The first thing I saw on that Monday morning was a fateful WhatsApp message. The news was devastating. My beloved guru, Rehman Bhai, had passed away in his sleep in Lahore, at the age of 90. IA Rehman was, as we all knew, a man of great depth, representing the very best of all God’s […]
Whither Bhutto’s Pakistan?
A cliché that has come to acquire permanent place in Pakistan’s chequered history reminds us annually about the cross road that as a nation we are standing it. It also reminds us how callously dictator General Ziaul Haq removed and executed his benefactor on cooked up charge of murder. Indeed, when Martyred Zulfikar Ali Bhutto […]
Women leaders as catalyst
March has been a month of historic significance for the Muslims in Indo-Pakistan sub-continent. Without undermining William Shakespeare’s warning about Ides of March, notwithstanding the tragic events in the same month in 1971 when Bengali nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rehman decided to go for independent country in defiance of massive Pakistan army operation to stop […]
Vote count: Joseph Stalin is recalled!
My fellow columnist Yasmeen Aftab Ali who carries an impartial pen and expresses unbiased views on subjects of intriguing and controversial nature, has come up in Daily Times (March 14) with a forthright comment on the shocking results of the recent Senate elections. What she has described as a ‘closely followed match between Opposition and […]
Pakistan-us foreign policy!
The inadvertent delay and rumpus caused by former American President Donald Trump and his supporters to vacate Oval Office for some time posed a serious threat to American democracy. Resistance by Trump supporters was so severe and relentless that it certainly cast serious aspersion on national security. The unnecessary delay shrouded the future of democracy, […]
Belittling a national hero!
I had known most of Pakistan’s super spies by virtue of being a journalist but never knew them that close. Lt. General ® AsadDurrani was the most outstanding among them. It was a coincidence that he and myself were appointed ambassadors by martyred Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto probably one and at the same time […]
Fascism on the rise in Pakistan
The government in Pakistan with its imminent collapse unfolding is seen intensifying its fascist stranglehold on dissent. It has unleashed a blitzkrieg crackdown not only on the media but opposition politicians, honourable members of civil and other dissenting voices with flood gates of violence against women and minorities especially the peace loving ShiaHazara community—according to […]
I wish Shaheed Bhutto were alive today
Had Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto been alive today, poor people of Pakistan would not have been so pathetically treated by Imran Khan government for want of co-vid vaccine, utter lack of proper medicare, running from pillar to post for sustainable oxygen ventilators and pep. It is indeed, an irony that the world scientists are speeding […]
LIKE OF HIM ARE NOT BORN EVERY DAY!
It was a bright sunny day but otherwise a dismal hour on January 4, 2011 when we were shocked by the most tragic news of cold bloodied, broad-day light murder of otherwise popular Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer. It was, indeed, one of the darkest days of our times when one of our brightest political […]
Benazir Bhutto, the iron lady (PART II)
Dictators and their mouthpieces—being guilty of their crime of committing treason—never let go any opportunity to declare her a security risk. I remember that when Pressler Amendment (1985) was on the anvil by the Congress to impose economic sanctions on Pakistan and to stop aid under General Ziaul Haq, it was Benazir Bhutto in exile […]