Departing Quetta today, on my flight was none other than Ali Ahmed Kurd, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association and firebrand lawyers’ movement leader.
He was sitting two seats ahead of me, but was later escorted to the cockpit, where he stayed till the end of the flight.  It was the pilot and flight staff’s [...]

Sometimes when I read the writing of others, I feel as if the voice is my own.
This morning, when I read Amir Mir’s report in The News, I realized some of the words were my own.
Wednesday morning (Pakistan time), I wrote these words in my post, eighteen hours before Amir Mir’s report in the Thursday [...]

Terrorists struck an office of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and a police station in central Lahore this morning, killing at least 22 persons and injuring over 200.  At least thirteen of the dead are police officers, reports GEO News.
Reports of the attacks’ details are conflicting.  Several officials have described the attack as a suicide [...]

Book Review:
Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda
By Gretchen Peters
Thomas Dunne Books, 2009 (320 pages)
Earlier this month, President Asif Ali Zardari asked where is the Taliban getting its funding from. For a partial answer, he need not look further than in the bloodshot eyes of one of Pakistan’s six [...]

Why do old white men have a fetish for drawing and redrawing the maps of countries in which they do not live?
Perhaps — and I’m being facetious and ironic — it stems from their radicalization as youths when they play boardgames, such as Risk, and are indoctrinated with a sense of God-like mastery and dreams [...]

The military operations in Swat and resulting humanitarian crisis are a test not only for the Pakistani government, but for Pakistani society as well.
In recent days, the general public and media in Pakistan have responded with great vigor to the call to support displaced residents of the Malakand Division.  For example, many in Mardan have [...]

The nation of Pakistan begins its greatest test in decades as Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani declared war against takfiri terrorists in the Malakand Division in a national address this evening.
Gilani called on Pakistanis to unite behind their army and government in a war to “completely eliminate” militants who have reaped havoc and death in [...]

Recent reporting, including the current concern in the Western press for the nearly million internally displaced persons in Pakistan, has made me return occasionally to my November 2008 post, “Toward the Iraqization of Pakistan?”

Six months ago, I warned of: Pakistan’s IDPs tripling in number, rising ethnic tensions in Karachi, the consolidation of anti-Pakistan militant groups, [...]