The great equaliser: death by 140 characters on August 17, 2011“You don’t own the eyeballs. You don’t own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don’t control production on the new platform, which isn’t one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us” — ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’, Professor Jay Rosen. The traditional media has […]
Pakistans foreign policy: grandeur of delusions II on August 10, 2011“Our object should be peace within and peace without. We want to live peacefully and maintain cordial and friendly relations with our immediate neighbours and with the world at large. We have no aggressive designs against anyone. We stand by the United Nations Charter and will gladly make our full contribution to the peace and […]
AfPak: a series of unfortunate events II on August 7, 2011We have heard a lot about the perception of the so-called Pakistani elite vis-à-vis the endgame in Afghanistan. I thought it might be worthwhile to elicit opinion from the Afghans about their perception of the Pakistani elite and its designs on Afghanistan. Abbas Daiyar, a researcher and member of the editorial board of Daily Outlook […]
Pakistans foreign policy: grandeur of delusions I on August 3, 2011“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring” — Carl Sagan.So the CIA’s Islamabad station chief has left Pakistan — the second to leave in under one year — and did so, ostensibly, for health reasons as an AFP report stated. Coming […]
Baheer: three currents of Hamza Shinwaris poetry on July 27, 2011“Insaan yem, da fitrat pa taqazo ke na raazam, Shaheen yem, da karghano pa panjo ke na raazam, Yaw sind yem da sehba, da perzonay waham josh, Laikin za da kam-zarfo pa kaaso ke na raazam” — Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari. (I am a human whom even the nature cannot restrain, Like a falcon I […]
De-radicalisation: deception or determination? on July 20, 2011Just as Pakistan was starting to witness yet another round of political violence in Karachi, a three-day national seminar on de-radicalisation, organised by the Pakistan Army, concluded in Swat earlier this month. Politicians, military leaders and opinion leaders from Pakistan as well as guests from other countries, attended the heavily guarded gathering. The full text […]
Mini cold war on Afghan frontier on July 13, 2011You know something has gone really awry in the Pak-US relationship when the Pakistanis bring out their heavy political artillery against the US. Now who would not take Pakistan’s Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar seriously? Speaking to a television channel, the defence minister has threatened to withdraw Pakistani troops from the Pak-Afghan border as a […]
The sham operation in Kurram on July 5, 2011On July 4, 2011, the Pakistan Army announced that it has launched an operation in the Central Kurram Agency with the primary objective of clearing the ‘miscreants’ and opening of the Peshawar-Thall-Parachinar Road (why Tal has become Thall in the English press beats me). The geographical scope of the operation is rather circumscribed, if the […]
Obamas Af-Pak strategy: tossing away the COIN on June 29, 2011In his speech on June 22, 2011, Barack Obama outlined the drawdown of the US forces from Afghanistan. He declared his plans to pull out 10,000 troops from Afghanistan at the year’s end and another 23,000 by mid-2012, essentially withdrawing all troops inducted during the 2009 surge. Obama pledged the drawdown at a steady pace […]
A thousand and one tales of terror on June 22, 2011“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” — Charles Baudelaire quoted in ‘The Usual Suspects’. Syed Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani investigative reporter associated with Asia Times Online, was brutally murdered last month. His body was recovered a week after his book Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin […]