Imran Khan’s band of merry men
These days, the latest ‘it’ crowd in Pakistan are the Immy K revolutionaries. For those of you who do not know, these are pseudo-intellectuals who think they can help Imran Khan bring about an inqilaab (revolution) which will lead to khudmukhtaari (autonomy) and freedom from the West, just by standing on a road for a few hours, or even better, by liking a page on Facebook. I hate to break it to all who belong to this crowd, but quite frankly, you all are deluded. Before I go further, I must admit that I have a huge amount of respect ...
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Palestine, behind the Osama smokescreen
The Bin Laden killing has gripped the global media and has been a source of relief, as well as misery, for many people around the world. Nevertheless, the practical impact of his killing on international terrorist activities and the war against terror is yet to be seen. This event, however, has inadvertently served as a smoke screen for more substantive events in the Middle East, specifically Palestine. Recently, Fatah and Hamas, the two groups representing the Palestinians, came together in an agreement to end the tensions between them and to formulate a plan for government formation. The history of these two ...
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Pakistan would have saved the IMF chief
The news about the IMF chief/possible French presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn being arrested and charged with an alleged sexual assault, including an attempted rape of a hotel maid, has been a cause for shock worldwide. The New York Police Department (NYPD), on the complaint of a hotel maid, responded quickly and a high-profile personality like the IMF chief was removed from an Air France plane minutes before it was to take off for Paris. Now, United States (US) courts will decide the fate of Kahn according to American law. While I understand that you cannot compare apples and oranges, when I ...
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Easy education: How to spot a fake school
It is not so hard to to attain a student visa for the United Kingdom nowadays and go there for higher education with a dream of becoming rich. Indeed the process has now become very easy – even students who have just completed 12 years of education get admissions in universities in the UK. The UK earns nearly $1.8 billion annually from international students, most of these are from Asia. A pertinent question here is: does every university in the UK provide quality education and are all properly accredited? No. According to research conducted by a UK based background screening company in 2011, ...
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Bin Laden is dead, but I want more
Osama Bin Laden is dead, but you knew that already. You’ve heard about it a million times by now and probably swapped inane conspiracy theories back and forth. It seems like a great moment in history doesn’t it? The most wanted man in the world, a six feet plus Arab who evaded and dodged the world’s most powerful military and intelligence sources for over a decade has finally been hunted down like a common criminal and eliminated once and for all. Pakistan awoke to the news with surprise. It seemed so surreal, so theatrically staged. Obama proclaimed the news with ...
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We, the survivors of Osama
It has been almost a decade since 9/11 and now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, politicians will have meetings, intelligence services will brief each other, armies will re-strategise – but what will the rest of us do? We, the survivors of terrorism, the people who mourn loved ones on a daily basis and the people who live alongside drone attacks and bomb blasts – do we rejoice or do we look back over the last ten years and try to remember a world before all of this? My heart feels heavy – because even as I write this I know ...
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An American perspective: Osama’s death is not Obama’s victory
When Osama bin Laden was killed, I was at a dinner party given by an award-winning author, munching on sweetbread and chatting up brilliant filmmaker, writer and activist types. Though I’m in the country where Bin Laden was tracked and killed, for me the news ironically came from America. I read about his death in an email from Mississippi shortly after waking. My American friends are bombarding my Facebook wall – “What’s it like to be there right now?” Honestly, I feel happy, scared and fairly apathetic. As I rode to work, I watched Defense pass outside my window—the mosque, the ...
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Learn to be Taliban: K is for Kalashnikov
Imagine that you learnt the alphabet and numbers with images of Kalashnikovs and tanks instead of apples and oranges. During the mid to late 1980s, a USAID funded project printed millions of textbooks in Peshawar. The funds came from Saudi Arabia and the books were distributed amongst school children in Afghanistan and in new madrassas across Pakistan. These textbooks were prepared to indoctrinate. Specialists from the Afghanistan Centre at the University of Nebraska Omaha received nearly $60 million to develop a curriculum, which glorified jihad, celebrated martyrdom and dehumanised invaders. By the mid-1980s, the Afghan mujahedeen were bleeding the Soviet Union, hastening her economic collapse ...
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Forget Aafia, we’ll keep Davis
On Monday, Waseem, the brother of one of the men Raymond Davis has been accused of murdering, announced that he was open to an exchange involving Dr Aafia Siddiqui and Davis. Later, Aafia’s sister Dr Fauzia and mother seconded the idea. They are not alone. Calls to exchange Aafia for Davis emerged soon after the American was arrested. To me, these do not make much sense as both cases are completely different cases. Aafia was tried and sentenced to 86 years in a US prison on seven charges. Davis, on the other hand, has been accused of shooting two Pakistani citizens ...
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Davos Diaries: The West is not working
As I attend speak to various members of the 2,200 business elite, top politicians and journalists who have gathered at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos there is a sad realization in the air: the West is not working. The global polarization between the haves and have-nots is taking its toll on progress and if the Western world seeks to move forward it must bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. Former President of the United States Bill Clinton addressed a gathering here. He said: “My concern is that businesses and governments in this difficult environment will see the ...
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