From blood telegram to New Year blast on January 3, 2018On April 6, 1971, a communication was transmitted by a group of twenty officials from the United States Consulate General Office in Dacca to Washington, DC as a passionate message to rethink American policy that appeared tilted heavily towards Pakistan. The message ended with the ardent appeal: “We, as professional public servants, express our dissent […]
Thoughts for the New Year on January 2, 2018This past year, Pakistan has presented a bewildering maze of imponderables. With the lists of the truthful and the virtuous expanding exponentially, there is none left whom one could hold responsible for the country’s increasing woes. A seventy-year old Pakistan has turned into a land where everyone claims absolute freedom to say or do whatever […]
Of depleting space and policy vacuum on December 26, 2017 The Chief of Army Staff’s appearance before the Senate Committee of the Whole has been much debated and much analysed. In the process, the critical gist of what he stated has been generally overlooked. This part, to me, is the one where he urged the government not to leave a policy vacuum. But, then, […]
Fact against fabrication on December 19, 2017Returning home after a week of travel, I find that the line separating fact from fabrication is ever more blurred with efforts constantly afoot to manipulate one look like the other while, in reality, the two are the diametric extremes of a pendulum movement. The disastrous effects of this syndrome are transmitting rapidly to our […]
Quo Vadis, my land of hope? on December 12, 2017The above lines from Faiz’s unforgettable poem on Pakistan’s independence have a message that has lingered through decades, growing in meaning and relevance as we have moved along. In August 1947, it was the harrowing spectre of death that forced him to use expressions like ‘stained light’ and ‘night-bitten dawn’ for that consequential morning. It […]
Here and beyond on December 5, 2017“Do you hear the tumult of death afar, The call midst the fire-floods and poisonous clouds? The Captain’s call to the steersmen to turn the ship to an unnamed shore, For that time is over — the stagnant time in the port – Where the same old merchandise is bought and sold in an endless […]
An ominous capitulation on November 28, 2017Pakistan is passing through as perilous phase — a phase that can be ended quickly through decisive action, but if allowed to prolong, it could bring the entire edifice tumbling down. From being just a fear, this has gradually grown to assume the proportions of a foreboding. Nothing is going right, not because nothing can […]
The media circus on November 21, 2017I have been seeing these circuses for long, and, believe me, these aren’t getting any better. I mean, these circuses of the anchors masquerading as pontiffs or some such routine which they enact. They get together every so often to rain down a barrage of self-elevating edicts as if they were the flies on the […]
Under siege on November 15, 2017“They wanted spring, of course they wanted it, more than anything. They longed for sun with every pore of their skin. But, spring hurts. If spring can come, if things can be different, how can you bear when your existence has been?” H elen Dunmore, ‘The Siege’ Today is day 8 of the siege of […]
Travelling far, dreaming beyond on November 14, 2017The fourth round of the US-Pakistan Track-II Bilateral Dialogue, held in Islamabad on November 6-7, contained many distinctive events, none more so than a visit to a place that used to be the hub of terrorist activities not so long ago — North Waziristan! After a soft launch by holding a cricket match followed by […]