Opinion

By Yousaf Ajab Baloch Last year the former chief minister of Balochistan, Aslam Raisani, responded to a journalist’s question regarding the massacre of the Hazara community at Mastung: “The population of Balochistan is in millions, 40 dead in Mastung is no big deal.  I can send a truckload of tissue paper for them to wipe their tears.” Did the former chief ...

Sanaullah Baloch    Balochistan’s dormant conflict was triggered by the exploitative nature of the multi-billion mega projects introduced by Musharraf. The general signed off on the Gwadar Port project and gave away the world’s best copper-gold project, Saindak, to the Chinese without a fair and transparent bidding process. To ensure the smooth and uninterrupted expropriation of Balochistan’s natural wealth he ...

By Muhammad Akbar Notezai Day by day, Balochistan is becoming a battleground for journalists who barely and rarely dare write and report independently. They regularly receive threats from security forces, underground organizations, sectarian organizations, political parties, student associations, etc. These warnings come as a price the journalists have to pay while endeavoring to perform their journalistic duties with honesty in ...

 By Sanaullah Baloch Over the years, the ruling elite has been polluting the public mind with baseless assumptions and storylines regarding Balochistan. This leaves little room for logical debate on the province and on the appalling socio-economic and political realities that have resulted in the Baloch people’s hostility to the state system. Despite massive media outreach and the Internet revolution, ...

By Simon Davies   A senior Pakistan government official has told the High Court of Lahore that Facebook has entered into a covert working relationship with national authorities to censor online content. The admission was made earlier this month during a hearing of public interest claims brought by Bytes for All Pakistan (B4A) against the government’s policy of widespread online ...

By  Lal Khan At the start of the talks during his recent visit to China, Pakistan’s premier Nawaz Sharif told the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, what has become a traditional cliché with the Pakistani diplomatic policy, “Let me tell you very candidly and very sincerely that what I am witnessing here on my visit to Beijing, it reminds me ...

By Ishrat Saleem Stephen R Covey, the author of the highly acclaimed The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, was once invited by President Bill Clinton to Camp David. President Clinton had read his book twice and wanted Covey’s counsel on how to integrate the concepts presented therein into his presidency. The Seven Habits proposes ...

Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur Passengers are relaxed in a cruising airliner all dreaming of their cherished destination and the pleasurable environment they would be in when suddenly the captain’s anxious voice breaks the calm. He says, “Ladies and gentlemen due to unavoidable circumstances a change of plans has been necessitated and we have been diverted to an uninhabited island. However, ...

By Thomas C. Mountain As Nelson Mandela lays on his death bed his legacy as the godfather of neo-Apartheid South Africa has been firmly established. Today in South Africa life for many if not most is nearly as precarious and undignified as when Mandela was first inaugurated as President some 20 years ago. So the best way to describe “modern” ...

By Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur It was a cool night of November 7, 2010. Faiz Mohammad Mazarani Marri’s torture-inflicted wounds were being nursed at his house in Metroville, Karachi (Gulshan) by his old parents. He had returned home three weeks earlier after having been in the custody of the intelligence agencies. That night a posse of Sindh Rangers, police and ...