The Kurram question
Kurram has emerged as a sectarian tinderbox reminiscent of the turbulent years of 2007-08. The disturbances that began in 2023 with an attack on a school have escalated rapidly in…
A big transition
IT is hard to imagine how someone changes the course of their life — more so when that person is a top jihadist leader on the world’s most-wanted terrorist lists…
Contours of the new Middle East
HOW and why the Assad regime collapsed like a house of cards in a mere 11 days, after battling foreign-sponsored rebel groups, including IS and Al Qaeda, for some 13…
Why the numbers matter
NO one knows the exact number of madressahs in Pakistan — not the government, not the madressah leadership, and not independent agencies. Each entity offers its estimates, claiming theirs to…
A ceasefire in a land of conflict
District Kurram has long been embroiled in conflict, driven by tribal land disputes and exacerbated by sectarian tensions. The region is home to both Sunni and Shia populations, with tribes…
Cui bono?
It didn’t take long for headlines out of Syria to turn, did it? Locals that set fire to Hafez al Assad’s grave and celebrated the “dawn of freedom” could ignore…
Struggling against terrorism
IT has been a decade since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, which killed some 150 students and staff in December 2014. It was the darkest moment in Pakistan’s…
Gamification of violence
ON Aug 28, police station Banr in Swat came under a militant attack in which one policeman lost his life and two others were wounded. Investigations revealed that a tech-savvy…
Dream of political stability
IT is often believed that engineering political stability is the solution to a nation’s economic and security challenges. The idea of this so-called stability is used to justify the suppression…
Terror in Dukki
RECENTLY, a horrific incident of terror took place in the far-off district of Dukki in Balochistan, where 21 poor miners, mostly Pakhtuns, working in the coal mines, were mercilessly slaughtered by…
