A royal visit
His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s royal visit showered immense benevolence on Pakistan as Iran and India flayed Islamabad over attacks in their countries. What made the visit…
More than a personality clash
THE civil-military saga continues to be the biggest story coming out of Pakistan in the aftermath of the Kartarpur opening. Many of the guests invited for the ceremony haven’t stopped talking about all…
Pakistan’s Tehran overture
The government’s efforts to reinvigorate ties with neighbouring Iran are a welcome development. COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s recent visit to Iran is particularly significant for two reasons. First, it…
Central and West Asia in 2017
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan – had their own dictatorships. All of them…
Trotting out traitors
Nawaz Sharif is no imbecile. To say that he was tricked into an interview where he let his mouth run is to deny him agency. But that’s our cultural ethic.…
Coalition options for Pakistan
When the Arab coalition was in the making, I wrote in an article on these pages (‘Coalition politics’, January 19) which stated that “another aspect of the coalition is that,…
The holy-cow factory
Somewhere in this land of ours, there must be a prodigious factory dedicated to manufacturing holy cows. How else do you explain the endless supply of this product throughout our…
Remembering the Peshawar tragedy
The valiant struggle, waged by Benazir Bhutto, to counter the forces of terrorism, was revived by Tahira Qazi, Principal of Peshawar Army Public School on December 16, 2014, one of…
De facto to de jure
Maulana Tariq Jameel said it best at the Supreme Court’s population conference: “Our judges are such [a] blessing as they keep doing what they aren’t responsible for. God Bless them”.…
Legal eye: The slippery slope
We seem to be on the slippery slope that leads down to praetorian rule. Nawaz Sharif is down but not out. It is hard to deny that he is still…
