The West and Russia are two cyclops who have never been able to see eye to eye. Over centuries, they have grown into giants with ambitions beyond their borders and power beyond their dreams. For the rest of the world, they are a nightmare. The present conflict in and over Ukraine is more than a […]
Lahore dozes in the summer. In spring, it comes alive with LitFests. The Faiz Festival occupied last weekend; the Lahore LitFest the next. In between, there has been the Horse & Cattle Show in the Fortress Stadium. Once the showcase for Punjab’s agricultural livestock and agro-produce, it has been revived as a showpiece by the
To enjoy any LitFest, one needs to be a hyper-active octopus, with eyes and ears at the end of every tentacle. The Lahore LitFest 2025 – the last in a trilogy before the abstinence of Ramzan – offered a banquet of intellect, spread over four halls in cruel competition. To attend one was to forgo
The first Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) 2010 was the crucible. Since then, each year, it has moved higher up the ladder to its present maturity as the 16th KLF, held this year on 7-9 February and as usual at the Beach Luxury Hotel. The first KLF 2010 had an attendance of 5,000. This year, the number
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
