Pakistan Festival Muscat 2022 on September 20, 2022On August 19, celebrating the 75th anniversary of Pakistan’s Independence Day in (Oman) Muscat, Ambassador Imran Ali Chaudhry addressed a gathering of expatriate Pakistanis. Ambassador Chaudhry is known for serving expatriates. He earned an accolade for helping the ex-pats in the United States, where he was Third Secretary in Pakistan’s Embassy, Washington, D.C., at the […]
Reform the Higher Judiciary on September 14, 2022The year 2022 has seen Pakistan coming to its senses: cut your coat according to your cloth. That is, spend as per the income earned. Habitual of lavish spending, Pakistan has been struggling with methods to collect money from its citizens through a variety of taxes. Other than for flood victims, foreign aid may not […]
The IMF’s Disclosure on September 6, 2022On September 2, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a report on the revival of its financial assistance program, the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), to Pakistan. The report – call, a disclosure – mentioned that Pakistan’s previous government not only repudiated the agreed conditions but also reversed several key commitments without the consent of the […]
Shaukat Tareen’s Indiscretion on August 31, 2022Since July this year, Pakistan has been vacillating between two points: how to repeat Sri Lanka’s experience of turmoil and how to circumvent the same. Apparently, forces are trying to push Pakistan over the edge of economic bankruptcy compared to the forces trying to pull the country out of any such economic crisis. Pakistan is […]
Victimizing the Punjab Police on August 25, 2022The past few days have shown that Punjab has no citizen-police liaison body, which could evaluate the performance of police officers and reward those who served the citizens aptly during a given tenure. Everything has been subjected to the will of the political masters as if the police were their servants. This August 14 saw […]
Start Negotiations on Kashmir on August 16, 2022On April 11, 2022, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) took over the reins of Pakistan, with Mian Shahbaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister respectively. It was expected that the new government would make headway on the issue of Kashmir. That is, the new government would speak to India about […]
Post-FATF talk prospects on Kashmir on July 6, 2022Having comprehensively reformed the country’s system and fully complied with all the imposed conditions, Pakistan would expectantly come out of the grey list of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) by October this year. From then onward, Pakistan would be a free country to think that June 2018, when it was placed on the […]
The FATF’s Messages on June 22, 2022On June 17, in Berlin, the plenary session of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced that Pakistan fully complied with its conditions (34 action items) and comprehensively reformed its system. Now, the process of removing Pakistan from the grey list could be started after fulfilling the last prerequisite: an on-site monitoring visit from […]
The ISI’s Vetting Role on June 7, 2022On June 3, 2022, Prime Minster Shehbaz Sharif notified the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as the Special Vetting Agency (SVA) for the verification and screening of all civil servants from induction to promotions and postings. No one knows the reason for such a step. Per se, the decision is an expression of no-confidence in the civilian […]
Pakistan’s Reluctance in Condemning Russia on March 10, 2022On March 2, 2022, in a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and demanding that Moscow stop fighting and withdraw its military forces, Pakistan abstained from voting against Russia. The occasion was a rare emergency session called by the Security Council asking all 193 members of the UNGA to vote […]