In Pakistan, a youth-led, social media-powered movement is gaining ground – despite a media blackout of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) and it’s struggle for justice and dignity.
The revolution will not be televised in Pakistan. Unless it has the blessings of the powers-that-be. This has (...)
Manzoor Pashteen’s Pashtun Protection Movement gathers support in country where criticism of army is rare.
Every morning Ahmed Shah puts on his circular, red-and-black cap, decorated with spades, and feels ready to take on the world. “For me this cap is a symbol of resistance,” he says. “That’s (...)
I was introduced to the concept of dissent in the 1980s when I overheard a conversation among my father’s friends. They said a group of women had scared Gen Ziaul Haq so much that in a televised address he warned the people not to be misled by these few 200 bourgeois westernised women who were (...)
The army is unwilling to give any space to news reports or opinion pieces favourable to the Pashtuns and intends to continue ensuring a near-complete electronic media blackout of the movement.
The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) – which came to the fore after the extrajudicial killing of a (...)
Don’t be fooled by the media blackout and prejudice. The Islamists are not the only social movements on the march in Pakistan. Over the last few months, Pakistan has witnessed a plethora of long marches and square occupations in the country.
The long march led by the Islamists of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) remains the starkest example of the power of this new form of political claim-making. Thankfully, there are more progressive examples.
For example, an under-reported but (...)
Cuts in US aid mean the collapse of many CSOs and a career crisis for the middle class managers of “civil society” We take a look at the winners and losers
The cuts have already come but the crisis will come later. The budget passed by the United States Senate and House of Representatives announced an $8.8 billion shortfall in the amounts allotted to the US State Department and to USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. Money for the Overseas Contingency Operations Budget, (...)
Punjab University came to a standstill at the end of January, due to violent clashes between rival student groups. Students from the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and the Pashtun Education and Development Movement (PEDM) were arrested and charged under anti-terror laws. This article explores the (...)
The ugly history of intertwining fanaticism with the mainstream means next time the extremists play their hand the consequences will be worse, the capitulation greater and the surrender more abject than the one we have just witnessed [see below the description of the events].
The idea the (...)
THERE has hardly been an instance where the state has capitulated so humiliatingly to a group of extremists holding the nation’s capital hostage . The six-point agreement brokered by the military leadership is virtually a document of surrender. A beleaguered civilian administration has signed on (...)
In October 2017, the Quaid-e-Azam University campus has witnessed some ugly scenes. Hundreds of students were protesting for a number of days against fees hike, improving hostel and medical facilities and restoring students expelled a few months ago in clashes between ethnic groups. All demands (...)
Best There is growing concern in academic, policy and political circles on the radicalisation in educational campuses. A serious debate is taking place to change the narrative on Pakistan’s history to prevent the proliferation of extremist ideas among the youth. What this debate implicitly (...)
A coup in Pakistan’s checkered political life is never news. However, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification from his post on corruption charges through a court verdict on July 28 has an element of newness about it. Instead of the Pakistan Army, the recent coup has been carried out by (...)
Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif resigned from prime ministership after the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s ruling last week which declared him dishonest. Many suggest that the establishment played its invisible role in the whole episode because the civil-military relations were not smooth. After Mr. (...)
The supreme court verdict that ousted the prime minister is exceptional. But political corruption on a colossal scale has irreparably damaged the country.
Since Pakistan’s foundation in 1947, not one prime minister has served his or her full term. Things like assassinations and military (...)
The recent expulsion of three students from the University of Agriculture at Faisalabad highlights the paranoid manner in which campuses are being run today. The crime that cost the students their education was simply a Facebook post criticising the university administration, with one student (...)
The increase in penalty for eating or drinking publicly during the month of Ramazan, from Rs500 to Rs25,000 (for hotel owners), brought considerable attention to the “Ehteram-e-Ramazan Ordinance”. Apart from the fine, the law stipulates a three-month jail term for any offender. The rationale for (...)
The latest mob murder of a Pakistani student acccused of blasphemy reveals the mechanisms which the authorities, politicians and the Islamists use use to maniipulate and reshape society.
Mashal Khan’s murder shook many of us to the core. And how could it not? A young man of just 23 years was brutally beaten to death in a display of cruelty that is hard to explain. That it happened at an institute of higher learning, and was led by students, adds to the horror induced by this event. A (...)
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a big business proposition with huge Chinese investments spreading over 15 years having a total outlay of up to $46 billion: $35 billion on the energy sector in the mode of IPPs (independent Power Producers) and $ 11 billion for infrastructure (...)
It is a rare event in modern history that a country has been at war for over a decade without being able to identify who the enemy is. Pakistan’s 15-year involvement in the global ‘war on terror’ has turned the country into a primary theatre of this conflict, with immense costs in terms of loss of (...)
The fear of foreign actors undermining Pakistan’s potential progress has had a palpable presence in public discourse since the announcement of CPEC in 2015. From political outfits in Karachi to ethno-nationalists at the peripheries to even Islamist forces, all seemed to be part of a (...)
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