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Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
In Balochistan, not only are things not what they seem, they are not even what they are being called. Since the Supreme Court ruled on October 12 that the provincial government had lost its “constitutional right to rule,” a cabal ...
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Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
What if Pakistan could vote in the US election? According to a new opinion poll, in a fortnight we’d all be listening to a speech by President Mitt Romney, not President Barack Obama if Pakistan had its way. Of course, all the other ...
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Thursday, October 25, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
When an order is overtly unconstitutional and illegal, should an officer of the armed forces follow it? Is the defence that a superior ordered him to do so ever good enough? In 1941, Asghar Khan was twenty years old and had barely ...
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Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
A Pakistani journalist visiting Kabul in the nineties half-jokingly asked the then-vice president of Afghanistan, Maulana Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi: “I’ve read in the British gazetteers that the only way to deal with an Afghan is ...
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Wednesday, October 03, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
In the slow burn of Balochistan, why did Sardar Akhtar Mengal decide to enter now: to rouse the flames further or to douse them? There are at least three theories about what he was up to in Pakistan, and interlinked to that, what ...
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Saturday, September 22, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
ISLAMABAD: While the government’s announcement of ‘Yaum-e-Ishq-e-Rasool’ (Love the Prophet Day) on Friday was intended to officially lend support to Pakistanis protesting against the anti-Islam film and be a national expression of ...
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Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
Last Saturday, when the title ‘Majlis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen Pakistan’ (MWM) meant precious little to many of us undiscerning followers of news, an advertisement appeared in certain sections of the press. The “open letter,” as the ...
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Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
We had been waiting for at least two hours before Syed Akbaruddin walked in. It was clearly a busy day for the tall and lanky spokesperson of India’s external affairs ministry, accompanying his boss in Islamabad for the second round ...
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Saturday, September 08, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
ISLAMABAD: Scaling down Pakistan-specific non-trade barriers is clearly a priority for India but scaling down the Siachen peaks may be an entirely different course altogether. In an exclusive chat with The News, Indian External ...
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Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
Predictably, it began much before little Rimsha was accused of the incomprehensible – much before torn little pieces of religious paraphernalia were bandied about and their desecration decried. Venal mullahs, jilted neighbours, ...
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