The bloodbath in Kabul on May 31 will never be forgotten. Like a terrible nightmare it will haunt the memory of generations to come, not that Kabul had not seen atrocities before. Unfortunately, Afghan blood had callously been shed by both foreign oppressors and local warlords at different points in time. Particularly after 1992, Kabul has seen the wild ferocity ...

Within the elite circles in Bangladesh, a veiled woman is often framed in irrationality or presumed to be religious and possess intolerant views for she dresses to convey transcendence. Her dormant sexuality creates the perception of being enslaved or repressed. Some view her as an embodiment of virtue, some as an epithet of enslavement; she may be a feminist, her ...

Before the political uncertainties generated by the Supreme Court decision on Panama leaks could subside, a fresh public stand off between the civil and military leadership on what is called the Dawn leaks ushered a new challenge to the state system. So much has already been written about the aforementioned controversies and there is no use getting into their details ...

The deepening contradictions of the post Zia “republic” do not seem to be manageable anymore. The de facto isn’t ready to live with even the semblance of the de jure. The deep state is ready to attack the leadership of every institution that comes in the way of its total control of the state system and it includes even people ...

It is official now. The Punjab police has issued written instructions to its personnel to keep an eye on people with Pashtun/Afghan dresses and food habits as terror suspects. Police officials of Mandi Bahaudin were not shy of widely circulating written instructions for profiling of Pashtuns/Afghans with interesting details in this regard. According to credible press reports Punjab police is ...

While non-Muslim minorities seem like the most obvious victims of Pakistan’s repressive   blasphemy laws, in practice the picture is not as simplistic. That is not to say that the existence of these draconian blasphemy laws does not curtail the “substantive freedoms” of the minority groups in Pakistan — they certainly do. How the so called ‘Muslim’ penal code is creating ...

Book Review “Dewaal Sara Khabaray” “Talking to the wall”             Rahmat Shah Sayel once wrote “Chains every where, trenches abound  and military posts dotting the homeland, Be inflamed by your own consciousness, the homeland is a hell to live in.” As I listen to these piercing lines in the voice of a popular Pashtun singer Gulzar Alam sitting hundred of ...

Claiming descent from the armies of Alexander the Great, the Kalash once ruled Kafiristan ‘land of the infidels’, an area which stretched across the north of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The unfortunate crash that killed the pop-musician-turned-preacher Junaid Jamshed amongst many others, seems to have created a media frenzy. While the Pakistani media landscape is preoccupied with his pop music legacy ...

Yet it is Afghanistan that continues to inspire my work. Through my work I have been able to portray memories of Afghanistan while studying here in Indonesia. Nesar Ahmad Eesar in an exclusive interview with THE PASHTUN TIMES said: During my time, while studying painting, people kept telling me that I should not be learning painting as it is Haram ...

Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-1689), is an iconic figure in Pashtun history, literature and culture, often referred to as the national poet of Pashtuns. The life and character of Khushal Khan Khattak presents a complex, multifaceted terrain, considering he was not simply a great Chieftain and poet, but also a hunter, physician, philosopher, scholar and thinker (Shaheen: 2007). It would be ...