Tag Archives: Pakistan

The exercise of universal franchise in the war conditions prevailing in Afghanistan has been a tremendous landmark, not only for the Afghans themselves but for countries like Pakistan on the receiving end of every evil conceivable emanating from Afghanistan for nearly 35 years. With two of the eight presidential candidates on course to get nearly 80 percent of the partially …

Pakistan was in the grip of rumors on March 31st that the country’s former military ruler might leave the country any time. According to one report a small business jet from a Gulf Arab country had arrived in Islamabad and waited for an unidentified passenger at the Noor Khan  Air Force Base in Rawalpindi.   The news came hours after …

Within hours of the Islamabad court carnage on March 3, Pakistan’s chief justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani vowed to take the culprits to task. The next day, he ordered the installation of security cameras at all court premises.   The prime minister (Nawaz Sharif) expressed his displeasure over the attack, saying “it does not augur well for peace talks.” The Tehrik-e-Taliban …

  Pakistan’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf appeared before the special court in Islamabad on Tuesday, February 18. He, however, could not be indicted in a high treason case at the request of his legal team, which pleaded the court to first decide the issue of its jurisdiction for holding the trial and its plea for transferring  the trial to a military …

Media in Pakistan entered 2014 under the old threat to journalists’ lives. Caught in bloody crossfire between blind state power and extremist terror, journalism has always been a tightrope walk in Pakistan. Media by default is part of this war for being the sole platform to showcase the bloody drama in newspaper columns and on the airwaves.   Last year …

The year 2013 will go down in history books as a year of wars, natural disasters, political upheavals, economic slowdowns and stagnations, polarization and terrorism. The year’s lows were still better than 2012, especially on world economic front. It still faces huge challenges but early signs of betterment are good news for the downtrodden around the globe.   The US …

The negotiations between Iran and the west have not yet produced a deal. At the same time, the BBC’s Mark Urban, a defense correspondent, has unearthed a worrying connection between Iran moving towards the nuclear bomb threshold and a Saudi Arabian decision to produce a nuclear bomb with Pakistani help. “Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects and …

The small, portly man was laid out in bed that autumn morning in 2009, wrapped in a shawl, the intravenous line in his arm carrying ever-waning hope that he might yet beat back acute diabetes and a crippling renal disorder. He had come home to his father-in-law’s home in the small village of Makeen just days earlier, family sources would …

Two questions have increasingly taken centre-stage in discussions about what might happen in Afghanistan after United States withdrawal in 2014. One, if it will become a proxy battlefield for India and Pakistan, the two big South Asian rivals, and two, if anything can be done to prevent this. William Dalrymple, for instance, wrote in an essay for Brookings Institution this …

  About half a kilometer (.3 miles) from Karachi’s famous Banaras Chowk, to the left side of Banaras Nullah, stands a tiny old shop. The exterior is far from impressive; the interior even less so. A small space has been cleared out on the floor to provide seating; two old exhaust fans are tied to the roof in place of …