Shaukat Qadir

We, the sorry citizens of Pakistan, have got used to event-based news. So when the army chief reiterated his view that the Operation Zarb-e-Azb, or another of its like, is unlikely to have a permanent effect unless corruption is uprooted and accountability is across the board, speculation had to be event based. He went on […]

General Raheel has acquired quite a varied reputation. He talks infrequently but means exactly what he says. Conscious of the speculation that was rife about whether he would be offered an extension and, if one were offered, whether he would accept it, he decided to make public the fact that he would not. Unsurprisingly, this […]

The Karachi situation defies any simple explanation. The Chief Minister (CM) decided, for the first time, to do what should be done on each occasion but never is. He decided to take to the provincial assembly the question of whether to continue giving policing powers to the Rangers or not. In unseemly haste, the ruling […]

Much before the Arab Spring there were signs of unrest in the Saudi Kingdom. Periodically, Arab Bedouins have risen against the autocratic and often repressive kingdom that rules them. In fact, Osama bin Laden’s Saudi citizenship was revoked in 1992 because of his anti-kingdom movement, even as the Kingdom continued to fund al Qaeda. The […]

Recently, Pakistan decided not to intervene in Yemen despite urgent messages from Saudi Arabia. The news promptly resulted in a harsh response — almost a warning — by UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Dr Anwar Muhammed Gargash. Gargash might be a mouthpiece for the Saudis or his own government but this response was […]

To begin with, let me state again that Pakistan is now a nation at war, a war that is not confined to its borders or with an identifiable enemy but one that targets all its people anywhere, one that is being fought with an infinitesimally small percentage of its own misguided citizenry, occasionally with support […]

An editorial in a Pakistani daily on April 24, 2014 proved to be a very balanced analysis on the recent media/Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but perhaps its conclusion needs to be viewed from another angle. To begin with, the editorial reads as if the army (and ISI) is an entity independent of, or rival of the […]

On Saturday, April 19, Hamid Mir, a prominent journalist and television anchor, was seriously injured in a dastardly, targetted gun attack in Karachi. All sane citizens of Pakistan should, and did, condemn the attack, and all are grateful that he survived.I have not yet called him since he is reported to still be recovering but […]

While there is still a noticeable lack of strategic vision or direction in the conduct of our political leaders, it appears they have reached consensus on one fact: Pakistan needs to improve relations with its neighbours.There is a definite easing of tensions between Pakistan and India. Trade has opened up, across the international border as […]

On Monday, February 25, the surgeon general of the army — the highest ranking doctor in the military — Lt Gen Mushtaq Baig, was killed by a suicide bomber. The official version of the incident is that the teenaged suicide bomber, pretending to be a beggar, was waiting for a lucrative target and, spotting the […]