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After Baghdadi

After Baghdadi

On October 27, the US Special Operations forces killed the dreaded leader of the Islamic State (IS), Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in Syria’s Idlib province. This is the second major setback…

Bibi gets the war he wanted

I said and I said, even sneaked it into editorials where the editor has the last say, that Iran would most definitely retaliate even as experts and analysts loaded the…

Global terrorist threat

THE deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow last week, which left around 140 people dead, marks the expansion in the terrorist operations of the so-called Khorasan chapter of…

Bibi gets the war he wanted

I said and I said, even sneaked it into editorials where the editor has the last say, that Iran would most definitely retaliate even as experts and analysts loaded the…

As cursing won’t help, try reason

CURSING the enemy is a heritage of many belief systems, designed as a hex in some and simply venting the spleen in others. In countless legends, men have turned into…

Pakistan, Islam & education

WHEN a patient’s condition turns critical, doctors often say it is time for dua (prayer) more than dawa (medicine or treatment). Current Pakistani conversations across all classes about the state…

Vacuous governance

ARE Pakistanis justified in regarding Islamabad as superfluous to their governance? Do they need a president? The present in­­cumbent perches in a gilded cage, his wings clipped by the 18th…

Long war threat

WHEN the negotiators for the TTP threatened, by some accounts, a long war on Pakistan, I wonder whether their Pakistani interlocutors reminded them that in a long war it is…

The Iraq syndrome

IT has been common knowledge for more than 20 years that almost immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration was desperately keen to deploy that atrocious…

Glory and doom

WHY do some states see progress while others remain poor? Right-wing analysts link progress to the presence of the ‘right’ institutions, policies, and societal traits in rich states. But left-wing…