Is Israel really Pakistan’s enemy?
Growing up in Peshawar, a slightly conservative city of Pakistan, my sentiments as a child were nothing different from those of others in most parts of the country. I had a slight disliking for India, and sheer hatred for Israel. Words such as ‘Jewish lobby’, ‘Zionists’, ‘Freemasons’, and many others – whose meanings many of us did not even know – kept ringing in our ears through religious scholars, teachers, friends and peers, and we used to associate all of them directly with Jews, especially Jews of Israel and those having major shares in US corporations. The Indian intelligence agency Research and ...
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What war does to women
There is so much going on in the world. The clouds of war and violence seem to hover around the globe and there seems to be no end to this mayhem and chaos. Billions of military troops march out in the name of war and conflict every day. They fight against each other under the shadows of cannons, tanks, nuclear warfare, chemicals, gunfire and smoke. The fight goes on and on and when it ultimately ends (which it never does), we find them buried deep under the ground. They take cities, culture and heritage down with them, like they never existed. And ...
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Do you know about the people of Tirah valley?
Have you ever heard of the valley of Tirah? This is not some valley in distant country in a faraway continent; it is located in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in the northwest of Pakistan. Recently, Tirah has fallen into the hands of the Taliban after a fierce couple of months of fighting. The main battle for control of Tirah was between the Ansarul Islam (AI) and the Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) backed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The news of this fight has been covered extensively by some of the leading daily newspapers of Pakistan, but unfortunately, the mainstream news channels of Pakistan have completely ...
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Iraq 10 years on: Blair and Bush have blood on their hands
When former British Prime Minister Tony Blair proudly proclaimed on BBC News that he had “no regrets” about the war in Iraq 10 years on, I was so disgusted, I had to switch the television off and try to calm myself down. In these 10 years, over 600,000 civilians have been killed, a civil war ensues and no so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ever found. I must highlight that people died on both sides. Despite whatever opinion we may have of US troops, 4,488 American soldiers and marines were killed and thousands were left with severe disabilities in ...
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Is war between Israel and Iran inevitable?
War drums are beating for Iran and once again, the drummer is Israel, joined by some occidental powers. The facade started last summer but was postponed due to the elections in the US and Israel. The burning question though remains ‘is war between Israel and Iran looming’? In an attempt to answer this question, we must look at a few different perspectives. Israel and Western points of view Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat that must be stopped by all means, including a military strike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is convinced that Iran will be able to produce a nuclear bomb by summer ...
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Is music just music or does it have a nationality?
In the early 1980s, when Ghulam Ali’s melody ‘chukpe chukpe raat din’ and Nazia Hasan’s sensuous ‘aap jaisa koi’ took Indian film-viewing audience by a storm, the armies of both nations were engaged in a severe conflict on the highest battlefield on earth – the Siachen glacier. Two decades later, the Siachen conflict grew to become one of the major factors for the Kargil war of 1999, in a parallel universe at around the same time, the Pakistani band Junoon was making the youth of India groove to the tunes of ‘sayonee’. If talent and armed conflict could remain separate decades ago, today, when the online world is casting a ...
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Will Afghanistan see civil war after the US exits?
Recently, the two final term presidents Obama and Karzai, met at the White House to discuss the US-led NATO force withdrawal and future cooperation between the two countries. President Obama has made it clear that the Afghans will have full responsibility of their country’s security by spring and that the war will come to a responsible end by 2014. While the US certainly wants to speed up troop withdrawal, some analysts and Afghan politicians have shown apprehension at such a prospect. This is due to their fear that a sudden troop withdrawal might trigger a government collapse, which the Taliban could exploit to return ...
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The Afghan army and its failure
US President Barack Obama with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai has announced that the Afghan army will now operate directly from Afghanistan from this spring. While Karzai has expressed happiness over the announcement, he was heard saying that an indigenous army would mean that Afghanistan will not be able to put the blame on foreign troops in case of human rights violations in its own country. However, a very small number of US troops may remain in the region for assistance and training purposes. President Obama has made it clear that these troops will not be seeking permanent settlement in the ...
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The metamorphosis of Chand Ashoka
Prologue: Empathising with Emperor Ashoka after the historical battle of Kalinga which had a substantial impact on Ashoka’s personal mores and conventions, which meant that the Maurayan empire began to change drastically from an empire of the sword, as most of the historical empires were, to an ‘empire of the spirit’. A title very few empires deserve to be remembered by throughout the annals of history. This account is of the thoughts of a man who was the initiator of such a diametric change. Who am I? Am I the glorious king who achieves victory in every battle; the fearless soul who has the audacity ...
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‘Objectivity’ the first casualty in the Gaza conflict
A fragile truce is in place in Gaza and now begins the battle of interpretation of who was to blame and who was hurt most. Israel’s eight day war on Gaza was accompanied by a war of words, with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) sending out a barrage of propaganda that was uncritically picked up and repeated by most of the world’s media. Information from the communications branch of the IDF flooded the internet with the IDF’s own blog full of updates and infographics, also featured on their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr accounts. The infamous IDF video on YouTube ...
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