Published in DAWN
March 18, 2013
The large size of Pakistan’s ‘unofficial’ or ‘informal’ economy is sometimes cited as an indicator of the country’s resilience and its potential Read more »
Published in DAWN
March 18, 2013
The large size of Pakistan’s ‘unofficial’ or ‘informal’ economy is sometimes cited as an indicator of the country’s resilience and its potential Read more »
Published in the Express Tribune
That militancy is the biggest near term threat Pakistan faces is obvious. What may not be obvious is that the roots of militancy go deeper than just Pakistan’s links with the Afghan Talibans or its support of various other militant groups. Read more »
There have been calls for Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s resignation after his conviction by the Supreme Court. While Nawaz Sharif has demanded resignation, Imran Khan has threatened a tsunami march on Islamabad. Read more »
Is Pakistan’s middle class around 70 million (or nearly 40% of Pakistan’s population) as a recent article published in the daily DAWN suggested? After the publication of this article titled “Consumption conundrum” by Sakib Sherani (an ex-Banker), a former World Bank official Shahid Javed Burki writing in the Express Tribune Read more »
As I watched reports on GEO TV showing relatives of Dr Khalil Chisti eating sweets to celeberate his release in India, Read more »
The military establishment and its supporters as well as the PPP government’s interior minister Rehman Malik accuse “foreign powers” of fomenting trouble in Balochistan. Rehman Malik told Pakistan Senate on Feb. 9 that some external powers were conspiring to detach Balochistan from Pakistan. Read more »
It is hardly a surprise that a Kangroo court – otherwise known as Anti-terrorism Court (ATC) in Faisalabad handed jail sentences of 490 years in total to six labour leaders from on November 1, 2011. Read more »
Published in the Business Recorder
While the 9/11 was a big tragedy and caused the loss of around 3000 human lives, it is an undeniable fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis Read more »
Published Business Recorder, Oct. 1, 2011
The government and the Army think they can make up for decades of blunders of an adventurous foreign policy by convening an All-Parties Conference. Imran Khan thinks we can tell America to mind its own business. Liberals think all the faults lie with Pakistani establishment. We thrive on half-truths and wishful thinking but we cannot formulate a serious strategy like that. Read more »
Dr. Zulfiqar Mirza’s explosive and unprecedented press conference was the first of its kind in Pakistan’s history. As dumb-founded millions watched, it was the probably the first time a senior provincial minister accused a federal interior minister Read more »
5th July 1977 was one of the darkest days of Pakistan’s history. Zia’s coup against Bhutto sealed Pakistan’s fate. The coup came after a right-wing violent movement – partly funded by the Americans – had subsided and its more moderate leaders had signed an agreement with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. According to Prof. Ghafoor Ahmed, the secretary general of the opposition alliance, Read more »
There was no indication of whether the earlier account of Sheikh Essa’s arrest in Faisalabad was wrong. If it was right, how did Sheikh Essa reach Syria in 2009? Unfortunate and absolutely horrid and condemnable as Saleem Shahzad’s death was, it would be a mistake to take his stories on face value. Despite his apparently deep contacts with the militants (partly due to his former association with Jamaat-e-Islami), the glaring contradictions in his reports and the sweeping judgements contained therein do not reflect well on the credibility of either him or Asia Times online. Read more »
The photo that caused raucous in the United States: at the G20 Summit, President Obama bowed before the Saudi King and kissed his hand. Read more »
I had no idea that Ayaz Amir was capable of writing such a shallow analysis until I read his column titled “The Long Sulk” in the News International of June 17, 2010. Read more »
There was no indication of whether the earlier account of Sheikh Essa’s arrest in Faisalabad was wrong. If it was right, how did Sheikh Essa reach Syria in 2009? Unfortunate and absolutely condemnable as Saleem Shahzad’s death was, it would be a mistake to take his stories on face value. Read more »
Secretary of the State Hillary Clinton recently said Pakistan needed to understand that anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories will not end its problems. I agree. But what would help? Many things to start with, but American disengagement most definitely will. Read more »
The deadly and brazen attack on Pakistan Navy’s base in Karachi on May 22 has dealt another humiliating blow to the reputation and morale of Pakistan’s armed services. According to the initail accounts the small group of militants, as few as six, Read more »
DAWN has released Wikileaks cables about the role of US ground troops in Pakistan. I would say, my fellow liberal Pakistanis smell coffee! I had no illusions about the Jamaatis and forget about Imran Khan but liberals should wonder if they got anything right since 9/11? I would say hardly. They have been criticising the military leadership for talking about sovereignty in relation to the US drone attacks while ignoring that the presence of foreign militants which, according to them, is also a violation of sovereignty. Read more »
Time is running out fast. Pakistani Generals’ latest love affair with the United States that started after 9/11 seems to be heading for an acrimonious break up after exchanges of charges of betrayal. The US tolerated Pakistan’s duplicity (we cannot point to America’s because it is a super power and nor can we try Bush for war crimes) from day one Read more »
Never before Pakistan has cut such a humiliated and sorry face before the whole world and its military leadership looked so incompetent and stupid. The unilateral commando action of the US forces to kill Osama has exposed more than the incompetence or complicity of Pakistan’s military establishment. Read more »
Osama is dead, Obama is enjoying a surge in popularity, Pakistani military high command is hiding in embarrassment, and the big question for Pakistan is where do we go from here? Read more »
A lot of statistics are just that statistics but some can be quite revealing. While there is almost a consensus that Pakistan spends too much on defense, the common perception its economic development is constrained by an unfvaourable business environment or high subsidies on fuel or food is not supported by the World Bank indicators for 2009.
First published October 2010, Updated April 2011
Admiral Mike Mullen (first from left), the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Pervez Kayani (third from left) and next to him, the I.S.I. Chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha (then Major Gen. and Director General Military Operations) aboard the U.S. naval carrier Abraham Lincoln Read more »
I have suspected for long that the United States has been conducting false flag operations in Pakistan through covert operatives. I wrote on my blog on January 10, 2008, Could CIA be conducting Operation Gladio in Pakistan? Read more »An edited version of this article appeared in DAWN of March 21, 2011
The Army establishment may or may not have won this round of the turf battle with the CIA Read more »
One of the objectives of Kerry-Lugar aid bill for aid to Pakistan is to “support for promotion of a responsible, capable,and independent media.”According to this RT TV broadcast of March 10, 2010, Read more »
Shahbaz Bhatti was a principled and brave politician. Which General ever stood up for his beliefs and sacrificed his life? Salmaan was killed by a fanatic. Whether he acted alone or not, we may never find out. But Shahbaz Bhatti’s killing and the pattern of claims and condemnation is rather peculiar and deserves thought. Read more »
The most important fact to come out in the open is not that Raymond Davis is a CIA contractor, but that it is beyond any doubt that he was a covert operations person, as has now been officially acknowledged by the US. Read more »
Published by the Business Recorder
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has blasted the leadership in both Afghanistan and Pakistan for the poor economic growth, corruption, energy shortages and political instability that are plaguing their people. Read more »
Pakistan’s polity is so polarized that the case of Raymond Davis has become an highly emotive issue with the ‘liberals’ and the ‘ghairat brigades’ taking positions Read more »
I just read Najam Sethi’s column in the News International in which he argues that “we must try and fix the system incrementally, without derailing it.” He seems to be pinning hopes on an “independent Supreme Court”, and a “broad agreement between the government and the opposition over the essential elements of an agenda for reform”. This sounds more like a comment from a western government Read more »
The cat is out of the bag. For months, I have suspected that the ISI is back to its old game of using the paid-mullahs to exploit the religious sentiments of the masses to destabilize the country and capture it again. They did it in 1977 using the PNA and nizam-mustafa movement.The ISI used the pretext of Salman Rushdie’s book Read more »
While we mourn the murder of Salmaan Taseer by a religious lunatic, let’s get this straight. In the recent history, no country in the Muslim world or the developing world has been able to counter the rise of right-wing radicals or extremism when the secular or liberal parties were led by discredited, corrupt, and incompetent politicians. That is lesson number one. Read more »
Dear Mr. President
Today is the third death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto. You have completed over two years in the office and yet there is no sign that the people would ever find out who killed your wife, the mother of Bakhtawar, Bilawal, and Asifa, and the country’s most popular political leader who twice served as prime minister. Don’t blame the media if you don’t bring her killers to justice. Read more »
I have followed the VikiLeaks revelations relating to Pakistan with a yawn but was amused by how papers like the Jang, the News, the Express Tribune, the Nation, and some others rushed to print and splashed agencies’ planted material across their front pages even when the source was questionable and had dubious credentials to say the least. Some of these newspapers are so lazy Read more »
The following cable by former Ambassador Anne Patterson is a serious indictment of the US policy on Pakistan and confirms the view that it is the Pentagon and CIA, and not the State department diplomats, who call the shots. It is therefore hardly surprising that Anne Patterson wasn’t aware of the weight thrown in by them in favour of Kayani’s selection as Army Chief. Something, Sir Simon Jenkins of Guardian wrote as far back as January 2008. Read more »
I attended a dinner last week in Singapore where I had a chance to listen to Ian Bremmer who is the President of Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk research and consulting firm. Ian is quite a likeable, almost cute looking guy. He did his Phd in political science from Stanford when he was not even 25 and now teaches at Columbia. He founded Eurasia Group with just $25,000 and grew it into the world’s pre-eminent political risk consulting firm. He appeared relaxed in an open neck shirt on a rather humid Singapore evening. Read more »
An edited version of this appeared in the Express Tribune, Oct. 25, 2010
Pakistan needs to revive its ailing and stagnating economy now and control galloping inflation. The chronic issues of fiscal profligacy and narrow tax base have assumed crisis levels and the government does not have any plan except to carry around the begging bowl to the western capitals. Read more »
Sometimes, you can only get so much upset. It has now got to the point where it is getting so ridiculous that one can laugh, albeit with tears. Pakistan’s political and governance landscape presents the picture of a bad drama Read more »
The Wall Street Journal is reputed for its coverage of markets, business, and economy. But it is also a conservative paper and in terms of political orientation, not much more than a mouthpiece of the Washington establishment. Mr. Bret Stephens is the deputy editor of its editorial page (International) and its foreign affairs columnist. On June 8, 2010, he wrote a column ‘Israel and its Liberal Friends”. While referring to the Flotilla mission to Gaza and to cover up for Israel’s criminal and murderous attack on the peace mission, he had used the now familiar tactic of raising the bogey of Al Qaeda. Read more »
