Ripple Effect

13 things you should know about Jihadi John 1. His name is Mohammed Emwazi 2. He is a British national of Kuwaiti origin and grew up and lived in West London 3. He is thought to have travelled to Syria in 2012 and joined the IS 4. He has a degree in computer programming 5. He was first seen in the IS propaganda video of James Foley who was beheaded in August 2014 6. He has appeared in a series of IS videos of Western hostages, all of whom were executed, some of whom Emwazi himself killed. 7. His friends say he radicalized after a planned safari to Tanzania along with 2 other friends (including a German convert) went sour 8. A former IS captive has said that Emwazi is obsessed with Somalia and the rise of Al Shabab there 9. He told friends that Britain's domestic spy service Mi5 tried to recruit him 10, In 2010, UK counterterrorism officials detained him after a trip to Kuwait and searched his belongings, 11. Following this search, Emwazi was stoppe...

Killing Dogs in Karachi  The screengrab above is from a disturbing video uploaded on Facebook by Karachi resident Hira Tareen ( https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155291511590492&set=vb.767165491&type=2&theater ) showing a dead stray dog killed by shooters hired by municipal authorities in an upscale Karachi neighbourhood.  This practice of getting rid of Karachi's stray dogs (estimates put the city's population of such animals, in the absence of a proper survey, at around 50,000) by killing them has been going on for years but thanks to the growing use of social media in Pakistan, its barbarity has come under increasing scrutiny of late. In the past, the Karachi Metropolitan Corportationn (KMC) in charge of this issue would carry out week-long campaigns every year where they would place food laced with poison for stray dogs (the packets used to be called 'gulab jamuns', named after a local sweet delicacy). While inhumane, this was done af...

Furore in Karachi neighbourhood over killing of stray dogs The disturbing video above was uploaded on Facebook by Karachi resident Hira Tareen ( https://www.facebook.com/zaratareen?fref=photo ) . This practice of getting rid of Karachi's stray dogs (estimates put the city's population of such animals, in the absence of a proper survey, at around 50,000) by killing them has been going on for years but thanks to the growing use of social media in Pakistan, its barbarity has come under increasing scrutiny of late. In the past, the Karachi Metropolitan Corportationn (KMC) in charge of this issue would carry out week-long campaigns every year where they would place food laced with poison for stray dogs (the packets used to be called 'gulab jamuns', named after a local sweet delicacy). While inhumane, this was done after publicizing the campaign through newspaper notices and with warnings to residents to keep their pet dogs indoors. However, as the city's gov...

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...