Talat Farooq

Talat Farooq

  • Two kinds of power

    Eight-year-old Zainab’s rape and murder has drawn intense outrage on the streets of Kasur and on social media this week. It is the twelfth case of...

  • Tillerson’s fallacies

    Tillerson’s fallacies

    Rex Tillerson’s visit to Pakistan and Islamabad’s response are more of the same and will remain so as long as their divergent national...

  • Where the real paradox lies

    On Saturday, US National Security Adviser Gen McMaster said in a radio interview that President Trump wants Pakistan to change its...

  • Security for CPEC

    On May 24, two Chinese language teachers were kidnapped from the supposedly secure zone in Quetta. The militant Islamic State group later claimed...

  • Challenges in Iran

    Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a centrist, was re-elected last Saturday , to a second term by winning 57 percent of the votes in an election that...

  • Trump’s Tomahawk galore

    So what did Donald Trump aim to accomplish by launching 59 cruise missiles on a single Syrian airbase late last week? His supporters have been...

  • Beyond discord

    The last 37 years have been a long and convoluted journey. They have taken us from the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, through the proxy warfare in...

  • Some non-events in 2016

    In 2016, some cherished Pakistani dreams remained unfulfilled, deferred or worse, went sour – dreams of moving towards genuine democracy;...

  • Beyond political rhetoric

    Donald Trump is all set to enter the White House as the 45th president of the United States. Alienation and economic anxiety largely deriving from...

  • A deck of cards

    Quetta painted red again...yet again...And so it goes on; the killing spree continues; our pain gradually turning into numbness and our tears...

  • Democracy and the coup

    Our media and politicians are waxing eloquent about how the Turkish people – the ‘awam’ – have saved and strengthened...

  • Don’t you know who I am?

    On Wednesday, the Islamabad Police registered a case against former chairman Senate Nayyer Hussain Bokhari for allegedly assaulting a police...

  • A symbiotic link

    General Raheel Sharif’s recent call for across-the-board accountability to uproot corruption followed by the sacking of senior army officers...

  • Reality check

    It is all very well to talk about the civil-military divide in Pakistan. Yes, the divide is there. Yes, it has always been there. Yes, the army...

  • Tweak them instead

    According to a news item, top leaders of religious parties, seminaries and scholars held a meeting at Mansoora in Lahore on March 15 and agreed to...

  • Dekh magar pyar sey

    Roughly translated, the title means “You may look at me but only with love in your eyes”. This phrase – a favourite of rickshaw...

  • Obama’s tears

    In the East Room of the White House last Tuesday, President Obama broke down in tears when, bypassing Congress, he publicly announced executive...

  • Of brothers and scapegoats

    Around the time that Ashraf Ghani was describing Pakistan-Afghanistan ties as “not brotherly”, the Taliban forces were in the process of...

  • The three Sharifs

    As things stand today, Pakistan’s political, security and social situations are defined by three Sharifs: Nawaz Sharif, Raheel Sharif and Ramzan...

  • Losing a child

    A long, long time ago my 17-year-old sister died a sudden death. My mother survived her by nearly 36 years. During those three decades she never...