A R Siddiqi

Between October 28-30, the Pakistani nation was treated to a rare succession of rancorous public speeches by the leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to make a popular, rather a mobbish, charivari. A fledging yet in the national political menagerie, Imran Khan’s PTI has […]

The latest suicide car bomb attack in Kabul, killing 13 American and three Australian soldiers, was the deadliest single blow to American lives and morale since the war began 10 years ago. It was one of the eight major incidents to have hit Kabul since the beginning of 2011, including an attack on the Kabul […]

Did Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani speak too soon — back-to-back — in his two press statements, which appeared on Sunday, August 21, 2011 and Monday, August 22, 2011? While expressing “grave concern” over the deteriorating law and order situation in Karachi, on August 21, he said that the army was “ready to restore […]

President Mohammad Ayub Khan, in his emotionally charged radio address to the nation, recited the kalma tayyaba to warn India that the kalma reciting Pakistani would not rest until the enemy’s guns were silenced. Through the 17-day war in 1965, the entire country reverberated to the vociferous chants of jihad against Hindu India. Jihad and […]

Under Ayub as Commander in Chief, the Pakistan Army might well have been a page taken from the pre-independence, colonial army — the same uniform, same mess culture and same language (English for officers and a sort of Roman Urdu for others). An officer’s personal deportment was judged nearly as much by his social standing […]

The jihadi element had been deeply embedded in the psyche of Indian Muslims, particularly those from the minority provinces who were more afraid of the brute Hindu majority than of the British rule. The Indian National Congress is not known to have ever launched a concerted movement against the British until the civil disobedience and […]