Special Correspondent ISLAMABAD, Aug 7: The people of mountain regions like #Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) are bearing the brunt of the climate change and mega projects. However, their voices are not being heard at the policy level and hence, the food security of the local population especially linked with agriculture is being seriously jeopardised. This was the crux of views expressed by …

Tariq Masood Malik The bad bleeds. And that which bleeds — unless plugged — leads in the news business. Plugging is what we have been badly bad at historically. History cannot be disowned. Or can it be? Now what cannot be disowned must be faced. Owning up a muddled history is made easy when we look for some small little …

Noor Akbar Gohar GAHKUCH (Ghizer District), July 13: Complete shutter-down strike was observed by traders here on Thursday against frequent prolonged power outages. The call for the shutter down strike was given by the Gahkuch Bazaar Committee. It has become a norm of the day that people are subjected to unscheduled power outages for long hours, a trader told the …

Aziz Ali Dad Though there was no serious confrontation between different sects in Gilgit-Baltistan during the British period, there were latent sectarian prejudices among the populace. Colonel John Biddulph in his book ‘Tribes of the Hindoo Kush” recorded some practices and attitudes among Sunni and Shia communities that showed increasing dislike for each other among normally moderate people in matters …

By manipulating religion, Pakistan’s ruling elite stifles the freedoms of speech and expression and leave no space for progressive thinking, writes Muzzammil Mukhtar WALTER LIPPMANN was a US theorist of liberal democracy. He supported the use of propaganda, oriented to the existing class system, to control the public mindset. He argued in favour of what he conceptualised as the manufacturing …

“Sectarian thinking is contagious and rapidly spread.” ― Moutasem Algharati   The issue of sectarian violence in Gilgit-Baltistan cannot be analysed through an idealised view that tends to paint the region as an idyllic paradise where no violence ever occurred before the advent of modernity. The reality is that sectarian violence has been a part of the history of Gilgit-Baltistan. Throughout …

PESHAWAR: All public sector universities in the province have been asked to waive the admission fees of their students from Chitral. This was stated in a handout issued on Thursday. According to the document, Governor Sardar Mehtab Ahmed said those students who have faced substantial adversities due to flash floods in the region should be exempted from paying the admission …

GILGIT: An anti-terrorism court in Gilgit handed down a death sentence to two culprits for raping a girl student in Skardu town in Gilgit-Baltistan earlier this year. The verdict was announced by judge Raja Shehbaz Khan on Tuesday, a source told the High Asia Herald said on Wednesday. In addition to the death sentence, the court also sentenced both men to …

The crash of a Pakistan Army MI-17 helicopter killing the ambassadors of Norway and the Philippines and at least five others — there is still uncertainty — is a tragedy with possibly far-reaching consequences. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his entourage, as well as senior military officials and foreign diplomats, were all scheduled to visit Gilgit-Baltistan. The trip had been …

By Aziz Ali Dad Followers of Islam are certainly perplexed why their lives are being turned into hell for some self-claimed saviours of Islam to go to heaven. The situation should have triggered some soul searching, but despite the gruesome incidents of murder and mayhem of innocent people in Pakistan, no attempt is made to analyze the subject of reason …