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Monday December 02, 2024
Aasim Zafar Khan
Aasim Zafar Khan

The writer is a freelance journalist

  • November 10, 2018

    Driving in Lahore

    Big brother is finally watching you in real time. And because we’re not used to it, we’re going about our daily commute, unawares. However, all...

  • August 01, 2018

    Reflections of an election

    One of the major fallouts of the 21st century is how the internet, and by extension social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, have created an...

  • July 10, 2018

    A master class in irony

    Sometimes things need to get much worse before they begin to get better. Or, you need to hit rock bottom, after which the only movement left is...

  • January 10, 2018

    Bring back the kites

    A solitary kite was flying over a busy neighbourhood. It wasn’t a fancy gudda or patang, but a homemade kite that is put together with a plastic...

  • October 11, 2017

    No parking

    Pakistan’s motorisation rate – which is the number of passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants – stood at 17 in 2015. This is an...

  • September 27, 2017

    The new battlefront

    April 24, 2015: Karachi. Renowned activist Sabeen Mahmud had just been murdered. As her friends, family and well-wishers tried to comprehend what...

  • September 13, 2017

    Pawns on someone else’s chessboard

    At a time when governments and dictators alike are clamping down on freedom of speech and expression in print and on television, social media is...

  • March 12, 2015

    Bibi’s blunder

    There’s nothing quite like a fully functional and vibrant democracy. After all, which other political system will allow the president of your...

  • February 28, 2015

    The intelligence disconnect

    It happens every time. There is a terror incident somewhere in the country, and shortly afterwards we find out that there was intelligence available...

  • February 21, 2015

    Our national delusion

    Let’s talk cricket for a while. One match in particular. Yes, that one. On one side there was India. Reigning world champions with arguably the...

  • February 14, 2015

    Counterterrorism farce

    Pakistan has a brand new counter-terrorism force . The first batch of nearly 500 corporals, as they have been named, has recently graduated from an...

  • February 09, 2015

    The bullet train

    Pick a card - any card. That’s how the magician starts. And it’s all downhill from there. The die is cast, and with equal measures of sleight of...

  • February 07, 2015

    The inevitability of Daesh, Al-Qaeda merger

    The recent arrest of Yousaf al Salafi, a Pakistani Syrian, allegedly the commander of the Islamic State group in Pakistan, has opened a new front...

  • January 31, 2015

    Spooky statecraft

    Amidst all the grief in the aftermath of the horrific attack at the Army Public School in Peshawar, there has been one question on everybody’s...

  • January 30, 2015

    The impossibility of Madrassah reforms

    News Analysis

  • January 24, 2015

    Madressahs and cash

    The recently unveiled National Action Plan against terrorism is an important document. Important, because for the first time the government has...

  • January 17, 2015

    Where do we go now?

    December 16, 2014 will be a day remembered for long. Not only because 140 innocent children lost their lives in a war that simply has nothing to do...

  • January 10, 2015

    A brief history of non-state actors

    The west has long pointed an accusing finger at Pakistan’s policy of dealing with terrorists, alleging that: a) the state differentiates between...

  • January 03, 2015

    Leos, goats and committees

    This whole horoscope deal is a scam. A whole lot of drivel, created by somebody back in the day with immense amounts of free time and ready access...