Columns

By claiming responsibility for lashings, public beheadings and suicide bombings, the Taliban have declared themselves villains of the caliber that cannot be found even in the goriest of movies. But like anywhere else, the emergence of these villains has also prompted the rise of heroes.
Take for instance the case of Liaqat Ali Khan, of the Dagai village of Matta in Swat. On October 17, 2008, Liaqat received an unexpected guest at his house; the guest was Zhang Guo a Chinese

As the PPP government took power after the February 2008 elections, the people of Pakistan were promised many things. Along with far-fetched notions such as cleaner schools, better-funded public toilets and tax cuts for alcoholics, the promises included an end to lota-cracy, horse-trading and parliamentary spot-fixing. But with the world and many Pakistani children watching, Messrs Rizvi and Sabzwari announced their unhappy divorce from BB ki hukoomat. As you can no doubt imagine, the

'You are asking for too many of those', said yet another bearded maulvi to my good friend who is a criminal law practitioner; let us call him Mr. Crim Barrister. Taking another deep breath the maulvi said, 'I want to help you but this stuff is in high demand close to New Year's Eve. You might have to pay extra'. Mr. Crim Barrister is a fine gentleman of mostly Punjabi, except for some dubious but highly powerful Sindhi, family connections.
That day just before New Year's Eve he

Annointing the 'person of the year' is a ritual the media partakes with fanfare abroad. Little of it is done this side of the Indus, and even then a mundane pick from the political spectrum is the refrain. We could do with the pickings more often and it would be infinitely, better if a real opinion poll led the way. In the absence of such credible process, I reckon one will have to do with personal choice(s) - hopefully, not lacking in substance.
For Pakistan, the year just gone

Pakistan has had a history of being governed by authoritarian regimes that often denied access to factual information on issues of political and strategic significance to the citizens, who, in turn, had to rely on the foreign sources. One such outlet of information is the US daily, The New York Times (The NYT).
This newspaper claims to be 'America's newspaper of record, offering objective reporting and comprehensive analysis in politics, business, the arts and entertainment'.

Confucius said: "Our Master gets his way by being frank, friendly, truthful, respectful and moderate. That is our way." Try and make the Pakistani politician understand such wisdom.
Did you see the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly and theoretically shadow prime minister no less and two of the MQM's normally courteous but much loquacious stalwarts go thermonuclear the other day? They plummeted to depths which we never thought our politicians could go to. They not

This past month has been a particularly bad one for the women of Pakistan who have been repeated targets of the abysmal lows of public discourse in the country.
To kick things off in December, Advisor to the Sindh Chief Minister on Information and Archives damned a gang-rape survivor in Karachi by passing extremely judgemental remarks against her while the woman was still at the police station. Sections of the media followed it up and fed further into the 'she-asked-for-it'

The year that just went by has left the country mired in a grave political and economic crisis. And things don't seem to be getting better. People are anxious to see their rulers find time to focus on the real issues of governance. Deep mistrust of the leadership's intentions continues to persist. The environment required to run the affairs of the state smoothly is missing because of tensions within the ruling coalition growing to threaten its existence.
The PPP lately finds

No year is an island. A sequence of events will always demand its consequence, without respect for something as transitory as a calendar. Neither time nor logic pauses on 31 December and takes a holiday on 1 January. Sleaze was the theme of 2010; it has already oozed into the building drama of 2011. The link is Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's brief statement on the eve of 2011: to "cleanse" governance. New Year resolutions, traditionally, are known to have a short life. If the

While 2010 was a year of living dangerously, the New Year does not bring any better prospects for the country. In the field of politics, economy or foreign affairs there was little to cheer about during the past year and the prospects do not look any better in 2011.
The very fact that democracy survived the vicissitudes of the past year is a miracle in itself. The PPP-led coalition has managed to remain in power by a mixture of good luck, shrewdness and bravado of its chairperson

It is generally believed that a person's pet reflects his character and lifestyle. So how does one interpret the growing trend of having pets that cannot be patted on the back and who could readily make a meal out of you if let out of their cages. In the past it was the N Leaguers who flouted a pet lion during election time and that too because it happened to be their electoral symbol. That lion was well fed and highly sedated and yet it provoked screams from onlookers. Recently that

The last couple of days have brought out the ugly side of politics in no uncertain manner. The abuse hurled at each other publicly, particularly by the parliamentary luminaries of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), would obliterate even the thought of any comparison.
The self-serving nexus between the beneficiaries of the ongoing circus, and those who may not be its beneficiaries at this hour, requires much explaining as even the extreme excesses and misdemeanours of the

Recent events indicate that while the smaller political parties may play a crucial role in helping a major party to form a government when it is short of the required numbers, they may not always be in a position to affect a government change by subsequently withdrawing support. Every ruling party has enough resources at its disposal and can make use of patronage to elicit support from other smaller groups or independent parliamentarians when threatened by a no confidence move.

A few weeks ago the Azme Alishan movement asked me to go to London to help promote a unique TV documentary called Home from Home.
There, I stayed in a hotel just around the corner from Lincoln's Inn where Quaid-e-Azam first made his name as a brilliant law student and advocate. Just down the road, the British House of Commons, where the Quaid spent so much time studying the art of statecraft and watching the cut and thrust of political debate, sat under a blanket of snow. "The

The Cassandras have gone into overdrive again, predicting terrible tidings for Pakistani politics. Welcome to the new round of the old! There are two schools: the extreme one says the Pakistan Peoples Party government is about to fall while the moderate school thinks the jig is up for Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
The-government-is-about-to-fall school has repeatedly got it wrong in the past year and is about to lose the wager again. Their assessment was that with Maulana

There appears to be utter confusion around us. At a time when a stable, progressive environment is needed most to overcome the compounded difficulties this country finds itself in.
The media has become a lynch mob. The apex court has assumed the role of the chief investigating authority. The opposition parties are frothing at the mouth hoping to scavenge the spoils. The State of Pakistan is the object of desire. But there is no cohesive response as to the objectives to deliver

Asif Ali Zardari must be wearing a grin as broad as the fa