Moborate

In the preface to his book Inside Al Qaeda And The Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 , the late Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote: “I have never worked for any well-funded international news organizations. Nor have I worked for the mainstream national media. My affiliations have always remained with alternative media outlets. This has left me with narrow options and very little space to move around in… However, independent reporting for the alternative media best suits my temperament as it encourages me to seek the truth beyond “conventional wisdom”. ” Available outside Pakistan Before it led him to a tragic death, Saleem Shahzad’s quest for that elusive truth beyond conventional wisdom took him from walks on Clifton Beach with a military officer-turned-Al Qaeda strategist to nights spent in mud huts with Taliban militia men as helicopters passed overhead and drones struck in the distance. It took him from Pakistan to Iraq to Lebanon to Afghanistan and back to North Waziristan to meet ra...

I don't really know what's happened to Kamran Khan . Since that day , a couple of days after the Abbottabad raid, he has been more outspoken about the failures of our military establishment and the hypocrisy of our "strategic" security policies than he has probably ever been in his broadcasting career. It does make a nice change from the one-sided diatribes against civilian bungling that had allowed his programme to become extremely predictable and monotonous over the past year. (Lest this be misunderstood, I am not at all arguing that the ineffectiveness or corruption of civilian leaderships and bureaucracy should not be exposed. Only that in matters of security and on foreign policies regarding Kashmir, India, Afghanistan and the US there should be an equally fair assessment of the military which sets the tone, if not the entire agenda, of these issues. And also that the electronic media needs to provide some perspective to viewers when discussing the multiple crise...

I realize that everyone is now in a position to lecture our defenders on how to defend themselves . Shut down PAF Museum, close down the shaadi business, demolish Shah Faisal Colony, replace those security cameras, take away Rehman Malik's Blackberry etc. etc. etc. Can I take the opportunity to share a minor security lapse that I was personally a witness to a couple of months ago? Like most mid-career journalists I dream of real estate, basically owning my own little beach hut on Hawke's Bay . Occasionally I rent or beg my more resourceful friends but wouldn't it be nice to have a little one-room place there? I, along with a friend, found myself in a Colonel sahib's car in the pursuit of this beach fantasy. An enterprising real estate dealer had convinced us that Colonel sahib has a little plot on Hawke's Bay that he would like to sell for a bargain price. As we reached that blighted turning on Mauripur Road from where you turn for Hawke's Bay and Sand Spit ...

Let's get some things straight. There are still a large number of BIG questions unanswered about the killing in Abbottabad of Osama bin Laden . Many in Pakistan are choosing to obsess over how the American Navy SEALs team managed to come in and go out of Pakistan without being detected by the vaunted and financially over-indulged Pakistani military. Others are also questioning whether one should take the US government's and the ISI 's word that OBL was indeed present in the compound that was attacked and whether he was, in fact, killed as stated. These are NOT the questions I am talking about. The question that really needs to be answered is how it was possible for the most wanted man in the world to be living literally under the nose of Pakistan's men in khaki , whose leader had declared almost at the same spot only a week ago that his men had broken the back of terrorism and that Pakistani "dignity" would not be compromised for the sake of "prosperity....

Unlike MSS, or at least partly unlike MSS, I truly was at a loss for words about the the assassination of Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti . The only words that seemed to express the intensity of the despair I felt about the abyss staring us in the face came from poetry. In fact, before MSS posted her piece, I thought a collection of Urdu couplets was the only way I could mark this tragedy, because what is the point of repeating all that I have said so many times before. I might still do a post with such a collection, but here's a sample, from Faiz : "Amaa'n kaisi ke mauj-e-khoo'n abhi sar se nahin guzri Guzar jaaye tau shaayad baazu-e-qaatil thehr jaaye" [No one is safe, for the wave of blood has yet to wash over our heads Perhaps once we drown the killer's hand will be stayed]  But my reasons for writing today are slightly different. I have to admit that I am not a regular watcher of  DawnNews , a hangover probably of experiences from ...

DISCLAIMER: This piece was written yesterday, and then languished overnight due to a PTCL outage. It contains emotion and other profanity. I am rarely at a loss for words. I certainly wasn’t this morning, when I started out on a smarmy skewering of George Fulton’s ‘I’m leaving Pakistan because she’s being mean to me dammit! ' piece in the Express Tribune yesterday. I was going to run with his personification of the blessed motherland as a flighty female prone to self-destructive megalomania, I was. I was particularly taken with the bit featuring the Bryan Adams song where Pakistan, the impenetrable, fecund, feminine other, sings to him the lyrics To really love a woman/ To understand her - you gotta know her deep inside/ Hear every thought - see every dream/ N' give her wings - if she wants to fly/ Then when you find yourself lyin' helpless in her arms/ You know you really love a woman... Then I ran it by another Pyala who, with what is in hindsight admirable self-restrain...