Syed Rashid Munir

It is funny how some buzzwords manage to be ever-present and yet escape our cognitive radars. We hear such words all the time but never stop to think twice about the implications or their meaning. One such word that Pakistanis love to throw around is ‘crisis’. Crisis this, crisis that; at every turn, we are […]

Still reeling from the trauma of the Peshawar school attack, we have crossed the threshold over into the new year. At such a transitory stage, we all look back individually at the preceding days and resolve to improve ourselves in one way or another by addressing the areas where we found ourselves wanting. Such an […]

Out of the many chilling accounts that have emerged after the Peshawar horror, there is one tiny detail that demands further inspection. According to eyewitness accounts, the militants who attacked the school in Peshawar entered the premises only after burning the vehicle they had used as transport. Let me underline the significance of this seemingly […]

Last Tuesday, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its long-awaited assessment of the detention and interrogation regimes employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after 9/11. At a time when the US is becoming increasingly wary of its global role — and consequently reducing the amount of international agenda items from its to-do […]

Whoever said that a man cannot live forever clearly has not heard of Karl Emil Maximilian “Max” Weber. Born in 1864, the influential German sociologist produced a prodigious body of work that has achieved a canonical, immortal status in various fields ranging from sociology to political economy. While this space is much too small to […]

The 18th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) mercifully came to a close last week. As is the case with each SAARC summit, the actual event failed to produce anything of significant value besides the promise of a pan-South Asian energy deal. The deal itself is commendable and strives to bring […]

“Why must we make enemies out of them all?” exclaimed Sartaj Aziz, the advisor to the Prime Minister (PM) for foreign affairs when asked about Pakistan’s future policy towards non-state actors, and all hell broke loose. The statement came at a crucial time, when the PM himself was busy in forging stronger international ties through […]

As the mercury continues to drop in the coming days, the onset of winter, as always, will present the opportunity for self-reflection. And since winters arrive in the last months of the calendar, the self-reflection instinct becomes particularly intensive. All and sundry reflect on the time past and plot for the time ahead. However, while […]

As if bilateral relations between Pakistan and the US could not get any worse at this point, the Pentagon’s latest annual report has irked our decision makers for holding Pakistan responsible for using proxies to influence and sabotage proceedings in Afghanistan and India. The report has come out at a crucial juncture, when the army […]

The reports of his political death have, indeed, been greatly exaggerated. After taking many hits and getting very nearly knocked out, the Prime Minister (PM) is back on his feet again. Ever since the start of the protests and sit-ins in August, the PM had been found absent from duty at a time when he […]