The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than two decades now—men who had been stationed in Afghanistan in their youth are now sending their sons off to the same war. It has been termed the “forever war”, a conflict that seems to have no end, despite US Presidents being elected on the promise that they will pull out troops. The war that doesn’t appear to have an end might just be…
Posts published in “Pak Media comment”
The Freemasons Hall of Democracy located on 33 Davis Road Lahore has produced many marvels to detract the democratic order in the country, the latest being: ‘Jaag Punjab’. In the sixties, Mujib-ur-Rehman raised a similar slogan; ‘Jaag Bengal’ and even presented his ‘six points’ to break loose from the centre, which was thousands of miles away. In 1967, Bhutto presented a progressive solution based on Islamic socialism. He explained that the masses had been exploited…
by Arifa Noor in Dawn, January 5th, 2021The writer is a journalist.THE opposition has decided to keep opposing the government — just as it was in the first phase. The jalsas will not stop, here, there and everywhere, to keep politics simmering, and no more for the moment. The other decisions — which may indicate a boiling point — are yet to be specified or a date pinned, be it the resignations or the long…
There are reports that like the PPP, members of opposition PML-N are also considering contesting the Senate elections after all. This decision by the PDM alliance to boycott all electoral contests—the upcoming Senate vote included—was spearheaded by the leaders of PML-N in the first place. This is what makes this back and forth from within opposition circles a little strange; why is it that the parties cannot seem to make up their mind regarding the…
Editorial in Dawn, January 5th, 2021THE government wants to put a stop to the widespread smuggling of cheap, low quality Iranian petrol and diesel into the country through Balochistan. But it knows, deep down, that it can’t; at least not until it can force oil marketing companies to expand their retail network across the sparsely populated province and completely secure the long border with Iran to block the illegal trade routes. Neither of these two…
Editorial IN THE NEWS, January 5th, 2021In what can safely be described as one of the toughest times for the country, a huge chunk out of Pakistan’s national exchequer has gone to the Washington-based assets recovery firm Broadsheet LLC, which has won from a World Bank arbitration tribunal, the right to the cost – in millions of dollars – for a case filed during the Musharraf era with Broadsheet to recover millions of dollars from…
Editorial in Dawn, January 5th, 2021HORROR has revisited the beleaguered Shia Hazara community once again. Early Sunday morning, 11 coal miners, all residents of Quetta’s Hazara Town, were barbarically slain in Balochistan’s mountainous Bolan district in an attack claimed by the militant Islamic State group. The men were apparently asleep in their mudbrick dwelling close by the mine that they worked when the assailants burst in, held them at gunpoint, and bound and blindfolded them.…
The recent killing of 11 Hazara Shi’a coalminers in Balochistan, which has since then been claimed by the militant outfit Daesh, presents the biggest national security challenge that the state has faced in quite some time. The province was in a bad enough state as it was, despite heavy presence of all sorts of security agencies, and for an international terror organisation like Daesh to have taken root there firmly enough to carry out such…
Yet another day of horror has visited Quetta’s Hazara community. We have borne witness, over the years, to the unrelenting bloodshed the Shia Hazara community has had to face – as it gathers around coffins of its loved ones, brutally massacred on the streets, in buses, anywhere. We have seen protests. We have seen the Hazaras forced into a ghetto in Hazara Town. And we have seen all this repeated again and again and again.…
Lately, the police appear to have gone on a spree killing people with impunity. In the early hours of Saturday, a team of the Anti-Terrorism Squad gunned down a university student, aged 21, named Osama Satti in Islamabad. This is what happens when protectors become destroyers. The state entrusts the police with firearms to protect people; and in a democracy, in effect, it is the people who provide law enforcers with weapons. It is a…
Living without gas: edit in The News, Jan 6, 2021
While SAPM Nadeem Babar had pledged that people would not suffer this winter because of any shortage of gas or any reduction in pressure, both problems have occurred in all four provinces. People in Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan say they are forced to either burn wood to meet basic cooking needs, as not even stoves can be lit, or else depend on food bought from outside the home. At the same time, even…