De-Radicalisation

Literally meaning the ‘land of the pure’, Pakistan has been in the grip of extremism of one sort or the other – ethnic, linguistic, sectarian and religious – almost since its birth. Six decades after independence, we continue to struggle with basic issues relating to identity, democracy and constitutionalism. Elections are always a saga of…

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Time-Out

While the Osama Bin Laden (OBL) raid was indeed disastrous for the Army’s image, to condemn the ISI outright without hard evidence for the horrific Saleem Shahzad kidnapping and murder is terribly unfair. Casting aspersions and accusations on flimsy basis without evidence is normal in a society where defamation laws are neither strong enough nor…

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State of the State

Gen Pervez Musharraf’s personal ambitions neatly coincided with the state of the State in Oct 1999, despite Mian Nawaz Sharif’s “heavy mandate”, his military takeover was widely welcomed by all sections of society. Expected to correct the system of governance turned by a decade of “democracy’ into a complete farce, the premise was that if…

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