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…
Back in the news
“YOU can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Those famous lyrics are going to haunt American officials after next month’s US presidential elections as Washington…
The lethal troika
MANY factors were responsible for the defeat of the erstwhile Soviet Union and then the US in Afghanistan. A common factor was the existence of a combination of extremely resilient…
The making of HuT
IN January 2024, the British government labelled Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) as the 80th proscribed terrorist organisation, raising significant questions about balancing the protection of democratic institutions against subversive ideologies and…
No talks with TTP
THOSE in favour of negotiating with the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan mistakenly believe that the group is a legitimate insurgent movement. The Afghan Taliban see them as a comparable entity, deserving…
Finnish recipe
FINLAND has been ranked as the world’s happiest country for the seventh straight year. It is also the 13th safest in the world. In the Global Terrorism Index, it is…
