Notes in Anguish

Dear Mr Jinnah. I hope you are doing well and that they feed you better than we did here. After all, you did look in really poor shape when you left us. And of course, I hope the ambulances you have there are better than the one which we provided for your last terrestrial ride… →

Few wars are good, but seldom were wars driven by such overtly satanic intent as the ones in the Ukraine and Gaza. Few indeed were wars that promised to be such world-changing events and rearrangement of geopolitics as these. The war in Ukraine was initiated by the denial of valid Russian concerns of an existential… →

Back in the day when PTV was the only television channel in Pakistan, Chaudhary Nizam Din’s used to be a very popular talk show. He had many amusing stories to tell. One that I remember has to do with recruitment in the English army during their very early days in India. They began taking locals… →

In the last couple of years, no one with eyes even half open could have missed the long queue of countries desperate for membership in BRICS, leaving behind the US “Rules Based Order”. It was given only to our idiots in uniform that while the rest of the world was headed one way, we were… →

As over two years have passed since the High Command of our army, in partnership with our thieves of the first rank, brought about regime change in Pakistan, the profundity of this change can be better appreciated today. The deeper one thinks about this, one cannot help concluding that this change may well turn out… →

Recently, Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago likened the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas operation against Israel, to a mass prison breakout. This has been described in similar terms by many Western Intellectuals and commentators, who preferred to remain honest to themselves and to us in the face of the shameful policies of their… →

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had a substantial base of support in the army, especially among junior officers and the rank and file. But with the passage of time, as his role in the East Pakistan disaster of 1971 began being exposed, this support began to erode. What added momentum to this erosion were stories of his… →

For those who love their country and are aware of what is being done to it, these are trying times. Often in times like these, the mind goes off in search of a hero. And so does mine. The hero my mind has settled on is not the sort on whom kinetic blockbusters are made,… →

Perhaps the right question to pose first off would be, if an Army-Imran deal was desirable, and then to go on to examine its possibilities. And this question is simple to answer. Not only was such a deal desirable, it was absolutely imperative. And this was imperative because of the way the cards are stacked in… →

I began writing for The Muslim, an Islamabad paper, in Jan 1991. What drove me to do this was a growing awareness that corruption was seeping into society and corroding its moral moorings at an alarming rate. Individuals were being broken down by it and felled, and these infected individuals were in turn corroding institutions.… →

On Sat, Apr 27, 2024, Mr Justice Mansoor Ali Shah addressed the Asma Jahangir Conference in Lahore. This was an address delivered with verve and the occasional flourish. There is little doubt that the recent letter of the six Justices of the Islamabad High Court had a lot to do with its content. Shah Sahib… →

The slips of the High Command have been showing from day one, but the mirror was missing, and so, they did not know how they appeared to us lesser folk, their mouths foaming with mendacity. As I survey our High Command scene, I am reminded of Milligan’s [??] tale about the King who made his… →