Ripple Effect

A senior defence ministry official - an air-vice marshal - briefed the Senate's Defence Committee on May 19 about the budgetary needs of the military. The official somewhat disingenuously told the Senate committee that Pakistan was the lowest spending on defence in the entire region and the figure he quoted to substantiate this claim was that Pakistan spent around $8,400 per soldier while India spent roughly three times that per soldier. A more accurate measure of comparison would be defence spending as a percentage of GDP which in Pakistan's case is 2.6 per cent of GDP compared to India's 1.8 per cent. Similarly, Pakistan spends $35.4 per capita on defence compared to India which spends $29.9. One is not sure whether any of the Senators present in the committee hearing could figure that what they were being told was not entirely true and that Pakistan does spend far more on defence than it should be given the size of its economy, GDP per capita and low human indicators. ...

By Saroop Ijaz The 2013 election was rigged. It was rigged before it happened. It was rigged before Mr. Imran Khan woke up to the fact. It was rigged when TTP picked favorites. In the run up, during the campaign, ANP leaders were killed every day. PPP and ANP were threatened, attacked, maimed and told that they could campaign at their own peril; the peril was violent death. The field was uneven, and the field was Punjab and Punjab only, since our “estranged brothers” were in no mood to allow campaign and electioneering in the rest of Al-Bakistan. Yet, to point to this elementary fact was to be an apologist for the beleaguered parties, to defend corruption.  The prime beneficiaries were Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mr. Imran Khan, who in the competitive spirit did not even spare a moment to condemn the attacks on rivals, to condole with the leaders and families of those killed. Callousness was the name of the game, leaders of PML-N and PTI implying and sometimes saying it directly that PPP...

A very dangerous precedent will have been set if Pakistan's electronic media regulator, PEMRA, decides to switch off Geo TV -- arguably the country's most popular news channel -- following a complaint by the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) accusing Geo of being "anti-Pakistan". The complaint also follows a serious allegation levelled by prominent Geo anchor and talk show host Hamid Mir's brother (following an attack on Mir) that the ISI was behind the attempt. Since the attack, which took place on April 19, Hamid Mir has made a statement in which he has said that he was approached by intelligence officers who had told him that he was on a "hit-list". His statement did not specify whose hit-list this was but in a country like Pakistan this should be cause for enough alarm for the journalist in question. If one recalls, journalist Saleem Shehzad, who was killed in 2011, had also reported receiving similar information from intelligence o...

We have for some time lost the ability to prevent murderous attacks, particularly on the courageous. However, now we are fast losing the capacity to even adequately condemn them. It is no longer apathy. It is vile bile directed at the victim. To survive is an offense, unpatriotic. Hamid Mir was shot multiple times and battles for his life. Yet, the grievance of “defense and other analysts” seemed, why he was not shot in the head, if it was a real attack. Who can argue with this cruel, foolish insensitivity? It was not only sadism; it was very acute masochism coming from quite a cross-section of the Media. Issue based differences aside, the courage and candor of Hamid Mir is beyond any doubt, and one sincerely prays for his wellbeing. The line of reasoning goes somewhat like this, the often frothing in the mouth defense analyst begins with: the ISI did not do it and so stop the lying, treasonous, RAW centered propaganda. Following it up with, had ISI done it, Mr. Mir would not have b...

Pink flamingos on Mai Kolachi These days if you drive on Mai Kolachi expressway towards Queens Road, you can see something quite unusually pleasant as you look to your left. No, it’s not the grey silhouettes of the cranes at Karachi port but something else, and quite unexpected. As you cross the train tracks you see and get on to the bypass proper, keep driving till you go past the land being reclaimed, rather controversially, by the Karachi Port Trust, on your left. A bit beyond that is a stretch of shallow water, probably caused by the mangroves on the other side or by the tide. Here, every day I have been seeing the rather unexpected but very welcome sight of a large flock of pink flamingos in the water. In fact, each time I drive on this road, my head rather automatically — and rather dangerously — swings towards their general direction. I have seen them fly a few times and the sight is quite amazing because the pink in their feathers is sharp and striking. The only problem is ...