Dr Fawad Kaiser

Terrorist hideouts being raided across the northwest has prompted a fit of introspection about the integrity of our security. However, this misses the point. Military operations clearly need to be carried out but we should be wary of the notion that dangerous individuals cannot be weeded out without a rigorous, integrated, centralised intelligence bureaucracy. The […]

A chilling videotaped confession of a murderer who molested and killed a seven-year-old boy, was filmed just a few days after he was arrested by the police. “I did not have the intention of killing a child,” the imam (prayer leader) of a mosque told the police after he pleaded guilty to molesting a boy, […]

On December 16, 2014, Pakistan became deeply shocked to learn of the murder of more than 100 children by a group of terrorists. In the wake of these events, Pakistan’s population displayed symptoms of collective emotional shock and bereavement, and endeavoured to come to terms with these feelings as a community. In addition to individual […]

The school shooting in Peshawar has generated great public concern and fostered a widespread impression that schools are unsafe for many students. Many of the school safety and security measures and strategies deployed in response to the school shooting have little research support and have been widely criticised as unsound practices. Threat assessment should be […]

In a sense, the Faisalabad PTI and PML-N mob violence defies explanation. All mob violence does. When attempting to explain it, there is no way to predict what may have triggered the violence. The most important feature of a collective behaviour phenomenon, especially violent protests, is that they are spontaneous and essentially unpredictable, as are […]

When you think that the four major oil producing countries — Libya, Iraq, Nigeria and Syria — are in tatters today and Iran is handicapped by sanctions, you will not hesitate even once to think that such a situation would have sent oil prices soaring. However, today, the opposite is happening and it is difficult […]

Despite continued scepticism among television anchors and media pundits in Pakistan, the PTI chairman, Imran Khan, insists that his press conference on Friday has produced a more confident campaign with a clearer message, focused on electoral rigging rather than the government propaganda claiming he had been making false allegations. This new strategy reverses the campaign’s […]

Famine is ostensibly preventable through government action and yet some famines still kill. Minister of State for Health Saira Afzal Tarar has said that the federal government is looking to devise a five to ten-year plan to deal with the famine in the Thar region of Sindh. Clearly the State Minister has no idea about […]

November 14 marked the birthday of a woman whom I consider no less than a mother, Fauzia Wahab, a two-time PPP parliamentarian and former information secretary of the party. The reason why I consider her as a mother is because she was the person who motivated me to write letters to editors, blogs, and potentially […]

While there has been limited research in Pakistan on drug abuse in private schools, a recent interview survey of the attitudes of private school students on substance abuse that I completed with my assistants indicates a sharp rise in the use of drugs in private schools. Most teachers can hardly cover everything in a curriculum, […]