How can a political party like the MQM invite martial law? This call is meant to settle scores with the PPP, which is covertly supporting political forces challenging the MQM. The MQM thinks that a section of the powerful establishment is also supporting the ANP against it. So it has given the message to the establishment that the MQM is a more valuable partner than others. Similarly, for the past few years, the MQM has been trying to extend its influence to interior Sindh and Punjab, but Sindhi landlords and Punjabi feudal lords and industrialists have been offering stiff resistance. So the calamity caused by the floods offered the MQM an opportunity both to attract Sindhi haris and hit back ...
Recognising the real donors
• The Pakistani government is back to its default mode, doing the rounds of international donor agencies and the richer countries with a begging bowl in hand. "We have had an ...Side-effect
• In a recent interview, Farooq Sattar referred to the present generation of post-1947 migrants from India as Urdu-speaking Sindhis. It is encouraging to hear that. For millions like Sattar, whose ...
A few good people
• Another blast, another tragedy, this time in Lahore. Twenty-nine people dead, many injured. There is no respite, no time to take a deep breath or say that the worst is ...On two American wars
• So they are gone, we are told, but 50,000 remain. Active combat mission in Iraq is over, Mr Obama declared on August 31, 2010, but the largest embassy on earth ...
Democracy is not an abstract miracle
• Democracy is the sum of its parts. American democracy in action is what the Republican and Democratic parties make it out to be. UK democracy is about the functioning of ...‘Us’ and ‘Them’
• What was once 'mixed' has become 'dual heritage' and for me having lived in Pakistan for most of the last seventeen years; I suddenly and unexpectedly bumped up against a ...Need for perspective
• Heavens have fallen. Hell has been let loose. Pakistan has been disgraced and humiliated. A hysteria has gripped the nation over the Spot-fixing scandal of our cricket team playing in ...
A familiar route to ‘change’
• Unabashed, Altaf Hussain continues with his demand that the military intervene to remove corrupt politicians and that they do so with the assistance of the Supreme Court. The MQM chief's latest ...Climate catastrophe
• Many countries might still afford to confine the subject of climate change to scientific debate or economic discussion. But in Pakistan climate change is actually beginning to have its effects, ...
Waiting for anarchy?
• In an attempt to calm the furore raised by his "asking for martial law," MQM chief Altaf Hussain said: "If my speech is reviewed thoroughly, nowhere have I demanded the ...
Our state of nature
• A breach occurred on the western bank of the Khirthar Canal near the Garhi Khairo-Jacobabad road in the early hours of August 25. The water gushing out of this breach ...Waiting for Rahul?
• Some 80,000 farmers protested near Parliament House in New Delhi last week against the paltry compensation paid by the government for the land it took over in “public interest”. An ...
Spectre of secularism
• The spectre of secularism is haunting the privileged elite of Pakistan, some privileged by birth or status, others by their grading in the realm of belief. Now pollsters have joined ...
Uncorking the Babri genie
• Maulana Jalaluddin Umri was fasting when he met a clutch of journalists last week. India’s mainstream media had shown no interest in him so he decided to invite a few ...
Cricket as a metaphor
• Another day, another scandal. Judging from the media coverage of the cricket betting sting first reported by the News of the World, it would appear that there are no floods ...After the flood
• Après moi, le deluge! (After me, the flood!) In which Pakistani mouth does it lie to repeat the French Sun King's observation? Musharraf's? Increasingly many, including it seems Altaf Bhai, ...Diplomats without dignity
• Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. While the people of Pakistan are resilient enough to face natural ...How India is defeating itself
• For many Indians neither the 500 million of their half-starving compatriots who litter India, and who live and die in the fetid gutters of Indian cities like Mumbai and Calcutta, ...Don’t blame donor apathy
• Hours after the joint announcement by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif on the setting up of a "clean" commission for flood rehabilitation, cynics started criticising ...Obama’s failed Afghan strategy
• There is growing perception in the international media that President Obama's Afghan strategy is not working. American public opinion is rapidly turning against the Afghan war and the majority of ...Gilani’s gratuitous remarks
• Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has charged that international NGOs consume about 80 per cent of their funds for flood-relief work in Pakistan on their administrative costs. In other words, ...
Disaster after ignominy after disaster
• I mean, really! It is another matter for Mr Altaf Hussain, the Quaid-i-Tehrik of the MQM to go to the extent of asking ‘patriotic’ generals to act against the legally ...End of the feudals?
• On Aug 28, the New York Times published an article entitled ‘Upstarts chip away at power of Pakistani elite’. The piece profiled Jamshed Dasti, a parliamentarian from Muzaffargarh district in ...
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