Pakistan silently watches the rise of Narendra Modi

My analysis – Pakistan: Cautiously pessimistic about Modi’s expected rise to power – first published here: A decade of UPA-Congress rule in India ends…

The Wrong Kind of Pakistani – Ali Dayan Hasan

On the invention of “the liberal extremist” and the attempted assassination of a friend. By Ali Dayan Hasan On March 28 in Lahore, my…

Khabar se Agey, Raza Rumi on Karachi problems

Raza Rumi’s analysis on the issues of Karachi including the recent report by International Crisis Group (ICG). Rumi says there is now a need…

Raza Rumi says that Karachi operation not the ultimate solution, we have to build institutions

Raza Rumi says that the sucess of the operation in Karachi can only be guranteed if all the stakeholders are taken into consideration. However,…

Raza Rumi says OBL Commission fails to serve its purpose

Raza Rumi’s analysis of the OBL comission report. He says the report has not clearly identified who is responsible for the incident.…

Saving a rocky relationship

The killing of Osama bin Laden is another hurdle to tackle, and we are in a critical moment of another reevaluation of the Pakistan-US…

Taliban suicide bomber dressed as schoolboy kills 31 army cadets

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent, The Independent Pakistan’s army suffered a damaging blow after a suicide bomber believed to be in his teens and…

The body is manifest; Life’s spirit is hidden

When a dispute arises as to the ownership of the husk, the husk belongs to the one who possesses the kernel. The heavenly sphere…

Amankaar Tehrik (peace movement) in Pakistan challenges the status quo

Courtesy Fouzia Saeed DISSPELLING THE MYTHS ABOUT TALIBAN Myth: The root cause of Terrorism is extreme poverty and lack of education Reality: This is…

Struggle for the soul

– Ayeda Naqvi While it is tempting to give in to anger, it is more important to take a deep breath and remember that…

Who will win the game?

I have been amazed at the reaction that my little piece, “Policy shifts not war” published on these pages on Dec 4 has generated…

Policy shifts not war

First published in The NEWS The dastardly attacks in Mumbai have irritated the old wounds and replayed the familiar, jingoistic tunes across the Indo-Pak…

Revelations of war crimes and moralizing idealism

By Charles Bogle (found here) The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, by Ron Suskind. New…

South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs

South Asian Cooperation and the Role of the Punjabs. Tridivesh Singh Maini. New Delhi: Siddharth Publications , 2007 South Asian Cooperation and the Role…

Kashmir,Azadi and Arundhati Roy

UPDATE: Arundhati’s brutally frank piece where she asks this question: The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation…

National identity sans freedom

A few quotes from this article in the Hindustan Times – incidentally it also includes what I rambled…. Freedom means everything. But I’m not…

A ‘counter-view’ of suicide-bombing

The victims are not exclusively Americans and Jews but in countries like Iraq and Pakistan, Muslims themselves. What is even more traumatising "which arouses…

The Other Half – divided hearts meet in Kashmir

Thanks to Beena Sarwar’s updates, I read this moving account, THE OTHER HALF – in ‘Srinagar diary’ by Kalpana Sharma. … the Indo-Pak peace…

India-Pakistan Peace Train (the journey must continue)

One day after the tragic bomb blast on the peace train, life goes on. The resilience of people in our part of the world…

The Story of Gul Badshah – Z. Nigah

Zehra Nigah’s beautiful poem for an Afghan boy, a victim of the war that was waged in the name of world peace but that…