Give peace a chance on January 5, 2018“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.” – Leo Tolstoy. The above quote sums up succinctly the Indo-Pak peace dilemma. While the populations across the international border share cultural, linguistic and in some cases religious affinity, the governments share a […]
Civilian control of the military on December 25, 2017The present controversy surrounding Army Chief Bajwa’s visit to Senate and the leakage of the contents of the discussion begs a serious question. Was the in camera briefing to Senate a simple case of formal civil-military interaction like in functioning democracies or a one off desultorily planned tete a tete? The answer may perhaps lie […]
How green was my valley on December 18, 2017How green was our valley once and how green would we be able to keep it is the biggest dilemma facing Pakistan in this time of energy scarcity. A nation that does not want to build the most feasible dams due to political differences and relies mostly on fossil fuel imports for its energy needs […]
Stop appeasing extremists on December 4, 2017In the afterglow of the Islamabad sit-in, one hears the faint echoes of Winston Churchill’s famous speech on the eve of Dunkirk in WW-II. When accosted by a boastful bevy of parliamentarians gloating on the successful evacuation of 340,000 troops by a flotilla of 800 vessels, he thundered, “We must be very careful not to […]
The revolt of the masses on November 22, 2017Emile Durkheim’s concept of anomie finds resonance in the present state of lawlessness and disorderliness prevalent in Pakistani society. We as a nation and society are in the throes of an anomie wherein the state and the society are equally culpable of a lack of moral direction for individuals. Despite democratic pretensions of a modern […]
State meltdown on November 15, 2017Gunnar Myrdal’s definition of a ‘soft state’ in his ‘Asian Drama’ is emblematic of a general lawlessness and absence of a respect for state laws. The softness is begotten out of the state’s ineffectiveness or unwillingness to enforce its writ over a population that is segmented into various classes and local power centres. The population […]
The return of the Raj on November 3, 2017After nearly 16 years, the much vaunted administrative prop of Colonial British rule has staged a comeback, riding on the back of the lack of imagination of our national decision makers in the sphere of public administration. The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice, as reported in the press, has prepared its recommendations […]
The coming anarchy on October 29, 2017Robert Kaplan prognosticated in his very interesting article ie The Coming Anarchy published in the February 1994 edition of the The Atlantic Monthly, a vision of a chaotic world where the disorder would rule the roost. The article was a counterpoint to the liberal democratic utopia propounded by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in […]
Promenade to Valhalla on October 17, 2017Robbie Burns, the Scottish bard would not have thought in his wildest dream that how his haunting melody ‘Auld Lang Syne’ would one day inspire a valedictory slow march, continents apart for the graduating officer cadets of a Muslim nation sworn to uphold the precepts like ‘struggle in the way of Allah’. The spectacle was […]
The march of folly on October 9, 2017What best advice would be a sincere friend of the leading global power of the world i.e. USA render regarding its Afghan project? Pakistan, being a country that has had a love-hate relationship with USA since its inception, cannot be accused of insincerity when it comes to an engagement with a country once referred to […]