Zulfiquar Rao

  The year 2016 will perhaps best be remembered as the year of Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump; two events analysts have defined as cataclysmic because they blew away the credibility of different polls and sharply questioned the value of political correctness. Donald Trump’s campaign and the appeal to xenophobia in favor of […]

There’s no doubt that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the largest single development plan in Pakistan’s history. Originally valued at $46 billion, the plan is now estimated to be worth $62 billion. The projects included in it are diverse but they’re mainly concerned with power generation; special economic zones; and development of infrastructure like […]

  The death of a sanitary worker in Umerkot in what was reportedly an incident of communal discrimination at the hands of doctors at a public hospital of Umerkot has reminded me of an event that took place in Karachi following partition of the sub-continent. British historian Alice Albinia has documented that incident in her […]

There’s an advertisement on television channels showing a housewife inviting a cab driver to have an Iftar meal with her family. Besides seeking blessings associated with the holy month, the invitation is also a gesture of appreciation as the cab driver has driven all the way from his home to return some grocery items the […]

The ongoing crackdown through FIA on liberal and democratic social media activists, supposedly to protect the security forces from unwarranted criticism through their online contents seems a flashback from 1999. Around the same time of the year in 1999, as imminent as just five months before the second government of Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by […]

Over the past weekend, Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan condemned his political opponents while comforting his supporters that he stood opposed to those who were ‘secular’ or ‘non-believing’; and scolded, “If you go out with a beer, you are unlikely to come across good people.” Many would downplay his expression as a part […]

It’s heartening that the DAWN Leaks stalemate — obviously blown out of proportion from the day one — is now settled. However, the entire episode offers several lessons for political parties and their leadership — particularly for the Pakistan People’s Party that so proudly lays claim to its democratic credentials. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) […]

Last October, daily Dawn carried an exclusive story about deliberations from a meeting on national security, chaired by the prime minister. The meeting was called to review the results of Pakistan’s diplomatic outreach to the world for countering India’s avowed plan to isolate it internationally in the backdrop of Pathankot Attack. India had claimed that […]

Since 2008 Pakistan military along with federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial governments have signed over a dozen truce agreements with TTP and its variants. These agreements ranged from with a particular group of TTP within a part of the FATA Tribal Agency to a broader agreement as we saw in Malakand Swat. While the incumbent […]

A local Urdu newspaper carried a lengthy feature on Mashal Khan, the student brutally murdered by a frenzied mob of fellow students on false allegations of blasphemy. Unfortunately, the feature wasn’t about how inhumanely he was lynched or how good a student he had been. Instead it was an apologia of how recklessly he brought […]