Anwar Syed

Here? Where might that be? Conceivably the entire state of the universe. Needless to say it would take many years of research and writing to accomplish that task. We will have to limit ourselves to the salient features of the state of affairs in Pakistan.For a change the news from home is reassuring, even encouraging. […]

The 11th day of May in the year 2013 came to be a momentous day in this country’s contemporary history. Elections were scheduled to be held on that day. For more than a month before that event was to take place, politicians, media barons, and leading men and women in civil society had been urging […]

On October 12, 1999, General Pervez Musharraf, chief of the Pakistan army at the time, was travelling from Colombo to Karachi. According to his own version of events, he was given to understand that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was instructing the pilot to land not at Karachi but at an airport in the interior of […]

No one has seen tomorrow, for it has not yet come out from the womb of time. It will eventually surface and then join the infinity of yesterdays. There is nothing we can do to mend the yesterdays if something had gone wrong with them because they are no longer within our reach. Tomorrow is […]

The man on horseback used to be a favourite term for a sturdy, wilful, ruthless and authoritarian claimant to the throne. A man answering this description, namely Asif Ali Zardari, currently answers this description. The constitution says he will reign but not rule. Through his control over the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), he can designate […]

Values denote desirability of the end results of given actions. They give rise to principles that work as guides to conduct. They are not normally enforced by the state unless they have been incorporated into law. Their implementation depends on the larger society’s approval of the conduct in question. Societies have gone through different historical […]

Malik Riaz Hussain is a real estate developer and dealer, and is one of the wealthiest men in the country. He has allegedly spread money to holders of the highest public office, politicians of all hues and colours, bureaucrats, diplomats, and some even in the media. He has instigated an ugly scandal implicating Arsalan Iftikhar, […]

We have all heard advocacies for a system of education that abolishes or diminishes the distance between the elite and the masses and thus makes for an egalitarian society. It is a known fact that public education is in a bad state. Its instructional resources and standards of attainment are inadequate and its product is […]

On May 13 a joint session of parliament passed a unanimous resolution condemning the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad by a group of American commandos without the prior knowledge, much less approval, of the Pakistani authorities. It called upon the government to appoint an independent commission to investigate this event, ask the American […]

Karachi, one of the largest cities in the world, called the city of lights, where nearly 20 million persons reside, has been bleeding for several years. I heard a journalist say the other day that as many as 2,000 of its residents had been killed in 2011. One may ask if that is too many […]