The coming radicalization! on May 20, 2020As Pakistan was recovering from the scars inflicted by sectarianism and other forms of religious violence, the onset of COVID-19 has highlighted that it is as vulnerable to the radicalization as it was two decades ago. This piece identifies three areas where Pakistanis are susceptible to the menace of radicalization. Owing to the pandemic, a […]
Pandemic, Neoliberalism and the Betrayal of Pakistani Elite! on May 10, 2020While the Italian mafia is helping its countrymen with food supplies, Pakistan’s elite (politico-economic beneficiaries) seems to be on the strike; having abandoned its people into the lurch. It may be a politically incorrect analogy but it still compels people to take a pause and knit their relationship with the rulers using the threads of […]
A world in transition on April 13, 2020The world has been in transition since the 2008 economic recession. This overarching shift is comprised of four transitions: wealth has been pushing against democracy; territoriality is winning against flat world; social groups/networks are on the retreat against the social hierarchy; and health is running over privacy. Like any other transformation, these are also zero-sum […]
Witnessing the End of Liberal Order on January 2, 2020The last decade epitomized nothing in a more pronounced manner than the retreat of US-led liberal order. Liberal minimalism [laissez fair] under globalization met with creeping maximalism – the rise of populism and return of state in political spectrum. Hedley Bull, a distinguished International Relations scholar, defined political order as, ‘a pattern [in the relations […]
Islamophobia: Securitization of Liberal Values on December 20, 2019Pluralist Western societies are facing a grave threat of exclusivism – Islamophobia, founded in speeches of political figures and actions of the violent perpetrators. Divisive politicians instrumentalize history by importing past events, such as crusade wars and terrorist events with Islamic connections and create security suspicions by labelling Muslims as ‘aliens’ to be feared of. […]
‘Cold war reaches Middle East’ on August 28, 2019Geopolitical signaling and symbolism gain significance when the world is in transition. The signaling is translated into concrete steps when states observe the signs of consolidation in ailing order or the establishment of the new one. This environment demands swift power calculations by state actors by rising above the impractical ideological transnationalism. Geopolitics transcends ideology […]
Global Order and Afghan Peace on April 24, 2019PhD (IR) Candidate at National Defence University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Research Fellow at the University of Maryland, USA The course of history is not guided by, what Francis Fukuyama called, an evolutionary process; rather it is shaped by the Hobbesian anarchy. Induced by the history, global orders under anarchy, are therefore, created, sustained, and imposed by […]
Why do they fear us? on February 27, 2019The title of this article is not a question like the one asked by United States (US) President GW Bush in reference to the 9/11 perpetrators, instead it attempts to identify some of the causes of the anti-Muslim sentiment prevalent in American society in particular and the West at large. Interestingly, many writers from the […]
Has Afghanistan reached its Post-Islamist Turn? on December 26, 2018Islamism, with its revisionist rigor, has been a very potent force for the last five decades. Although it has many strands and faces, it is generally defined as ‘using or instrumentalizing of Islam by individuals and groups for political purposes.’ When Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran introduced reforms in political and social spheres, this conscious project was […]
Populism visits Pakistan on August 17, 2018The contemporary world is witnessing a tide of democratic recession at the hands of majoritarianism and populism. The latter, after helping Donald Trump win the US presidency, all the while questioning the validity of liberal democracy in Europe, has now knocked on Pakistan’s door. The unusual rise of Imran Khan in the country is being […]