What we didn’t learn from China on January 4, 2018Pakistan’s friendship with china was founded in 1950 soon after the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) emerged as the sole entity to represent China under the chairman Mao Zedong. Pakistan was among the first few countries in the world which ended its diplomatic relations with nationalists led Republic of China in favor of PRC led […]
Offending the ‘gods of the state’ on December 29, 2017Twelve months after five civil society activists mysteriously went missing Pakistan’s FIA has submitted a report before the Islamabad High Court effectively clearing their names. The five had, at the very beginning of this year, been accused of using social media to promote blasphemous ideas and content. The ‘disappeared’ were: academic Salman Haider; bloggers Asim […]
Politicking by our state institutions on December 21, 2017There has been so much of noise in public discourse over how Pakistan’s Supreme Court failed to maintain an equitable yardstick between assets cases of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and a combined case of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and General Secretary Jahangir Tareen. Although there’s no obvious comparison between the two, the […]
Avoidable martyrdom on December 14, 2017I planned on writing on something else, but then I came across a tweet from the ISPR, which quoted the COAS, saying “Freedom isn’t free, it costs sons of the soil. Freedom that we enjoy is owed to many such brave hearts. Salute our Martyrs”. The tweet came in the backdrop of the mortal sacrifices […]
PPP at 50: What caused the downfall? on December 7, 2017Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) celebrated its Golden Jubilee last week. The party has seen all sorts of highs and lows in the last 50 years. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founding chairman of the party was without a shred of doubt most popular political leader of the country— at least in its erstwhile western wing — […]
Let’s turn Pakistan into a stratocracy on November 30, 2017What we saw over the weekend and Monday in the backdrop of a sit-in in Islamabad by Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a Sunni extremist organisation must not be shocking but only if we are naïve. Many have mourned at the abject surrender of the state before the religious fanatics. But it was not the first time writ of […]
The out-of-school children challenge on November 23, 2017On the face of it this might not look frightening but as many as 22.6 million of children between five and 16 years of age are out of school. Just to assure you these figures are not from some NGO’s agenda-driven survey or research but very much from National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) — […]
Future of democracy is elusive in Pakistan on November 16, 2017Not that what we are witnessing in Pakistani politics is happening for the first time, yet it’s so debilitating that it feels as if unfortunately democracy has no future in the land of the pure. The disgust, which was hallmark of civil and military bureaucracies and judiciary in terms of their view of the politicians […]
Stockholm syndrome of our polity on November 9, 2017On August 23, 1973, a gunman entered a bank in Stockholm, Sweden with an intention of robbery. However, before he could rob the bank and run away, the police arrived and an encounter involving firearm ensued. The gunmen managed to take four bank employees as hostages and kept them inside the bank vault. Over the […]
A séance with Jinnah’s spirit on November 2, 2017I was captivated to know of a document archived in British Library, London, which is a record of a special séance with the spirit of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah held at 6 pm on March 13, 1955 — eight years after creation of Pakistan and seven years after Quaid’s death. The special séance, where a […]