The sheikhs of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Politics has no shame. Why should the PTI be an exception only because it claims to be as pious as a Sheikh Sahab in Ghalib’s verse? There is no point…
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the PTI
The chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa surprised many when he declared that “Pathans are the PTI, and the PTI is Pathan.” One could expect the leadership of the ANP and…
Khyber mail
The single biggest issue uniting the opposition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is an intense dislike of Imran Khan. This perhaps suits the binary politics of Punjab. But in a province like…
Khyber mail
Part - II In the early years of the PTI’s tenure in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and following another public gaffe by Shaukat Yousafzai and Shah Farman, I asked a PTI insider…
For peace in Pakhtunkhwa
As luck would have it, Pakistan sits astride two sets of fault lines - the geo-tectonic fault lines and the geo-political fault lines. The epicentre is where these cross, and…
Path to resilience
WHEN I first arrived in Pakistan in 2005, it was in the wake of one of the most devastating disasters in the country’s history. The earthquake that struck on Oct…
Forgotten women
SEVENTY-SEVEN per cent of Pakistan’s more than 11 million farms are smaller than five acres, yet the country’s agricultural policies rarely reflect this reality. They fail to recognise that the…
Offshore riches, onshore realities
Pakistan’s oil and gas potential remains vast and underexplored, with the recently offered offshore exploration blocks in the Makran and Indus basins standing out as some of the most exciting…
Governing water
On December 8 (2025), the Asian Development Bank’s Asian Water Development Outlook 2025 stripped away any remaining ambiguity. More than 80 per cent of Pakistanis lack access to safe drinking…
Silence in the classroom
There is a class of professionals in Pakistan whose working lives bear little resemblance to the respect we claim to afford them. They work far beyond official hours, absorb responsibilities…
