Friday Nov 13 will go down as the day when horror visited Paris in a wave of coordinated terrorist attacks against soft targets by gunmen and suicide bombers wearing suicide vests. At least 150 people died, among them concertgoers and restaurant diners, while more than 160 were injured seven of the attackers were also killed….
Dear Readers, To say that Pakistan has, over time, become a complacent nation that is not overly bothered about missing many targets it had aimed for would be an accurate assumption. To also say that we have become very much accustomed to the lack of commitment exhibited time and time again by the leadership would…
Fast-paced changes are taking place in all sectors across the world, among them the reshaping of the global security landscape. This we cannot afford to ignore. With the world economy becoming increasingly more and more interconnected every passing day, these changes are influenced and driven by the revolutionary transformations, in economics, politics, technology etc to…
The Army’s well planned military operations to rid North Waziristan of militants has been a major success, there is a sharp drop in acts of terrorism throughout Pakistan. The frequency of militants attacks was 154 per month, it has now come down to 71 per month; less than 50%, following in one year almost to…
For those graduating from the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), the country’s primary military institution is “hallowed ground”. I entered its steel gates on 14 May 1964 as one of the 110 Gentlemen Cadets (GCs) selected for the 34th PMA Long Course. As an Army Aviation helicopter pilot I flew to PMA several times in 1969/1970,…
In a paper on “The Impact of Corruption in Post Conflict Environments on Contracting Agencies”, Mark Carruthers of Centerra says that corruption prospers at all levels in our society. He defines it as (1) Systemic – as an integral part of the economy (2) Political – Corrupt interaction between high level officials and the private…
The majority of the corruption cases the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) tackled when it first came into being in Oct 1999 pertained to misdemeanor in the nationalized financial institutions. About 80% of the cases involved loans and/or advances on flimsy grounds and against very little (or mostly fake) collateral. NAB’s first major successes therefore was…
Dear Readers, Pakistan established relations with Afghanistan immediately after its independence in 1947 but because of issues related to the Durand Line the relations started deteriorating. Later in the 1970s due to the Soviet-Afghan war and then the Taliban insurgency after 9/11, relations soured up. In the recent past too there have been plenty of…
A fictional depiction of true facts, “Exodus” by author Leon Uris is a moving account of the struggle of Jewish refugees escaping persecution and discrimination in Europe to get to Israel (Middle East) after World War 2. Sixty years later history is repeating itself but in the reverse direction. Migrants from the Middle East and…
We are in the state we are in is because we have been compromising on targetting corruption, now it has become a part of our lives. The penetration is so deep that it has subverted society to the extent that the corrupt do not hide their corruption anymore. In fact they flout their newly acquired…
