THE Pakistani taxpayer has to foot yet another bill. The government is paying a whopping $28.7m from the national treasury to a Washington-based asset recovery firm Broadsheet LLC because it reneged on a contractual agreement. At the centre of this debacle is the National Accountability Bureau that had signed the original agreement with the company to recover stolen assets stashed in various offshore accounts. The disagreement between the two parties ended up in court which…
Posts published in “Pak Media comment”
Terrorism strikes in Balochistan once again—at least 11 coal miners were killed in the Mach area of the province on Sunday after armed militants kidnapped them and took them to a nearby area before opening fire at close range. Initial investigation has revealed the attackers identified the miners as being from the Shia Hazara community and the gunmen took them away for execution, leaving others unharmed. Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack,…
by Major Adil Raja(R) in The Nation, January 04, 2021I could tell straight away that he, an officer, wanted to talk. He came in to see me as part of a four-member scholars syndicate working on their thesis, which is a part of their M. Phil in media studies. As a Major in the Pakistani Army, he belongs to the Marri tribe of Balochistan. Before he joined the Pakistan army, his father took up arms…
Countries worldwide understand the growing importance of the internet; some recognise it a fundamental right. The Punjab government thinks otherwise. It has permanently shut down Wi-Fi hotspots across different cities in the province. Punjab is rationalising such a poor decision by citing the lack of funds. The Punjab government’s decision is unfortunate considering that free internet was part of the larger initiative to digitise Pakistan. The biggest beneficiaries of these Wi-Fi spots were students and…
by Kamran Yousaf in The Express Tribune, January 4th, 2021.This writer is a senior foreign affairs correspondent at The Express TribuneYear 2020 was tumultuous, to say the least, for Pakistan on the foreign policy front. Not just relationship with India saw further deterioration but regional developments and realignment further compounded Pakistan’s challenges. The New Year started with Pakistan saying that India in a bid to divert attention from the multiple domestic problems might resort to…
For the vulnerable Hazara community of Quetta, peace only comes in short periods of time during a reign of terror that spans decades, and continues unabated. Terror revisited the vulnerable religio-ethnic community yesterday when armed men kidnapped 11 coal miners in Mach area of Balochistan, took them to nearby mountains, and opened fire at them from close range. Six of the miners died on the spot and five others on way to hospital. Sadly, Hazaras…
The details of the Broadsheet LLP case are a complete mess that Pakistan has been embroiled in for a long time. There is a penalty of millions of dollars hanging over the State’s head, and as it scrambles to find out who was to blame, more court judgments get decided against Pakistan’s favour and attack the accounts of our embassies upon our delay of payment. In this case, Broadsheet LLP was hired by NAB during…
by M Alam Brohi in Daily Times, Jan 3, 2021Sindh needs to have a new social and political Magna Carta shaking out of the primitive tribal, ethnic, social, economic, political and ideological clutches which have been impeding its journey to modernization. It does not have a growing middle class nor has made any strident progress into industrial economic structure. It is chronically dependent on the agricultural economy marred by growing gap between haves and haves-not.…
Political disagreements in the past between Afghanistan and Pakistan have affected bilateral trade activities the most. While the cross-border exchange of goods and services could prove enormous benefits to both neighbours’ economic stability, the usual outcome of trade talks do not offer anything valuable. Nonetheless, Pakistan’s government’s latest move to reduce value-based and regulatory duties on Afghanistan’s export items is a step forward in the right direction. Pakistan’s decision regarding Afghan exports depicts Islamabad’s sincere…
THANKFULLY, there are some quarters in Pakistan willing to use their authority to signal the unacceptability of forcibly disappearing people. Usually, for much of officialdom, the issue of missing people is the elephant in the room they had much rather ignore. On Friday, the Islamabad High Court took the unprecedented step of slapping a Rs10m fine on the authorities for their failure in tracing the whereabouts of Ghulam Qadir who has been missing since six…
Pakistan’s angry political culture
by Maleeha Lodhi in Dawn, January 4th, 2021The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.THE political culture of a country always evolves. But not necessarily in a positive direction. As elsewhere in the world, politics in Pakistan has long had unseemly dimensions. Political leaders have often acted from a zero-sum view of political competition and were far from respectful of their opponents. However, the political culture in the country today is…