Remembering Benazir
December 27, 2012 marks the fifth death anniversary of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, the great visionary leader, who resisted with great courage the agenda of neo-colonial forces - pushing Pakistan to…
Winds of change
Winds of change are blowing across Pakistan. With the advent of the New Year, there is a twinkle of hope in many eyes that 2013 will mean the beginning of…
Lone rangers in the drone zone
For several months last year, I was at the receiving end of occasional emails that conformed to a particular pattern. They all began with a reasonably uncontroversial critique of the…
Devolution the saviour – I
A tumultuous month ago, Sindh was pushed back a century and a half to a system of bureaucratic rule through antiquated laws that the British had used for ruling their…
In transit
As I write this on the terrace restaurant of a hotel in the hills in Sri Lanka, there’s a small river tumbling over huge boulders a few feet away. The…
Endangered heritage
The Indus Valley Civilisation, stretching over the area that today constitutes Pakistan, is probably the oldest known to mankind. From the remote northern reaches of the Hindu Kush mountains to…
No white heat revolutions
Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson – twice elected – famously observed in 1964 that a week was a long time in politics. True to those words, the twist came…
When bad men combine…
When Marx spoke of the withering away of the state, he envisaged society progressing to a higher stage – a sort of classless utopia. When Pakistanis speak of their state…
Kerry-Lugar concerns
One of my British professors once remarked that “you Pakistanis are not intelligent; you have native intelligence, and act clever”. I obviously hated this remark but after seeing the performance…
Our shoulders for others
The WikiLeaks episode and the undiplomatically harsh statement of the British prime minister in India, blaming Pakistan for the export of terror in the region and the world, must serve…
