Pakistan – a weak state
Save the constitution Pakistan is still struggling to bring its institutions under control. The major consequence is the weakening of the state. A failed state is the one wherein the government authority…
Asking Pakistan to redouble its efforts
Not much elbow room Pakistan’s core thinking right now revolves around how to wriggle out of the war on terror. Each visit of an official of the United States (US) reminds Pakistan…
Pakistan and the Saudi-led military coalition
We need to sort our own problems first Pakistan may be a dangerous country to live in but an interesting country to study. On November 25, through a statement, the White House…
Persisting with the Islamic Military Alliance
Or not? Perhaps, the world is witnessing the Middle East version of the NATO in the 41-nation Islamic Military Alliance (IMA) formed in December 2015 against the menace of terrorism ravaging Islamic…
High handedness of the higher judiciary
More was expected of the Supreme Court If anything were declared the bane of Pakistan, it would be the yearning for populism by non-elected institutions including the Supreme Court (SC). What was…
Pakistan’s Afghan problem
The US cannot push Pakistan to ‘do more’ beyond a certain extent if it wants to maintain cordial relations India and Afghanistan are the two major beneficiaries of the mounting trust deficit…
Ahmad Noorani and nationalist bigotry
Violence substituting constructive debate Some Pakistanis still revel in a state of oblivion that Pakistan was not founded on a democratic demand and process in 1947. These skeptics think that Pakistan was…
Back to the July 28 judgement
The mere globalization is instrumental in thrusting the tyranny of awareness on the people of Pakistan. Understanding the law is no exception. The decisions of the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan that…
What General Bajwa says
“The point is simple: Development projects are not meant for saving any economy. Instead, they are meant for running the economy.” One thing is now obvious: the balance of Pakistan’s system…
Understanding the language of silence
The ISPR is overlooking the fact that one of the basic principles of (the subject of) public administration is that the institutional behaviour remains domain specific. That is, change the domain, change…
The plot thickens
The cat is finally out of the bag. Speculations of the past are the reality of today. Civil-military relations are at their worse. The dissonance is spilled out in the streets. The…
Balochistan House in Switzerland
Second, through Amil, Pakistan made an interesting remark that the “use of Swiss soil against Pakistan by violent secessionists was totally unacceptable”. Through this statement, Pakistan acknowledged that it was tolerant to…
NA-120 and gatekeepers
Never before has this country witnessed such an invidious election campaign against a politician who had been ousted by the higher judiciary from the office of the prime minister on the lame…
Over to you, Foreign Office
On August 21, the pronouncement of the South Asia policy encompassing Afghanistan by US President Donald Trump failed to create the kind of panic generated by the declaration issued from the platform…
Pak-US relations and the “ghairat” brigade
It was anticipated that a development on the Af-Pak strategy (announced by former US President Barack Obama in March 2009) would take place and it has taken place. On…
There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark
…and also, it would appear, in our (not so) Supreme Court. “Sometimes, it seems that the SC understands this limitation: … former Chief Justice of the SC Iftikhar Chaudhry bullied government…
The judiciary-military nexus – II
These are dangerous waters The first part of the Panama case judgement opened with a quote from the Godfather: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” In other words, all wealthy…