Traditionally elections for Senate , the house of federation, held every three years to elect 52 senators ( half of the total) would be held without much suspense because of its limited electoral college and predictability of the results due to the already known strength of the political parties in their respective provincial assemblies. In post Zia era the impact of the ...

I asked an old afghan man that what he thinks about peace process offered by Ashraf Ghani to Taliban.  He told me, he do not see anything changing in their lives. I told him that there is something called hope, faith and optimism. He said that “I want to believe that good things can happen to Afghans. I want to ...

The civil military row or to be more precise the wrangling between PML (N) led elected civilian government and the military establishment is quite open and public by now. But the dark prophesies about complete derailing of democracy, postponement of the Senate election and general election haven’t come true so far. In fact polling for the Senate election will be ...

The ten days long sit-in by Pashtun youth in Islamabad in the beginning of February has been followed by powerful protests in Swat and Bajour Agency. In Swat people were protesting against security checkpoints where people have to wait in long queues and they are allegedly humiliated. People of Swat were particularly infuriated after a child died while waiting at a security ...

In the last weeks, Islamabad witnessed an outpouring of extreme anger and fury from Pakistan’s Pashtun dominated areas. Thousands of protestors including University students, rights activists, and political workers converged at the National Press Club to condemn extrajudicial killings, disappearances of Pashtuns youth, loss of lives in landmines, forces’ arrogance on security check-posts, curfews and harassment of tribesmen on the ...

More than a week of peaceful protest by thousands of Pashtun activists ( mostly from Waziristan and FATA) in front of Islamabad Press Club may or may not succeed in forcing the government to accept their reasonable demands but it has definitely redefined Pashtun political discourse in Pakistan. The contradiction between ever growing socio political awareness brought by urbanisation and the utter political disempowerment is the ...

Jan. 27, 2018, was another bloody day in the Afghan capital Kabul, with more than 100 killed and about 200 injured in a suicide attack in one of the busiest areas of the city, just meters away from the old Interior Ministry complex. As usual, the victims were mostly civilians, including women and children. There was no hesitation from the ...

The National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism has a 20 point agenda; none among them talks about the radicalization in public or private sector universities or colleges. The killing of a college principal on January 22 by one of his students in Charsadda over perceived blasphemy is yet another grim reminder that how distorted interpretation of religion is vigorously being ...

In recent times Pakistani political and military leadership has come around to the position where it is publicly accepting the fact that General Zia’s policy of supporting private Jihadist networks in 1980s was actually a fassad (turmoil) as according to them Jihad is  sole domain of the state. Not only that. From General Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation” after 9/11 to the ...

Despite objections by Afghanistan, Pakistan has accelerated work on building fence along the Durand Line, the two countries’ border, steeped in history and bitter controversy. Pakistan argues that fencing the border will stem cross-border movement of militants, a key sticking point in ties between Kabul and Islamabad, and Washington and Islamabad. President Donald Trump has ratcheted up pressure on Pakistan ...