TOMORROW is Youm-i-Pakistan. A big military parade will be staged to remind 220 million people that the Pakistani nation is alive, well and always at attention. Over the past few weeks nationalist sentiment has been high, Pakistan versus India once again at the forefront of the news cycle. It is apt that March 23 has coincided with state nationalism in …
Abbas Nasir IF there were an opinion poll asking Pakistanis who their favourite leader is today, one could be certain that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would be a hot favourite, if not occupy the top spot herself. Her conduct has been exceptional and exemplary since the March 15 terrorist attack on two Christchurch mosques that killed 50 Muslims …
EVEN for a society that views most form of rights-based activism with suspicion, the backlash against Aurat March has been particularly acrimonious. In the days since the protests were staged in several cities across Pakistan, countless women have been subjected to retaliation — from photos of their placards being doctored, to receiving death and rape threats, to having established political and …
Tooba Syed MARCH 8, 2019, will be remembered as a day of hope and unabashed protest, in which thousands of women in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad, Quetta, Peshawar, Gilgit-Baltistan and Mardan took to the streets and marched. Aurat March and other women’s marches reflected the collective consciousness of Pakistani women coming together organically and wilfully to march against deeply entrenched social and …
Jawed Naqvi THE mad major portrayed in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove — a psychopathic American nationalist driven by an urge to bring the world to a sudden end with nuclear war — has many cousins. Ayatollah Khomeini was reviled as a warmonger, but he jailed the Hojjatiah Shia extremists who supported him. He found that they were plotting to chuck …
FAYYAZ Chohan, the improbably titled — now former — Punjab minister for information and culture, has once again demonstrated his boundless capacity for uncouthness and bigotry. A video of him has emerged on social media that shows him making vile, derogatory remarks against Hindus in his trademark combative style. The occasion was an event in Lahore on Feb 24, and …
Struggles past and present show the left how we can make the connection between the fight for women’s rights and the struggle for economic and social equality. FOR YEARS, International Women’s Day on March 8 would pass by without notice in the U.S. beyond a small number of leftists. Most people who noticed on their calendar probably assumed it had …
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy The release of captured Indian fighter pilot Abhinandan Varthaman is excellent news, and Pakistan’s gesture that it wants to de-escalate a crisis that put the world on edge [is appreciable]. Equally, this act conveys confidence that Pakistan has had the upper hand in a conflict not of its own choosing. Pakistani war rhetoric, though disturbingly loud, was …
Two nuclear-armed states shoot down each other’s planes The last time that Indian and Pakistani jets bombed one another’s territory was in 1971, during an all-out war. In that conflict more than 10,000 soldiers died, over 100 planes were shot out of the sky and Pakistan was torn asunder, as the new state of Bangladesh took shape. But then neither …
Robert Fisk WHEN I heard the first news report, I assumed it was an Israeli air raid on Gaza. Or Syria. Air strikes on a “terrorist camp” were the first words. A “command and control centre” destroyed, many “terrorists” killed. The military was retaliating for a “terrorist attack” on its troops, we were told. An Islamist “jihadi” base had been eliminated. Then I heard …
