Tag Archive | Pakistan
Let’s Talk Civil-Military, NOW!
This article appeared in Daily Times on Monday January 30, 2012 as my weekly column BAAGHI Atiqa Odho needs to change her name. Not only her name but also the prefix if she wants to avoid further humiliation that she possibly could not and would not want, just because she is a woman and does [...]
Why no outrage against Taliban?
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) executed 15 kidnapped members of Pakistan’s Border Security Guard, a paramilitary force that guards the country’s northwestern border region in a major blow to government efforts to pursue peace talks with the militants. While the news about this massacre appeared in media on January 5, 2012, the video was released to media [...]
What’s Brewing in Pakistan
This was written for The Open Magazine of India, and appeared on Saturday January 21, 2012 ISLAMABAD ~ Ever since democracy was restored in Pakistan after the general elections of 2008, not a day has passed without a crisis—sometimes engineered, sometimes resulting from the government’s weaknesses and incompetence. The country’s two major political parties, the [...]
Presidential immunity vs selective accountability
Appeared as my weekly column BAAGHI in Daily Times on Monday January 23, 2012 Umpteen talk shows on 24/7 ‘breaking news’ media in Pakistan tell us almost daily how bad is democracy, how this democracy is worse than the dictatorships we have had, etc. TV presenters and reporters show little care for facts-based evidence to [...]
Revisiting the ideology of Pakistan
This was originally published in the September 2011 issue of Pragati If there is one national termite that has been eating up Pakistan’s physiology and neurology, it is its purported ‘ideology’. After more than six decades of existence, Pakistan is still defending its genesis and going to-and-fro on the cause-effect tree. Graduating a ‘community’ into [...]
A Year without Salmaan Taseer
This was originally published in Daily Times on Wednesday January 4, 2012 in a special supplement to mark first anniversary of Shaheed Salmaan Taseer Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer was killed on this day a year ago by his own guard who thought Taseer has committed blasphemy by criticising a man-made law against blasphemy. The cause [...]
Friends, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears!
This was originally published by Daily Times on Monday January 16, 2012 as my weekly column BAAGHI Benazir Bhutto once said about democratic governments in Pakistan that they might be in office but have never been in power. An unbridled army has always been in the driving seat aided by the judiciary, bureaucracy and the chosen [...]
Do not accuse the apex court please!
As appeared in Daily Times on January 9, 2012 as BAAGHI, my weekly column. Asma Jahangir took many by surprise when she refused to appear for Husain Haqqani in the memo case before the judicial commission made by the Supreme Court (SC). More surprising were her blunt statements about the judiciary privileging the ‘establishment’ (a [...]
Where is judicial independence, my lords?
This piece appeared in Daily Times on Monday January 2, 2012 as weekly column BAAGHI The apex court’s short judgement in the memo case last Friday left many stunned and shocked. The petitioners could neither prove any violation of fundamental rights under Article 184(3), as their petition claimed, nor could they prove former ambassador Husain [...]
