TIMING is everything, especially in politics. Mistiming can be fatal, as three recent leaders, now out of power, have learned. In October 1999, PM Mian Nawaz Sharif decided to remove COAS Gen Musharraf, even while Musharraf was returning home from Sri Lanka. In June 2019, PM Imran Khan transferred the then head of ISI, Gen […]
U.S. President Donald Trump has bent diplomacy full circle. He has reversed inter-state relations to a pre-Westphalian age. The conduct of international political relations between states were enshrined in the 1648 treaty of Westphalia. It introduced the concept of territorial integrity, that ‘states, regardless of size, have the right to self-governance.’ Sovereignty shifted from a
ANYONE who attended the ThinkFest on Jan 11-12 in Lahore hoping to walk away with a panacea to Pakistan’s ailments, must have been disappointed. The ThinkFest was a master class in dissection of a living corpse. The discussants — scholars, politicians, a former prime and finance minister, serving and retired government officials, artistes, cricketers, financiers
[DAWN, 9 Jan., 2025] To reassemble the origins of Pakistan, one needs time, money and luck. Collectors of deltiology (the study and collection of postcards) need all three to make sense of Pakistan’s jigsaw chronology. Our country’s visual history is a scattered puzzle, with pieces that are 5,000 years old with an undeciphered alphabet, a
It took our solitary Olympic gold medallist Arshad Nadeem to remind us of that old adage: Success has a thousand fathers; Failure is born an orphan. No matter how many awards, honours, cash prizes and amenity plots may be bestowed upon him, it is clear that Arshad’s achievement in Paris was singularly his own. His
IF 2024 will be known as the year of seismic general elections, it will also be remembered as the one of unforgettable weddings. In India, Mumbai is still aglitter in the after-glow of the wedding of Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. The festivities spread over weeks of uncapped extravagance. The total
President Joe Biden insists that he is still running. He has not said in which direction. He needs to decide quickly before someone makes up his mind for him. Some expect the Democrat party to push him over the edge. Others that his medical team may advise him against subjecting himself to the rigour of
More than change [DAWN, 11 July 2024] Read More »
Khushwant Singh would have been delighted. The latest LitFest revived his memory over two days at SOAS in London, the city he loved as much as his birthplace Hadali (in Pakistan). The added piquancy for him was that the sessions began and ended with two Pakistanis. The Keynote Speaker on 1st June had taken Khushwant’s ashes
HEALING THE WORLD [DAWN, 6 June 2024] Read More »
[DAWN, 23 May 2024] They are all dead: the feisty Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci and her fourteen interviewees – prominent amongst them Henry Kissinger, King Hussein of Jordan, Yasser Arafat, Mrs. Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios, and the Vietnamese freedom fighters General Giap and
