Despite dire predictions about continuity as PM due to the unbecoming shooting off his mouth that has left even his coalition allies aghast, Yusuf Raza Gilani is gracing the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Summit 2012 at Davos, coincidentally the man who could well replace him in the future as the PM of Pakistan is…
With Gilani hell bent on becoming a sacrificial lamb for Zardari’s US $60 million, the hour of judgment has tolled for the man from Multan. A seven-member larger Supreme Court (SC) Bench headed by Justice Nasirul Mulk hearing the NRO implementation case. ruled that “the show cause notice being under sub-section 2 of Section 17…
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta raised a storm signalling that US and NATO troops in Afghanistan will transition from a combat role to a “training, assist and advice” role by late 2013, a year earlier than the mandated 2014 schedule. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney had earlier railed against US troops fighting a war of independence…
Mumbai is a city of contrasts, never so apparent as one comes in to land at the International Airport. High-rise developments are pockmarked across shanty towns, ongoing construction of raised expressways snaking over slum areas to overcome the enormous traffic jams clogging the city. Dreams sometimes become a reality in this sprawling metropolis, multiple times…
The Supreme Court (SC) having given notice to several respondents in the Manzoor Ijaz – Haqqani Memo issue, the govt resorted to its usual ploy of attempting to frustrate the course of justice. The first salvo was Dr (??) Babar Awan’s vitriolic attack on Tariq Khosa, appointed by the SC as a one-man Commission to…
The New Year is usually associated with joy but this time around a great many countries approached it bad that happened, whether in Pakistan or outside seemed to be our fault or so we were told. And what about our leaders? They being interested mostly in self survival, fell over themselves in keeping the USA,…
By all accounts Hussain Haqqani and Mansoor Ijaz were good friends, the tone and tenor of the BlackBerry exchanges clearly show they made for a lethal combination. The May 10 Memo was meant to be a specially crafted “neutron bomb” to (1) change the present national security parameters in Pakistan and bring it into line…
The compulsions for survival has driven our leaders over the past decade to allow the US-Pakistan relationship to gradually degenerate into a master and slave status. Pakistan is now subjected to various insults across the board periodically, in the past year motivated vilification of the Pakistan Army and the ISI by key US public officials…
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…
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…
