Reclaiming Lyari’s soul
News moves quickly through the tight alleyways of Lyari. Usually, the chatter is about a local football match, a Balochi poetry session or the death of a community elder. Lately,…
Legacy unbroken
December 27 is not merely a date on the calendar; it is an unhealed wound etched deep into our national history. Exactly 18 years ago, the Daughter of the East,…
Trump’s NSS 2025
The US’ newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) under the Trump administration marks one of the most significant recalibrations of American strategic thought in decades. Although an NSS is never…
Rise of state-centricity
The Trump Administration’s US National Security Strategy (NSS), released last month, has made overt what had long remained covert: America’s ongoing dialectic between its desire to assert its imperialism on…
Joint economic command
Across Asia, the Gulf and Africa, the fastest-growing states run their economies through a ‘Joint Economic Command’. Vietnam does it. South Korea does it. Rwanda, Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, the…
Weak state pillars
OUR state is a delicate structure consisting of diverse ethnicities and provinces that preceded its creation. They elected to join, in fact create, Pakistan in 1947. A reflection, though under…
Flying coffins
IT takes courage to fly, whether as a pilot (or as a passenger) in a metal coffin, assembled, as the astronaut Alan Shepherd put it, “from hundreds of parts supplied…
Going back in time
WITH a series of significant constitutional amendments as well as de facto changes in governance, a distinctive political system is taking shape in Pakistan. The fact that it is authoritarian goes without…
Haunted states
THE commemoration a fortnight ago of the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s demise served as a reminder that the fascist dictatorship established in Spain in the late 1930s had endured…
Centre vs province
A GREAT deal of confusion is being stirred around the question of provincial allocations under the National Finance Commission award. A couple of things must be borne in mind when advancing…
