A craven approach
The army chief’s speech on Martyrs Day about two weeks ago was addressed not only to the soldiers but indirectly also to the civilian government. It has been widely commented…
Dealing with Modi’s India
As India awaits the outcome of its election, Pakistan should calmly weigh the implications of the result for relations between the two countries and consider how – and when –…
For a new democracy
During the last 60 years we have seen successive democracies inter-mingled with military rules. It is a painful reality that the worst military rule in Pakistan was far better than…
Health reform in the air?
The 18th Amendment meant that the health sector has been returned to its original constitutional home in the provinces. This was a bold step undoing the centralised service delivery that,…
Legal questions
The MQM faces four official investigations in the UK. Where do those enquiries stand now? The first, into incitement to violence, relies on a series of televised speeches in which…
Foreign borrowing is for the elite
Every political party, when in opposition, criticises the sitting government for its poor economic management and reliance on foreign handouts to finance the budget and the balance of payments deficits.…
Dance away the war
How does one get one’s message across to a large audience when a cacophony of sounds drowns out one’s voice before it is heard? Politicians scream into microphones making aggressive…
Hostility is not an option
It has been more than one and a half decades since the advent of the nuclear age in South Asia but the leaders of both India and Pakistan seem to…
The central actor
Our political structure has seldom appeared more brittle. Political parties are at each other’s throats just as the religious groups always were; and now the provincial assemblies too seem at…
Qadri’s dreams and our nightmares
Those who listen to their dreams can be dangerous, to themselves and to others, because they traverse the treacherous boundaries between conscious and unconscious, sanity and insanity, myth and reality,…
