Ikram Sehgal

A fictional depiction of true facts, Exodus by author Leon Uris is a moving account of the struggle of Jewish refugees escaping persecution and discrimination in Europe to get to Israel (the Middle East) after World War II. Sixty years later history is repeating itself but in the reverse direction. Migrants from the Middle East […]

We are in the state we are in is because we have been compromising on targeting corruption; now it has become a part of our lives. The penetration is so deep that it has subverted society to the extent that the corrupt do not hide their corruption anymore. In fact, they flout their newly acquired […]

To ascertain the economic and security implications inherent in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which the Chinese call “One Belt One Road”, a Chinese delegation comprising the chairman of the China Group Companies Association (CGCA), Dr Zhang Chongqing, along with security experts from one of the leading Chinese security companies, CSS, are visiting Pakistan. […]

Deeply imbedded in our body politic, corruption has taken strong roots. Transparency International (TI) in 1996 rated Pakistan as the second most corrupt country in the world. We have only gone up the tier because other countries are more corrupt than us. While this process of decay can never be eradicated completely from any society, […]

Launching the unmitigated disaster that was Operation Gibraltar in 1965, it was criminal negligence not to anticipate a far wider Indian response than the conflict being only restricted to Kashmir. Even though after Rann of Kutch in May, formations like the Seventh Division had moved out of their peacetime locations, our military hierarchy was lulled […]

Former federal minister and close aide/confidante of PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari Dr Asim Hussain was remanded for 90 days by an Anti-Terrorism Court under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 because of what the Rangers described as “credible information about his involvement in terrorism-related activity and embezzlement of funds”. Asim soon started coughing out a […]

On an election petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), alleging poll rigging in NA-125 in Lahore, an election tribunal decided in May of this year that the irregularities were serious enough to cancel the constituency’s 2013 election results. Terming it null and void, the tribunal de-seated PML-N’s Khawaja Saad Rafique, the Federal Minister for Railways. […]

Given our troubled history of martial laws, many are averse to governance where the stakeholders have no say. The recurring problem is that the stakeholders still have no say in governance in Pakistan’s version of ‘democracy’. Our politicians mostly have glaring deficiencies in their character, force-multiplied by blatant avarice and greed. With confidence in the […]

The landmark Supreme Court (SC) judgment validating parliament’s enactment of laws authorising trials of terrorists by military courts was widely hailed throughout the country. Greeted with a sigh of relief, public opinion registered a massive surge of hope and aspiration. The SC ordered that the military courts adopt the basic principles and procedures of a […]

The British believed that the communication gap between the British officers and native Indian troops was responsible for the mutiny in the army of the British East India Company leading to the 1857 War of Independence. To propagate British imperial rule after 1857, an Indian Viceroy Commissioned Officer (VCO) rank was instituted to facilitate effective […]