Hope never dies
RINGING out the old and ringing in the new at the turn of the year invariably involves wishful thinking. Mostly, the detritus of the recent past flows pretty much seamlessly…
Electoral fantasy
WILL the dissolution of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies be accompanied by the announcement of an election date? There has been considerable speculation of late around the controversial new…
Pakistan’s universities at 75
AT birth, Pakistan inherited Punjab University in Lahore, the only among the Raj’s 16 universities. Seventy-five years later, there are 120-plus officially recognised universities. Roughly an equal number of non-recognised…
Island in the sun
BY 1983, it had been eight years since US troops had finally departed from Indochina. Much to the consternation of some in the military-industrial-political hierarchy, the so-called Vietnam syndrome —…
Leadership matters
RECEP Tayyip Erdogan has won a third presidential term. His dominance of the Turkish political scene for over two decades has been marked both by enviable successes and trying challenges.…
Chasing mirages
THE last time an army chief met the business community in the midst of a sharply deteriorating economy, we saw a string of policy gimmicks emerge as attempts to redress…
Fighting terrorism
COMPREHENDING the nature of a terrorist threat is essential for countering or physically eliminating it, as well as for preventing its recurrence. A terrorist threat comes from a complex system…
Stagnation of political sphere
A FEW weeks ago, my father, who often catches up on news programmes he has missed via YouTube, began to watch one such show. Almost 15 minutes into the programme…
An economic catastrophe
PAKISTAN has been brought to the edge of an economic catastrophe that it has not seen for decades. While the recent ‘constitutional fraud’, and the political crisis created by the…
No joy in Dhaka
THERE is a sense of irony in watching tanks and armoured personnel carriers on the streets of Dhaka, defending a government that traces its lineage to the forces that resisted…
