Columns

Wikipedia reads, "An Achilles' heel is a deadly weakness in spite of overall strength that can actually or potentially lead to downfall. While the mythological origin refers to a physical vulnerability, metaphorical references to other attributes or qualities that can lead to downfall are common."
In Greek mythology, when Achilles was a baby, it was foretold that he would die in battle from an arrow in the foot. Naturally, his mother did not want Achilles to die. So she took

As it has intermittently happened in recent years, this past week or so violence erupted again in Karachi and there was a spate of murders that has for some time been dubbed as "targeted killings". The political analysts of all hues agree that this latest series of tit-for-tat murders, and many such horrific binges before this, decidedly have a political and ethnic tinge to it.
This murderous frenzy that has already resulted in about 35 deaths has not been without a consequence.

Nowhere in the Islamic world has Islam been instrumentalised for the sake of political ends and gains, like the way it has been in Pakistan. This is because everybody has the freedom to interpret and apply Islam as they want here. All those people who declared Salmaan Taseer as 'liable to be murdered' in their fatwas were not even capable of issuing fatwas, according to an interview by Allama Ashrafi on television. The lay Muslim is not even informed of whose fatwa they should adhere

Pakistan is not a failed but a derailed state. Growing religious fundamentalism has mutilated its weak democratic polity. And the military has stretched itself to such an extent that it occupies today the space that rightly belongs to the people in a free society. The many-year long US-backed war in Afghanistan and its border areas against the Taliban is not a solution to Pakistan's problems but it adds to them. Islamabad is itself mixed up with those forces which strengthen the

The latest news from the North Pole is that Santa has decided to trade in his red costume and sleigh for a yellow hazmat suit and wrench. A career switch is certainly imminent if the oil giant BP and Russia's Rosneft move into the neighbourhood to get their oil fix. As announced last week, such strategic alliances to exploit untapped natural resources sent energy markets soaring, but the truth is that this odd couple's hunt for hydrocarbons on top of the world does not bode well for

Education, irrespective of the content, has to engage a child, make him/her interested, and give something that he/she can apply and utilise to make sense of his/her world. Children are not empty vessels that can be filled with all sorts of things irrespective of their attitude to learning and irrespective of the use to which this knowledge can be put to.
Teachers have a very difficult job. They have a syllabus and a work plan to go through but in order to deliver they have to

A large part of the PPP-led federal government's energies are spent on staying in power by keeping the allies in good humor and deflecting the opposition pressures or coping with sudden surfacing of violent incidents like a killing in Karachi, terrorist attack or street agitation. It also deals with the demands and pressures from the traditionally powerful military and foreign powers, especially those providing economic assistance to Pakistan.
The opposition parties have a clear

The British Raj was the high noon of bureaucracy. The British sepoy armies might have won the day from Plassey to Seringapatnam and Alwaye, but it was the pre-1857 "writer" and post-1857 Indian Civil Service Sahib who converted a day into two centuries. No army can preserve victory; that is the responsibility of the civilian servant of the state.
Every empire becomes a fiefdom of the bureaucracy. The 'qatibs' or scribes were so powerful that they successfully resisted the new

Can an Indian professor live in Lahore and teach human rights to students of Punjab University? Can a Pakistani professor live in Delhi and teach human rights to St. Stephen's College students? The other day I met a Greek tourist in Delhi at Humayun's Tomb who teaches human rights to Turkish students at Bosporus University in Istanbul. Greece and Turkey are historical enemies, like India and Pakistan.
Sitting on a bench, I ask Ms Banias, who was on a sabbatical in Delhi, on how

Last Friday, four weeks after a 26-year-old unemployed university graduate set himself afire in front of a government building, a revolution commenced in Tunisia, but it is not over - either for Tunisia or for all countries where the people have had enough of suffering, corruption, and lack of rights.
It was a mini-revolution but it achieved one thing at least: the people of Tunisia were heard - by the man who was apparently pilfering that poor nation for nearly 24 years, and

History buffs know Sarajevo as the city where on June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a 20-year-old member of a Serbian secret society known as the Black Hand, shot and killed Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. That one shot precipitated World War I, a war which lasted for more than four years and led to the deaths of more than 16 million.
In more recent times, Sarajevo became famous for hosting the 1984 Winter Olympics. But barely a decade later,

The novel "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" gave birth to the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde". The novel features a character named Dr Henry Jekyll, who has two distinct personalities; one good and the other evil. The phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" usually refers to having extreme swings in moral character according to changing situations. The recent behavior of Pakistan's Barelvi clergy exemplifies similar swings in moral character that are reminiscent of the mood swings of Dr Henry

If there's one thing Karachi-ites hate, it's a curfew. Oh no, there's no midnight deadline for the hip and happening people of Korangi No 2 or Pehalwan Goth. The Afghani Tikka-wala at Al-Asif stays open until Fajr prayers, and the sole claim to fame of the Bakra Hotel in Kharadar is that it never closes. Never, mind you. But that was before the killings began.
I lived in Karachi for well over two-and-a-half-years and found that one shouldn't believe everything one hears about

A plausible explanation for why the incumbent government has survived the minefield that is the Pakistani polity so far is the fact that it is an awful time to be running the country. No one is interested in holding the reins. Political parties can bide their time on the cushy opposition benches while the perpetual government - the powers that be, if you will - can twiddle their thumbs while watching the helplessness of the political government.
Not in any way to imply that the

Birthdays bring joy and happiness but this January, the PPP supporters that had planned huge cakes and grand celebrations to commemorate Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's birthday found nothing but blood and tears as a pall of gloom and doom enveloped the length and the breadth of the country due to the shocking assassination of a Bhutto-lover-- Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab. Like most people, I know little about Taseer except that he was a great admirer of Bhutto, a bold PPP leader like

Just think about this for a second: every time there's news about a seemingly religiously inspired murder,
or two, or twenty, the first antidote on offer is how religious parties often do poorly at the ballot box. To a certain extent, this off-the-cuff statistic attempts to placate those, both home and abroad, who're deeply afraid of a Pakistan being inhabited and run by far-right forces. The logic goes something like this: if a party does badly at the polls, it implies that it

Salman Akbar, the goalkeeper of Pakistan's Asiad gold-winning team, offered a succinct comment when a scribe recently sought his views on the failure of the Pakistan Hockey Federation to pay their salaries for the last three months.
It was right around the time when MQM chief Altaf Hussain had just pulled the rug from under the PPP and seemed on course to bring the house down in Islamabad the beautiful.
Playing down assurances from PHF quarters about redressing the