The dramatic killing of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, epitomizes all that is steadily going wrong with the country- large scale sectarian terrorism causing domestic mayhem, growing religious fanaticism within society, e
With the exit from the government of the Maulana Fazlur Rehman led faction of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUIF), the perpetually buffeted – by an overbearing military, an hyper active and interventionist judiciary, a hostile media and fickle and demand
The superlatives being attributed to the signing of the Inter-Government Agreement (IGA) and the Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement (GPFA) for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline appear rather farfetched especially when seen in
A perusal of the US embassy cables made public by Wikileaks makes it clear that while the US has all the information and intelligence about the double-game being played by Pakistan, it finds itself clueless, even helpless, in bringing to an end this
A meeting in Lahore between the Federal Law Minister Babar Awan and the former chief minister of Punjab and PMLQ leader, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, has shaken up the political scene in Pakistan by opening up the possibility of new political alignments w
There is something quite pathetic about the sensational confessions of a loquacious former military dictator harbouring fond, if utterly unrealistic, hopes of making a comeback in his country’s politics. Although Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s interview
It has been a double whammy for the American war effort in the Afpak region: not only have the Americans been made to eat humble pie and ‘apologise’ to the Pakistanis for the helicopter attack on a Frontier Corps (FC) border post in Kurram agency
From Gilgit to Karachi and from Lahore to Quetta, extremist Sunni terrorist groups appear to have declared an open season on the minority Shia community in Pakistan. Despite the expressions of outrage and condemnation by top political leaders and civ
The movement for Pakistan, as envisaged by its chief promoter Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was not intended to produce a religion dominated theocratic state. No doubt he engaged in communal tactics and successfully executed a spurious doctrine, the two nati
The nuclear threat in the subcontinent has led to renewed and redoubled efforts to find a solution to the antagonism between India and Pakistan. One is led to believe that if cross border terrorism ceases, a dialogue can be facilitated between the t