Farhat Taj

With the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a garrison town of Pakistan, one would like to hope that the international and Pakistani narrative that heavily implicated the Pakhtun tribesmen in the Af-Pak region on the side of al Qaeda, a narrative based on wrong assumptions, would tend to change. This means a hope […]

Reportedly, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has approved the establishment of a university in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The estimated cost of the project is three billion rupees. The university will be constructed in the frontier region (FR) of Kohat, a part of FATA. One should cautiously welcome the move. This is a long […]

Mr Ejaz Haider responded to my article ‘Misleading information’ (Daily Times, April 2, 2011) via his two-part column ‘Responding to Farhat Taj’ in another daily (April 10, 2011). I had said in my article that, “Mr Ejaz Haider, as a political analyst, is expected to be honest and not to mislead people.” I regret to […]

Military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Taliban atrocities in the area have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. This has led to multiple human rights violation of the internally displaced persons (IDPs), including the IDP children’s right to education. I came across hundreds of IDP children who were earlier in […]

Ejaz Haider is a well-known Pakistani political analyst. No doubt some of his analyses are insightful. But I have noted that he has been providing misleading information about the Pakhtuns. I would like to comment on one of his latest articles ‘Some more on the Pakistani Taliban’ published in a national daily on March 13, […]

Some time back, a piece in Foreign Policy suggested a referendum in FATA and the nearby areas of Afghanistan to ask the people if they were for or against a strict Islamist government. In case of a yes vote, any people in the larger region subscribing to a strict version of Islam could emigrate to […]

Raymond Davis, an American national accused of being a CIA contractor in Pakistan and charged with killing two Pakistani citizens in January 2011, was released by a Lahore court on March 16, 2011. The US authorities said Davis was protected by full diplomatic immunity but the Pakistani government refuted the US claim. He was immediately […]

Once again Adezai has been brutally targeted by the Taliban and 37 people have been killed. This time they chose a funeral ceremony on March 9 for mass murder in this staunchly anti-Taliban village of about 7,000 people. Adezai, a small village in Peshawar, has a tribal jirga-backed anti-Taliban lashkar that has stiffly resisted the […]

Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Gilani, was shot dead in broad daylight in the federal capital. Bhatti, the minister for minorities, had been receiving frequent death threats from terrorists. This is the second high-profile killing in two months, following the assassination of Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, […]

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has made a series of attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in FATA since 2004 using Predator drones. These strikes are part of the US-led war on terror. The drone strikes have been viewed through the prism of assumptions by some people in the international media and research […]