As if we needed anything to be left to the imagination of what constitutes an Islamic state and what ultimate end it will have, ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has already had a couple of executions via beheading to...
For Imran Khan’s supporters, taking bravado, uncompromising positions is a virtue. For others not blinded by the cult of the ex-cricketer it is what has caused a loss of over 600 billion rupees to the brittle economy, weakened a frail democracy that had just begun...
When one’s voice is muted, it helps to be introspective. It helps to wonder if it was silenced by society and the general construct of what is acceptable speech or if you had given up on your beliefs voluntarily, the equivalent of slicing your tongue....
Step into the future. Here is a chip that you can place at the top of your spine in the base of your head and it will record, and perhaps even publish, your thoughts and your beliefs. The world would self-destruct. Civilisation would only exist...
Published in Daily Times on July 13 2014 Operation Zarb-e-Azb has cost Pakistan at least two billion dollars thus far. This, according to one of Pakistan’s most astute military commentators who is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army, Samson Simon Sharaf. The operation’s effectiveness is now...
Published in Daily Times on July 6th 2014. Chances are that about 600,000 of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), also known as the internally ‘disowned’ people of North Waziristan, will need more than a few tonnes of wheat, which the army is supplying to them in...
Published in Daily Times on June 29th 2014. The Punjab police’s brutality against Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) workers was unpardonable. It led to 11 killed and over 80 injured. With all the hunters of our people out there, the police being part of the...
Published in Daily Times on June 22nd 2014. Now that the army, backed by the government, albeit hesitatingly, has waged war on the terrorists, one feels like there is some oxygen to fill one’s lungs with. The question is if Operation Zarb-e-Azb is merely a...
D-Chowk is the protest spot of Islamabad. It looks like a place where the earth has churned up concrete barriers and barbed wires. On one of the barriers, someone had graffitid: ‘Stop Shia genocide’. A few days later, it was black charcoaled, later it faded and...
Published in Daily Times on June 8th 2014 Acid burned, honour killed and choked, the Pakistani women who make the headlines are literally out of a nightmare. Like Farzana Parveen who recently was murdered by her own family with bricks outside the Lahore High Court, there are...