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Taseer’s Real Killers

Taseer’s real killers

Salmaan Taseer was a good Pakistani, a self-made businessman who did not use his politics to create illegal wealth or stash it abroad like most other politicians. He revolutionised telecommunications,…

The precarious lives of politicians

FORMER prime minister Imran Khan was shot in the leg during an assassination attempt last week while participating in the long march. He survived. But Pakistani politicians seldom survive assassination attempts, which…

Revisiting the CoD

IN recent years, the Charter of Democracy has become the holy grail of our politics — perhaps even a term that, Camelot-like, denotes nostalgia for the golden years post-2008. No wonder,…

Can’t take them on

One of the most dreadful periods I have lived through, as a citizen and as a journalist, was in the aftermath of the assassination of Salmaan Taseer in the first…

What have we become?

From the murders of Mashal Khan, Priyantha Kumara, Rashid Rehman, Sabeen Mahmud, Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti to the targeting of localities belonging to religious minorities and the attacks and…

A nation of angry people

Anger, unfortunately, is deeply entrenched in Pakistan. In its worst form, it surfaced in the crowded Ichhra Bazaar last week when a young woman wearing a shirt with some Arabic…

A good conspiracy

IF one thing’s true about human nature, it’s that everyone loves a good conspiracy. The stakes are sensational, the ending is grand, and most of the characters are faceless aliens…

Descent into madness, barbarism

The events of August 16, 2023 in Jaranwala have evoked an unusual chorus in harmony of condemnation. And so they should. But let us attempt a balance sheet of the…

Connecting the dates

Where were you on May 9, 2023? This is one journalistic device to bring up a particular event for comment and interpretation, an event that may have touched the lives…

A bonfire of literary festivals

What use do we have for the poets, writers and, in a general sense, intellectuals whose business it is to teach us to think, to feel and to dream? Well,…