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Thursday October 03, 2024
Shahzad Chaudhry
Shahzad Chaudhry

  • September 22, 2019

    The real imbroglio

    Making war is easy, finding peace is hard; and, all wars are fought to find peace. There isn’t a bigger conundrum than what faces Afghans, the...

  • September 06, 2019

    Different worlds

    I have returned home after a two-month sojourn to Trump’s country. I last visited there in 2016. That was election year and halfway down it seemed...

  • August 30, 2019

    A way out in Kashmir

    In 1998, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met to set in motion the ‘Comprehensive Dialogue’ process as a part of the bilateral...

  • August 23, 2019

    Making sense of South Asia

    Politically, Narendra Modi has played his cards. He has used his near two-thirds majority to remove the charade of Article 370 in the Indian...

  • August 09, 2019

    How the peace was lost

    August 5, 2019 will haunt the memory of the people of India and Pakistan forever. India has decided to upstage itself with a presidential order...

  • July 26, 2019

    Strategic windfall

    Donald Trump and Imran Khan have us all in a spin. What seemed to be an expedient meet-up without associated diplomatic frenzy or driven by an...

  • July 19, 2019

    Waltzing with Trump

    As Imran Khan prepares for Washington there is something he must know. President Trump, IK’s host for the visit - which will include a tete a tete...

  • July 05, 2019

    In pursuit of the unknown

    If one was to summarise the state of governance in the country, the following will make a comprehensive list: The Budget has been passed and if...

  • June 21, 2019

    Living with Celiac

    This is a public-service column. It was inspired by a recent event on Celiac disease where the PTI’s Shafqat Mehmood presided with specialists,...

  • June 14, 2019

    Fighting fear

    At a recent deliberation of a group of opinion-makers and thought-leaders – many with experience in governance and policy formulation – there...

  • May 31, 2019

    Modi 2.0

    Modi 2.0 is a journey which began as Modi 1.0. There are things which he has achieved and things still left to be done. The saffronisation of India...

  • May 24, 2019

    Modi mania?

    The Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party – the political wing of whose Prime Minister Narendra Modi...

  • May 17, 2019

    Surviving an IMF regime

    The deed is done, or will be shortly after the IMF board has approved the staff-level agreement with the government of Pakistan for a structural...

  • May 10, 2019

    The president’s men

    Prima facie, it is a useless debate. The matter is settled in the constitution and forms part of the basic structure which remains unalterable per...

  • May 03, 2019

    The age of ineptness

    The opposition led by the Sharif brothers is effectively pacified given their specific challenges, personal and legal, as indeed their absence from...

  • April 26, 2019

    What failed Asad Umar

    Transpose Ishaq Dar in place of Asad Umar with the same set of economic challenges that Asad Umar faced eight months back when he started off as...

  • April 12, 2019

    Why the PTI must not fail

    Pakistan is in the midst of a unique experiment. Unbeknown we have marched into an era where our political journey as a society has evolved to the...

  • April 05, 2019

    When nothing else works

    Little over five years when the Ayub martial law struck, I was too young to know the difference. All it did was disrupt my most favourite moment of...

  • March 29, 2019

    Why Modi will think twice

    Had Balakot and the next day gone per the plan, Modi would have been in his starry heavens. It did not. Instead, it brought grief to the entire...

  • March 22, 2019

    The white man’s burden

    When Samuel Huntington first published his thesis of ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order’ in 1996, he was laughed...

  • March 15, 2019

    Pulwama and after

    Whoever conceived and enacted Pulwama did no favour to Pakistan or the Kashmir struggle – despite recent talk that the Kashmiri fight for freedom...

  • March 08, 2019

    State of play

    When India first decided to launch its terror doctrine, pre-Doval, it used freelancing terror assets in Afghanistan to attack some key bases in...

  • February 22, 2019

    A very blind India

    Mumbai was a reality. It needed a more pervasive investigation to connect the dots but the facts were lost in irrational emotion. We, India and...

  • February 15, 2019

    Where is the money?

    For starts, we have depreciated the overvalued rupee to encourage exports and limit imports. That’s an apprentice approach to control the current...

  • February 08, 2019

    The Afghan promise

    A promise for peace in Afghanistan can be blunted by two principal and two tertiary factors. The principal ones include the sitting Afghan...

  • February 01, 2019

    Searching the soul

    A sentence that Imran Khan spoke when addressing his party convention on the government’s 100-day performance may be the most telling if indeed...

  • January 25, 2019

    Off the rails

    Pakistani society and its constituent institutions displayed their most macabre traits this past week. A couple, which had young children, was mowed...

  • January 18, 2019

    Afghan end-game?

    The Afghan war is whimpering to an end because of natural causes. The Americans have exhausted their patience to sustain an outpost of little...

  • January 11, 2019

    Economic truth

    So what trick is Imran Khan missing in his first opportunity to bat as the government? These are transition times the world over. Global economy and...

  • January 05, 2019

    Reality bites

    So, what’s the year’s lasting lament as 2018 fades out? That the government, the military and the judiciary, all seem to be working in...

  • December 28, 2018

    2019: make us nicer

    Here is what I wrote a week before Imran Khan was sworn in: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes something out of it more for the sake of the...

  • December 16, 2018

    Equanomics

    The PTI has landed itself into this dysfunctional economic mess which is surviving only on borrowed money. The indigenous economy around basic...

  • December 14, 2018

    Equanomics: Part - I

    Equanomics is what this nation might need to address its woes. However, what has sustained over decades as the economic order of this society can...

  • December 07, 2018

    The first hundred days

    This is what I got from the PTI’s first hundred days in power: that Imran Khan is a sincere, well-meaning and honest person who has reached the...

  • November 30, 2018

    A world divided

    A spread view of the world’s map is most revealing and may help understand better how the new world is turning out. The Pacific Ocean acts as the...

  • November 23, 2018

    Arresting divisions

    It helps to realise that religion is underwritten in the purpose of Pakistan. At least, that is how the country was first imagined. The fact that...

  • November 16, 2018

    The TLP conundrum

    Despite Barelvis being the dominant sect – almost fifty percent – they had been overwhelmed by the Deobandi-Salafi brand since independence....

  • November 09, 2018

    Appeasement

    It actually began way back before the country was formed. After the Quaid and his cohorts had determined that the parting solution was unlikely to...

  • November 02, 2018

    Leaders or managers?

    This is the crux of governance, the difference and complementarity of which must come early to any person in a position of leadership. Actually, it...

  • October 26, 2018

    The new order of impunity

    These are Trump’s times, as of the many right-extremist political start-ups which are cashing in on the politics of culture and identity.There...

  • October 19, 2018

    Not much lost yet

    The tremors from the by-polls may have been mild but should have registered on the PTI’s Richter scale. The loss of Imran Khan’s two seats has...

  • October 12, 2018

    Politics of entitlement

    All politics is for power, which in turn gets driven by the allure of influence or lust. Exceptions exist and that is when history gets made but...

  • October 05, 2018

    Performance check

    Begin with the economy, a perpetual and deep pain: so the State Bank raises the interest rate by one percent. This made for a two-and-a-half percent...

  • September 28, 2018

    Reading the Indian mind

    To most Pakistanis, it is an enigma. One can never tell what an Indian mind may be thinking. And it doesn’t speak well of the two people.Surely,...

  • September 21, 2018

    How sweet is CPEC?

    We are such big-brother aficionados that in the 70 years since the country was first formed we have always had one looking over our shoulder. Even...

  • September 14, 2018

    And on flows the river

    The year 1979 was geopolitically seismic. America’s permanent haunt, Iran, and its sovereign, Raza Shah Pehlavi were overthrown in days by a rare...

  • September 07, 2018

    The first few days

    Let’s face it, PTI, there has been more pain than plaudits in the first few weeks of the government. This has less to do with how matters may have...

  • August 31, 2018

    Hi, Secretary Pompeo

    These three words will define how the US and Pakistan develop their relationship in the foreseeable future. The structural domain is already...

  • August 17, 2018

    Foreign affairs

    On August 18, Pakistan’s newest prime minister, Imran Khan, will wake up to the reality of a live western border with Afghanistan. One hopes that...

  • August 10, 2018

    Imran’s era

    This shall be the second time in his life that an era will be known by Imran Khan’s name. The first was when he led the Pakistan cricket team and...