The Resurrection of Hakimullah Mehsud

According to a senior unnamed official from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence yesterday, Tehreek-e-Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud is actually alive. According to the Guardian, “Mehsud was reported to have died in a CIA drone strike in South Waziristan in January but, although Pakistan’s interior minister claimed he had been killed, the death was never confirmed by either [...]

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Politicians – They’re Just Like Us!

Sometimes we are really hard on our politicians. I mean, come on guys, they’re people too! Sure, many lie, cheat, and steal from the country. The whole “there’s no I in ‘team‘” saying is completely lost on most of them.  But beneath that lying, cheating, bratty exterior are people, with real feelings. Because politicians – [...]

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The South Park Controversy

The Comedy Central show South Park is no stranger to controversy. In fact, in last week’s 200th episode,  every celebrity South Park has ever made fun of -  from Tom Cruise and Tiger Woods to George Lucas and even Mickey Mouse – came together to protest against the town, which they called, “a hotbed of [...]

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Find Heaven – Daniyal Noorani

Over the weekend, more than 47 people were killed in an attack on a line of people waiting at a food distribution point at a refugee camp in Kohat in northwest Pakistan. On Sunday, another bombing targeted a Pakistani police station in the town of Billitung, killing seven and wounding around two dozen. And yesterday, [...]

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The Unsung Heroes of Generations Past

A few days ago, my cousin discovered piles of old family photos in Dhaka – images documenting my mother’s family history from the 1930s until today. Technology and communication being what it is, she scanned and uploaded a number of them on Facebook, to share with our relatives now spread across the world. Growing up, [...]

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Abbotabad Riots – In the Name of a Name

Below is my piece that first appeared in Foreign Policy‘s AfPak Channel, a continuation on my previous post that delves more into the party politics that often clouds what the real issues are or should be: As the 18th Amendment, the constitutional reforms package designed to bolster parliamentary democracy in Pakistan, inches closer to becoming [...]

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Not the Way to Wage a Counterinsurgency

On Tuesday, news agencies reported that up to 71 civilians were killed in a weekend air strike by Pakistani jets in the Khyber tribal agency. However, the Pakistani military has yet to confirm the deaths as civilian casualties, and military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas emphasized that the army “had intelligence that militants were gathering [...]

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Flash Dance Hits Pakistan

Last year, T-Mobile UK debuted a commercial that featured 400 dancers at Liverpool Street Station. The ad, which has been seen over 19 million times on YouTube, even led to a Facebook-organized knock-off flash mob that shut down the same station a month later. In Pakistan, the Keh Do campaign for Coca-Cola is attempting something [...]

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The Institutional Showdown – Usman Zafar

In the past several weeks, political developments concerning the Pakistani Constitution – specifically the 18th Amendment – have garnered much media attention in the country. Below though, Usman Zafar, an Islamabad-based producer for Express 24/7, probes this subject further to assess the much deeper divide and conflict between Pakistan’s judiciary and government: The cat and [...]

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Shahrukh Does Amrika

On Sunday, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed Bollywood actor/superstar Shahrukh Khan on his recently released film, My Name is Khan, his U.S. airport security woes (Stars! They’re just like us!), the Indian film industry, and perceptions of America abroad. The interview was surprisingly interesting, but I found a few points to be the most thought-provoking. Towards [...]

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