Syed Wajahat Ali

In 2002, General Pervez Musharraf opened up the media landscape to include private television channels. Since then, this sector has grown exponentially. Indeed, during an interview with BBC HARDTalk back in May, on the state of coercive media manipulation in the country, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry boasted that: “Pakistan is probably one of the freest […]

Afghanistan awaits another withdrawal. Previously, it was back in the winter of 1989 when Gen. Boris Gromov of the Soviet 40th army crossed the Friendship Bridge on the current Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border. Simon Saradzhyan, the founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard Kennedy School concludes, “The soviets failed to ensure a sufficiently broad and comprehensive inter-agency […]

The Israel-Palestine region is located at the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea. It comprises modern Israel and the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank bordering Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and the Mediterranean. The territory has historically remained important for the great powers; from the Romans, Muslims, to the British. For […]

1759, Peter Forsskal, the genius of the Swedish transformation, writes “finally it is also an important right in a free society to be freely allowed to contribute to society’s well-being. However, if that is to occur, it must be possible for society’s state of affairs to become known to everyone, and it must be possible […]

Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), Switzerland, published a study sampling 31,212 higher education students from 133 countries and 6 continents. The research finds “boredom, anxiety, and frustration” among students during lockdowns. The socio-demographic difference, gender, and nature of subjects are important variables in scoring the efficiency of online academics. Students classified as male, part-time, first-level, […]

That was a beautiful cloudy morning. A rhythmical, well-introduced voice sounded as I entered the back lawn of Islamabad Club with a light orchestra in the background. After saying thanks to my host, I rushed into the gathering area. “You become brave and generous when you have substance about life. Art is means of communication. […]

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is transcontinental economic connectivityenvisioned in 2013 by China`s President Xi Jinping to “promote the connectivity of Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas, establish and strengthen partnerships among the countries along the Belt and Road, set up all-dimensional, multi-tiered, and composite connectivity networks, and realize diversified, independent, balanced […]

T.G. Montgomery surveyed K2 as a part of Kashmir-China border demarcation during the British Survey of India in 1856. The colonials feared the Russian expansion southwards. K stands for Karakoram Range to the northeast of the Himalayas on the Pak-China border and 2 is the mountain number allotted by the surveyor. “I actually think it’s […]

What happened at Capitol hill was not unexpected.The American republicanism clamping downunderthe burdenof its ethnographic diversity?The preposition is farfetched keeping in view the history ofsystemic resilience of this nation to preserve democracy passing through the fourth century of political ups and downs-a journey of immense polarization and bloodshed. Neither the crises nor the events are […]

1945 was the ‘zero year’ of the twentieth century. From 1945 to 1960, 36 states were decolonized from European imperialism. The process of decolonization was inorganically grounded withthe cultural aspirations of the diverse human strata inhabiting the colonized extensions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It was orderly executed in some areas. However, in […]