On a quiet Friday March 15, 2019 afternoon 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, armed with automatic weapons, opened indiscriminate fire at close quarters on men, women and children inside the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifteen minutes later, a second attack unfolded only five kilometers away at the Linwood Islamic Center. 50 innocent Muslims…
After almost two decades the US-led NATO intervention in Afghanistan aimed at eradicating the Taliban has no end in sight. US President Donald Trump and the American people, if not the US military, decided that an honourable exit was necessary to end the longest war in US history. Despite the fact that one of Trump’s…
BJP’s chauvinist ideology of ‘Hindutva’ leading up to the elections has increased communal tensions and violence in several Indian states. Instead of politically countering the electoral setback to Congress Party in the State Assembly elections in December last year, Narendra Modi returned to his time-tested anti-Muslim anti-Pakistan election formula to ignite religious fervour among Hindu…
In South Asia we are quick to blame law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and the judicial system for the lack of justice in our courts. However, we have done practically nothing to strengthen the law, the hands of the enforcers of the law and the legal process necessary to provide fair and equitable processes. The situation…
A governmental body created by a legislature to implement and enforce specific laws, a “regulatory agency” or a “regulator” would usually have quasi-legislative functions, executive functions, and judicial functions. Many laws govern social and economic matters, such as income tax, environmental laws, occupational health and safety laws, real estate law, employment laws, etc. A regulatory…
One of the major basis for corruption the illness eating away the substance of the Pakistani state, its institutions and its people is perjury. An especially dangerous criminal offence, perjury or lying in court undermines the very purpose of the court, the laws of the country and the judiciary system at large: to bring justice…
Kazakhstan, the largest economy in Central Asia has once again surprised the world by adopting a wise political change/ move to safeguard its system and its continuity. Nursultan Nazarbayev the former president who served for 30 years recently announced his resignation from the presidency in a televised speech and transferred his powers to Chairman of…
India often believes that Pakistan lives under the shadow of its superior military prowess. Boasting on numerical ascendency, India looks at Pakistan through the lens of, what I call, “perpetuated grandiosity” i.e. reducing Pakistan and its military capability to an “incapacitated flutter’. This estimation is rooted deep in the Indian strategic community’s belief that India’s…
The US and Afghan Taliban negotiators wrapped up their latest round of marathon peace talks on March 12 with “real strides” made but no agreement on a timetable for troop withdrawal, the US special envoy Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said. He divulged that the next step would be discussions in Washington, adding that “there is no…
Context While the Pakistan-India tensions are known to flare up occasionally, the present one over the February 14 Pulwama incident has calmed down for the time being. However, in the absence of any political dialogue related to Kashmir, there is likely to be a next episode. Most assessments of the incident have examined the conflagration…
