The rules of the game
It is heartening to hear CoAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa emphasise upholding the rule of law and supremacy of the constitution. In an indirect manner, he also indicated that the…
Setting the rules of engagement
Henry Kissinger once remarked that: “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”. Though most American political and economic institutions stress on liberal democratic values, Washington has continued to…
Banking on military justice
In 2015, when parliament passed the 21st Amendment that allowed constitutionally protected military courts to try terrorism suspects, many reluctant lawmakers offered their mea culpas. Indeed, how can one forget…
No more military courts
Accprding to official sources, the government has decided to table a bill to extend the ‘exceptional’ use of military courts for another three years. Reportedly, the draft amendment would give…
Rule of law – but who rules?
When we met him in Islamabad last Saturday, he looked quite sombre with a sense of disappointment about him. Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif seemed to be weighing his options either…
Autocratic rulers
The Hussain Haqqani article admitting to his issuing unlimited visas to US Special Ops, CIA and all manner of black ops personnel without going through the normal channels of security…
Military courts: a mistake
On December 27, 2014, only 11 days after the APS attack in Peshawar, I wrote my weekly entry in this column under the title, ‘Military courts: a defence’. In the…
Semi-civilian rule
In the middle of the self-imposed tension of holding the PSL final in Lahore, and the attendant consequences of deployment of resources to manage the risks that we ourselves had…
Rule by contract
Recently, an opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly strongly criticised the provincial government for the alleged transfer of parks’ management to multinational firms. He thought this task could have been…
When radicals rule
A nuclear state with a huge population and army falling to extremists has been America’s nightmare about Pakistan for long. Ironically, it becomes a reality this week, not in Pakistan…
