All-weather terrorism
Almost 34,000. That’s the number of Pakistanis who have been killed in terrorist attacks between 2003 and 2011. The ISPR offers more numbers; 2,821: the number of Pakistan Army and…
High on grass
Z.A. Bhutto prescribed grass as the food that his people would merrily eat to mobilise resources for Pakistan’s bomb project, but he was not being original. Reports from North Korea…
Pneumonia
Hamburg: When an infant or young child experiences heavy coughing, rapid breathing and a fever over 38.5 degrees Celsius spread over several days parents should immediately take their child to…
Democracy
Since 9/11, I visited my mother four times here in the village of Polashpur in northeastern Bangladesh. She is 92 and lives in my ancestral home, surrounded by three fish…
Rebellions on the road to Damascus
The events rocking Rupert Murdoch’s media empire have been compared to the ‘Arab Spring’. That may be an exaggeration, but there is at least one respect in which the analogy…
The strategic agenda
The present flows from the past, and the future will emerge from the present. Syria’s sectarian war: The headline issue today and in the near future is likely to be…
Over the top
The good news is that in a few years we will be able to eliminate whatever education we have still left here and drown all the teachers so that this…
Keeping the faith
Not so long ago, the radio was in the news for all the wrong reasons. That was the medium chosen by the militant leader Fazlullah, who became known as Mullah…
Illusion and reality
THIS spring day, Lahore says it with flowers again. The green patch at the centre of the Liberty Roundabout is thronged with hundreds of the city’s residents who are there…
The HEC impact
The period between 2003 and 2008 saw amazing developments in the higher education sector of Pakistan, dramatically changing the landscape of our universities. In 2003, only 2.6 percent of youth…
