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Cultural resistance

MOB lynchings under the pretext of blasphemy have become commonplace. In exceptional circumstances, law enforcement officials intervene and take accused persons into custody before the mob sets upon them. But…

Fear of the people

SOME months ago, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) called a jirga in Gwadar. The aim was to highlight the many challenges of Balochistan such as underdevelopment and state excesses, including…

Countering terror — beyond labels

During the past few weeks, terrorists affiliated with the TTP), Al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) have been referred to by Pakistani authorities as Khawarij. This term,…

State vs. citizens

The twists and turns preceding and accompanying the holding of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement’s (PTM’s) Jirga in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) could not be described as anything but mind boggling. Initially,…

The whole scoop

ON a few people’s recommendations I watched the Netflix show Scoop about an Indian journalist Jagruti Pathak’s quest for front page stories and how, in that chase, she gets embroiled…

Taking back space

AN anti-MAGA America First family. That’s how an American friend recently described his family’s politics: vehemently anti-Trump and opposed to his ‘Make America Great Again’ exclusionist rhetoric, but still pro-US…

The fight to save the earth

IN her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein flags the most challenging threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. Sudha Bharadwaj…

Winning the argument

ON Independence Day this year, the custodians of power issued formal statements. As expected, the leaders praised the nation’s resilience in the face of economic hardships and pledged a brighter…

Trouble in Balochistan

EVENTS in Balochistan have been extremely disturbing of late. The past few days alone have brought tensions in the troubled region to a head. The brute force used by the…

The core-periphery bargain

DEPENDING on who delivers it, eulogies of Pakistan’s democracy tend to focus on a short-lived period of about a decade (or a decade and a half) after 2007 when power…