Failure all around (Dawn, June 8, 2011)
We Pakistanis – even those of us who have become cynical and bitter – tend to bristle when the words ‘failed’ and ‘state’ are placed within the proximity of the word ‘Pakistan’. We froth at the mouth and mutter something about Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, etc. Yet here we are. United States Special Forces on board US military helicopters entered Pakistani territory and flew to the outskirts of Abbottabad, where they entered a 3 story building housed in a high-walled compound near the Pakistan Military Academy and killed Osama Bin Laden, before taking his body on board one of their helicopters and leaving. All this is supposed to have happened in approximately one hour and forty minutes. Apparently, Mr. Bin Laden had been living right under our noses for years.
Storm in a teacup (Dawn, May 8, 2011)
I never read ‘Three cups of tea’. Something about its ‘white man stumbles upon brown misery, then sets about correcting it using his all-American heartland gusto, saving one drowning soul at a time’ narrative did not sit well with me. I also found that the optimism generated by the near universal fawning over Mr. Mortenson (the author of Three cups of tea) grated with my pessimism about our education system.
And justice for all (Dawn, March 24, 2011)
The legal drama of the ‘Raymond Davis killings’ (is that a suitable moniker for the event?) was brought to an end under the Shara’i mechanism of Diyat (blood-money). Funds, from unknown sources, were transferred to the heirs of the two victims, as remuneration in exchange for discontinuing their noble quest for justice. Or was the money transferred to them as justice? Not sure on that one.
Radical Islam and business in cahoots, apparently (asifsaeedmemon.net, March 21, 2011)
I have always found Nadeem Farooq Paracha’s (known in Pakistan and elsewhere as NFP) writing interesting; both in his earlier incarnation as music critic and his current one as social and political commentator (on his Smoker’s Corner blog for Dawn ). I don’t always agree with what he has to say. Nonetheless, I enjoy reading him. He is, almost always, witty (in a caustic way) and there is a lot to be said for the existence of at least one contrarian among Pakistan’s burgeoning multitude of English language commentators.
He does, however, occasionally go a little too far in his desire to impose a Marxist meta-narrative on Pakistan’s short history.
The market and the state (Dawn, February 8, 2011)
In introductory economics courses, economic systems are explained by using the two extreme (and mostly theoretical) examples of the “command economy” and the “laissez-faire economy”. The former is fully controlled by the state and the latter has no state interference at all. Most economies in the world today (except, perhaps, for North Korea) exist somewhere between these two extremes: the mixed economy.
Reform or bust (Dawn, January 21, 2011)
The government’s financial squeeze continues unabated after recent attempts by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led administration to alleviate pressure on the public coffers came to naught. The ruling party was left isolated by opposition parties as well as its own coalition partners as one after another proposed tax reforms and increases in power tariffs and oil prices were withdrawn in the face of intense political opposition. In effect, political reality defeated economic reality.
Was nationalizing education a blunder? (Dawn, November 2, 2010)
The summer of our discontent (Dawn, May 4, 2010)
The economy should now be the top priority (Dawn, April 22, 2010)
18th amendment inches closer to finish line (asifsaeedmemon.net, April 4, 2010)
Operation to what end? (asifsaeedmemon.net, May 29, 2009)
A dangerous precedent (asifsaeedmemon.net, May 15, 2009)
Pakistan and an Obama administration (asifsaeedmemon.net, November 10, 2008)
It’s been a bad year (asifsaeedmemon.net, November 3, 2008)
The impeachable Mr. Musharraf (asifsaeedmemon.net, August 7, 2008)