Three items below: 1. A Washington Post report revealing how Libi, the al-Qaeda commander moved about freely in Pakistan until he was killed last week. 2....
Two items below 1. Announcing a book by well known political economist and columnist S.M. Naseem in Islamabad, "The Unraveling of the 9/11 U-Turn: Essays in...
Here's a piece with some interesting insights about voters, by a friend & columnist who lives in southern Punjab - where the Choudhrys have poured tons of...
Human Rights Watch report on how media remains curbed, despite all the ostensible freedom, in the run up to the elections. Re: the mentions of 'dozens' of...
Reports of rigging at various polling stations as well as violence are still rolling in. At least five voters were killed in Khairpur district, and seven...
Sheikh Rashid has hot-footed it to Spain & Parvaiz Elahi is still confident PML-Q & its allies will win more seats. Talking to M. Malik at Geo, Elahi had the...
There are lots more reports of irregularities at the polling stations than the couple of examples mentioned in the article below. A lot of them, admittedly,...
Dawn's op-ed page today has three pieces I wanted to draw your attention to, all at http://www.dawn.com/2008/02/22/op.htm. One is Ayesha Siddiqa's excellent...
Two instances of censorship recently in Pakistan – one, the removal of videos exposing rigging at various polling stations, and the other, the blocking of...
The issue of the restoration of the judiciary threatens to stymie the formation of a stable government in Pakistan. Meanwhile, Condi Rice has reiterated her...
Here's a report I filed for IPS yesterday re: the issue of the 'non- PCO judges'. Main point: the new government can restore the judges as soon as it is sworn...
An excellent piece from Kavita Ramdas in The Nation, New York on how the issue is not electing the first black or female President but how Clinton and Obama...
With International Women's Day approaching, I was asked to write a short piece for Dawn's Karachi Notebook today (March 3, 2008). Copying the piece below,...
The `liberation of Kashmir' was too tempting a pun not to use, so I did, in my opinion piece in today's Dawn - http://www.dawn.com/2008/03/06/op.htm (text...
While the political wrangling continues - and the political leadership again confounds the nay-sayers by coming to an agreement - life goes on in other ways in...
March 21, 2008 This is an updated version of my article in Dawn today, 'Why Sarabjit Singh should not be hanged' - http://www.dawn.com/2008/03/21/op.htm#4 ...
Greetings people - I should have sent this out earlier but was sidetracked by the elections and their aftermath. The week that marked the fifth anniversary of...
Abie has asked for his phone number not to be forwarded - too late Abie, altready sent and people have already hit the forward button. But for those who send...
Pakistan's new prime minister has announced what many are calling a `revolutionary' agenda – continue the `war on terror' but on Pakistan's terms, revival of...
http://www.himalmag.com/2008/april/reflections_benazir.htm or http://tinyurl.com/39xdrb REFLECTIONS Benazir's legacy By : Beena Sarwar Just over a year ago,...
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41825 PAKISTAN: Putting Development Back on the Agenda By Beena Sarwar KARACHI, Apr 2 (IPS) - Pakistan's new prime...
Dr Haroon Ahmed and Saleem Asmi, two stalwarts of the first student movement in Pakistan, the Democratic Students Federation (DSF) write to set the record...
It is a shame that just as a democratic government was being sworn in, remnants of what we hoped was our militarist past, the Rangers, were busy beating up a...
Those who should know say that the judiciary will be restored within this week or at the latest by next week, including CJP Iftikhar Chowdhry. Meanwhile,...
Kanak was in Pakistan in December and we had a long talk about the Nepali people's movement - he saw many parallels with Pakistani politics but a major...
1. Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) demands the release of chief editor of The Frontier Post, Rehmat Shah Afridi, who was arrested in 1999 in a...
1. The life and work of controversial American academic Norman Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors, an ardent critic of Israeli policy and, unsurprisingly,...
