by Naziha Syed Ali in Dawn, August 17th, 2018 AUG 17, 1988, 3.51pm: Pak-1, with Gen Ziaul Haq, president and army chief of Pakistan on board, slams into the ground a few miles out of Bahawalpur, near the Sutlej river. Besides the pilots, Wing Commander Mashhood Hassan and Flight Lieutenant Sajid, there are 29 people on the massive Lockheed C-130 Hercules. They include, among others, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Akhtar Abdur Rahman,…
Posts published in “Pak Media comment”
by Habib Raja in The Express Tribune blogs, August 11th, 2018. The author is pursuing his PhD in political science at Maxwell School, Syracuse University. The results have apparently shown that, by and large, Pakistan does not vote Islamist. The 2018 Elections are over, giving a healthy but controversial victory to Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). These elections were, according to many independent correspondents, one of the “dirtiest” in living memory, mainly due to the…
report in The Express Tribune, July 13th, 2018. ISLAMABAD: Pakistan hosted on Wednesday an unprecedented meeting of heads of intelligence agencies from Russia, China and Iran to discuss counter terrorism cooperation, with particular focus on the buildup of Islamic State in turmoil-hit Afghanistan. Official sources in Islamabad confirmed that the participants held detailed discussions on joint measures to stop Afghan-based loyalists of the Middle Eastern terrorist group from threatening the territorial boundaries of the four…
edit in Dawn, July 14th, 2018 ISLAMABAD: The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) to Pakistan on Friday said it would not be able to thoroughly assess some key aspects of the electoral processes owing to delayed issuance of accreditations to them.In a statement issued on Friday, it said the mission had been operational in Islamabad since June 24. It was deployed after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) welcomed the presence of an…
A self-inflicted wound: Editorial in The Express Tribune, June 29th, 2018. The decision came late on Wednesday night and by Thursday morning and Pakistan was on the Financial Action Task Force(FATF) grey list following a plenary meeting in Paris. The FATF cannot itself impose sanctions it does not have that power, but countries affiliated with it can and therein lies the danger. The FATF has decided that Pakistan has failed to curb the financing of…
by Amir Wasim in Dawn, June 21st, 2018 ISLAMABAD: In reaction to Dawn’s statement disclosing disruption in its distribution, journalists’ bodies, politicians and rights activists across the country have expressed concern over attempts to gag print and electronic media by way of physical intimidation, abduction and torture of dissenting journalists and blocking of news channels. The statement issued by the newspaper’s management on Tuesday said: “The distribution of Dawn newspaper, for the past month, is…
by Asad Hussain in Daily Times, June 15th 2018. The writer is a Quetta-based columnist and an independent researcher. The word democracy is derived from two Greek words: “Demos: meaning people and” Kratos “which means power. In general, it means the rule of the people, where they select their own representatives who then form a government based on the will of the people. However, in Pakistan, democracy seems to mean something else. Here parliamentarians take…
By JUNAID ZAHID in The Express Tribune, May 14th, 2018. The writer is a researcher at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is a country facing depleting water resources mainly due to climate change and poor water resource management. Failure to estimate the actual water demand will hamper effective water management and overall socio-economic stability in Pakistan. Moreover, water resources (Indus River System) have potential to generate 59,000 megawatts of hydro energy in Pakistan.…
The writer, a former ambassador, is adjunct faculty Georgetown University and Syracuse University. WHEN should a country become aware that its foreign policy is past its shelf life and that change has long been due? Here are some telltale signs. You start having trouble with all or most of your neighbours. And instead of making new friends you make enemies. Your friends are treating you not only as an ally but also as a threat.…
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad. The onset of March is a pleasant time in Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s impressive capital. The long, cool desert nights give way to temperate sunrises. One can easily misconstrue this to be any sprawling American megalopolis basking in the luminosity of iridescent lights from the window seat of an airplane. The cars beneath look like lightened ants synchronized in a direction. But all this…
What the Prime Minister missed in his speech: op-ed
by Ahmad Faruqui in Daily Times, Aug 21, 2018. The writer has written, Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan In his maiden speech to the nation, Imran Khan focused on a variety of social, cultural and economic problems facing the country. He talked about the need to get rid of corruption, poverty, illiteracy, dependency on foreign loans, and the budget deficit. He also referred to the need to end the lavish style of the ruling…