Dr Mohammad Taqi

Mohammad Afzal Khan of Swat, known reverently by the honourific Khan Lala, passed away this past weekend. Pashtuns and Afghans living on both sides of the Durand Line and the diaspora, mourn the demise of the octogenarian nationalist icon who spent a lifetime pleading and leading for Pashtun national unification (qaumi wahdat). To many Pakistanis […]

Whatever Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani had planned for peace did not work out as Kunduz city, the capital of the eponymous northern province, fell to the Taliban on Monday. Kunduz is the first major city or garrison to fall to the jihadists in 14 years of war since the Taliban were toppled in 2001. […]

The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base at Badaber, outside Peshawar, came under a pre-dawn terrorist attack this past Friday. The security detail comprising of airmen and buttressed quite effectively by the army’s rapid response force were quick to confine, contain and eliminate the 13 or so attackers. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for […]

“I am receiving very depressing reports of economic distress and maladministration through political interference, frustration and complete lack of faith by the people in political leaders. The general belief is that none of these men have the honesty of purpose, integrity and patriotism to root out the evils of the country, which will require drastic […]

It started with a rather crisp tactical victory in the Rann of Kutch in April, went through the Operation Gibraltar disaster in August, muddled through the botched Operation Grand Slam in August/September, blunted a formidable Indian cavalry assault in Chawindah, hung on to Lahore by the skin of its teeth and came to an ignominiously […]

The 4th of September marks the anniversary of the great Apache warrior, Goyathlay — better known as Geronimo by friend and foe — putting down his weapon in front of the US General Nelson Miles. The 1886 capitulation of Geronimo, who had led a tiny band of the Chiricahua Apaches against the colonisers, is considered […]

Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid Gul passed away last weekend. He was perhaps the most vocal jihadist general after his former boss General Muhammad Ziaul Haq, with whom he shared his zealotry and now the month of death. Both were equally verbose and fanatical but General Gul’s boisterous bravado contrasted sharply with General Ziaul Haq’s sly […]

Over the past several days, Kabul city experienced one of the worst waves of terrorist attacks during the present Afghan conflict. It started with a massive truck bombing in the small hours of Friday morning in the Shah Shaheed district. The apparent target was an Afghan intelligence complex but 15 civilians perished and dozens — […]

The leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is dead and the Taliban as we have known them are history. Mullah Omar may have launched his bid for power in Kandahar but his career and myth were conceived, and finally shattered, east of the Durand Line. The Afghan Presidency stated in an official press […]

In the aftermath of the attack on the journalist and anchorperson Hamid Mir, which he thankfully survived, people are falling over each other to express their support to Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency. In a first of its kind even by Pakistani standards, and certainly unprecedented anywhere else in the world, banners have popped up in […]