Syed Rashid Munir

It is axiomatic that we will always be faced with difference in our lives. The way our societies have evolved, or the way we are as a species, we occupy a moment in time where difference and diversity are the name of the game. Everywhere you go, anywhere you look, there are people who are […]

The political system in the US is considered to be one of the oldest, most consolidated democracies in the world. Starting out from a revolutionary struggle against the vagaries of the Empire, the US experiment has largely been able to reap the benefits of independence and self-determination, rising to become not only the key power […]

Will he or won’t he? The question that has held the nation’s attention and plagued television screens in recent times to no end was finally laid to rest when the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) made public the army chief’s decision to not seek an extension of his term in office last week. General Raheel Sharif, […]

If ever there were a time for us to realise that the battle against extremism is an ongoing process and an everyday struggle, this would be it. After much tiptoeing around the idea of a military operation to counter the militants, we were finally slapped awake by the horrible attack on the Army Public School […]

When it comes to gauging the stature of a state, two facets of policy come to mind: on one hand is domestic policy that directly governs the behaviour of the citizens as they interact with each other and the state, and on the other is foreign policy that determines the state’s conduct in its interaction […]

For a vast majority of us, death is the only unchanging and certain reality in life. We spend our lives in constant company of the spectre of death and when it comes to claim us, the great and the poor embrace it alike, accepting it as the end of the life cycle. However, in some […]

Once again, Afghanistan — the country that is the exception to most others in terms of government infrastructure and state’s writ — is in trouble. It appears that no matter how much effort is made to stabilise the country known as ‘the graveyard of empires’, Afghanistan resists its move towards contemporary times with a vengeance, […]

The French are famous for their diplomacy and negotiation skills, and perhaps this was the crucial ingredient missing from previous efforts to agree upon common objectives for tackling climate change that we saw nothing come out of the climate conferences in Rio, Kyoto and Copenhagen. However, 2015 marks a major shift from that trend since […]

Pain is a strange thing. Sometimes it hinders our ability to function, forcing us to completely shut down, while on other occasions it can lead to new revelations that allow us to address the root causes. Pain being a two-edged knife that cuts both ways, there is always the temptation to just forget about it […]

The world’s attention has been focused on Paris for the past few weeks because of the horrific attacks that claimed many innocent lives and brought to focus the issue of terrorism perpetrated by terrorists. Just days after the attacks, however, Paris is now playing host to all nations of the world to discuss another important […]