document, i.e. the Declaration of Independence, whose central message was remarkably revolutionary for its era. In the decades […]
Maryam Nawaz’s Governance has Earned her Global Recognition
The true measure of any government lies in its style of governance and the seriousness with which it addresses the problems of its people. There is a world of difference between delivering speeches filled with promises and providing genuine relief. The injustices suffered by various segments of Punjab’s population between 2018 and 2022 are now […]