Improving security on February 1, 2019Across Pakistan, and across all metrics, violence-related casualties continued to decline in 2018, registering a 45% drop from the previous year, and an 86% drop since 2013. If we look purely at fatalities from terror attacks and incidents, the number dropped 83% from 4,643 in 2013 to 754 in 2018. This an unprecedented drop in […]
Advocating for tribal districts on January 25, 2019What is the most important need for formerly Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) at the moment? This is a tough question. The merger is pending with the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP) government, the path is fraught with a plethora of challenges, and the status is in limbo. The 31st Constitutional Amendment was fueled by decades of […]
Shades of grey on January 18, 2019“There’s no black and no white, just shades of grey…” goes the quote, and nowhere is it more applicable than the mystifying battlefield of Pakistani politics. Nearly six month into its term, the PTI government is still trying to find solid footing. There has been a range of missteps, and a range of positive outcomes, […]
Vote, or die! on July 25, 2018It is election morning, and I am unsure who to vote for. The electable candidates belong to parties that either represent the status quo, or the new face of compromised politics. I am not alone in these muddied, murky waters; several of my contemporaries feel the same way. It has been a baffling, frustrating and […]
The rot starts at the top on July 5, 2018There is an old adage for prioritisation that states “task-2 will never be as important as task-1”. Essentially, the bottom will never be as important as the top of the to-do list. The National Action Plan (NAP), which was created in a state of grief after the horrendous attack that left 133 schoolchildren dead on […]
Extremists in our midst on January 26, 2018Zainab’s murderer was a self-appointed ‘Naqshbandi’, a Sunni Sufi sect that traces back to the Holy Prophet, via Caliph Abu Bakr. But it is not the only case involving men, who claim to be the keepers of our religion, engaging in the vilest activities. Within 24 hours, a cleric in a seminary beat an 8-year […]
The cult of Sharif on November 29, 2017It says a lot about the state of a country and the priorities of its elected leaders when they show up in record volumes in support of their figurehead, but drag their feet on matters of national importance. At a time when the capitol was choked by demonstrators for nearly a month and the disruption […]
Stagnating levels of violence on November 11, 2017During the third quarter of this year, 499 persons lost their lives and 388 were wounded in violence and counter-violence incidents in the country. Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh, suffered the majority of fatalities while FATA and KP were the least affected by violence. A comparative data of fatalities from violence in Q2 vs. Q3 shows […]
JIT report and other murmurings on July 12, 2017The JIT report is damning and damaging to the lives and careers of the Sharif family. Commentators and analysts are all actively giving their analysis. But there are a few key things that we should not overlook in the resultant cacophony. First, the public should not and must not forget the vociferous and vehement manner […]
Unwarranted crackdown on May 23, 2017Over the weekend, reports broke out that some 79 cases had been filed in the last three months for negative propaganda against the state and its various institutions over social media. These can be filed now, since the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Bill 2016 was passed in August of last year. The bill was widely criticized […]