As change seeps in
When you travel from Karachi into the interior of Sindh (a colloquialism for rural Sindh, or pretty much anywhere outside of Karachi or Hyderabad) the landscape immediately changes as soon…
Realignment of ties
The most serendipitous emerging foreign policy event for Pakistan, provided its leadership has foresight, is the ongoing power realignment within the Muslim world, as international engagement with Iran looms on…
Mourning a villain
The death of a man who waged war against the Pakistani state and was responsible for the slaughtering of thousands of innocent men, women and children should have come as…
Militants die young
Life expectancy among militants is low – and lower if someone is a commander. But there seems to be no dearth of men willing to step forward and replace their…
Nakhra for sugar daddy
It is perfectly possible to be anti-TTP and anti-drone simultaneously, without making any moral equivalence between the two. The TTP is a murderous cult that deserves no sympathy. Drones operated…
Why isn’t the national flag flying at half-mast?
And why hasn’t a ten-day mourning period been declared for Hakeemullah Mehsud? To hear the tearful reaction from some of our politicos and television pundits it would seem it was…
Managing economic risk
Having entered its sixth month in office, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government has to deal decisively with a number of urgent economic challenges even as it has taken the necessary…
Outmoded counsel
FOR a brief moment last month, it seemed as if there might be the stirrings of a progressive wind blowing through the musty corridors of the Council of Islamic…
Need to rethink policing
THE public is beginning to realise that the police force cannot deliver what it promises. In Police for the Future, David Bayley asserts that dependence on law enforcement for crime-control…
Rethinking government
THE most critical constraint today to the effective functioning of the government is the latter`s overextended mandate, beyond its core role, and the competence level of its worl(force. The institutional…
