Anwar Syed

A document whose very existence was uncertain for a time has made waves in Pakistani politics. Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman, recently published an article in the Financial Times, alleging that President Asif Ali Zardari feared that the ISI intended to overthrow his government. The president, he added, had asked [former] Ambassador Husain Haqqani to […]

Pakistan is composed of four provinces, namely Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan. Punjab contains more than 60 percent of the country’s population; Balochistan is the largest in terms of territory and smallest in population. Each of these provinces has a legislature, a governor, a chief minister and his cabinet of ministers, and secretaries to […]

A certain number of self-governing territorial units may resolve to come together in a federal union, have their representatives prepare its constitution, enumerating its powers, and reserving all the rest to the federating states. This is how the United States of America came into being, and to the best of my knowledge that is the […]

The Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, recently called an all parties conference that resolved to form a grand alliance for the purpose of eradicating corruption. One may ask if such an alliance could be formed in Pakistan. The answer will have to be in the negative, because here the government and the party (the […]

There was a time when the ordinary individual’s right to know was not acknowledged. It is said of Naushirwan the Just that he was once out on a military campaign, the end of the month approached and the soldiers had to be paid their salaries, but the treasurer with bags of money had not yet […]

A public service announcement on a television channel tells us that those who kill journalists have been robbing us of our right to know. We may ask what kind of information it is of which the killers have been depriving us. Surely no one is stopping us from ascertaining whether Aristotle’s objections to Plato’s reasoning […]

Freedoms of speech and movement, and the freedom to take out a procession to express one’s grievances are generally recognised as fundamental human rights. The first two, referring to speech and movement, are exercised by citizens in democracies every day without let or hindrance. Protest marches surfaced in the US during the civil rights and […]

There are individuals and organisations that plan their journey through time. They settle their goals, identify and gather the ways and means of achieving them. They anticipate the impediments they might encounter on the way and devise remedies. Then there are those who deal with problems as and when they arise and to that end […]

Extremism is a state of mind in which a person believes that his interpretations of the ground reality and his prescriptions for improving it are the only correct ones and all others are misguided or wicked. He becomes a militant when he tells people that they will deserve to be wiped out if they do […]

On May 13 a joint session of parliament unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the killing of Osama bin Laden by a group of American commandos on May 2 without the knowledge and concurrence of the Pakistani authorities and, among other things, called upon the government to review its ties with the US. Denunciations of the […]