Feature / Analysis

Bani Abidi talks to art enthusiasts in Karachi

ArtNow recently invited the internationally renowned artist Bani Abidi to talk about her work as a part of it’s Springboard series held at FOMMA – Foundation for Museum of Modern Art . Speaking to a large audience from various professions and all age groups, Abidi who is originally trained as a pai...

The Bajwas of Gunna Kalan

The 16th day of April 1853 is special in the Indian history. The day was a public holiday. At 3:30 pm, as the 21 guns roared together, the first train carrying Lady Falkland, wife of Governor of Bombay, along with 400 special invitees, steamed off from Bombay to Thane. Ever since the engine rolled ...

National Stadium, we meet again

It felt like rekindling with a former flame – the sweaty palms, the shortness of breath and the butterflies. It had been four long years apart and the reunion was going to be something special. It felt like I was finally home as I walked into the gates of National Stadium with the floodlights, the c...

Lake Manyara Park risks extinction

Global warming has hit particularly hard Tanzania’s national parks, threatening displacing millions of wildlife and putting the thriving tourism at risk. Owing to global warming, currently Tanzania is likely to lose one of the key national parks in its most valuable strips of tourism real estate of...

Australian Ski Industry to Banish Due to Global Climate Change?

Skiing aficionados who often go to Australia to experience the resource-rich nation's ski resorts and alpine regions may be forced to scout other locations in the coming years as the worsening global climate change could kill the Australian ski industry by year 2020. A report by Sky News predicted t...

Women soldiers' role in Afghan frontline villages caught on camera

British women serving in Helmand photographed meeting village women trying to get their voices heard The decade-long war in Afghanistan has been the focus of countless books and exhibitions, but there is one view of the conflict that has not been described well – until now. The Royal British Legi...

Not losing in Afghanistan

John A. Nagl is a retired Army officer, who served in both wars in Iraq, and a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. He is the author of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife.” Americans haven’t lost a war in so long, we’ve forgotten what doing so looks like — and what it costs. The only war that we u...

U.S. Sees Shift for Afghan Special Ops

Elite Forces Will Take Noncombat Roles, Says Commander, as Troops Withdraw SARKANI, Afghanistan: Elite U.S. special-operations troops are preparing to shift to a rear-guard role in Afghanistan when the main allied forces withdraw at the end of next year, according to their commander. U.S. Army Sp...

Al-Qaida in Afghanistan is attempting a comeback

KABUL, Afghanistan :A diminished but resilient al-Qaida, whose 9/11 attacks drew America into its longest war, is attempting a comeback in Afghanistan's mountainous east even as U.S. and allied forces wind down their combat mission and concede a small but steady toehold to the terrorist group. Tha...

The consensus myth

EVERY so often, a new term enters the Pakitani lexicon. This is the season of ‘consensus’.There can’t be a military operation in North Waziristan until and unless there’s a consensus. A political consensus. A societal consensus.A Pakistani consensus that North Waziristan is a Pakistani problem that ...

‘Malala Moment’ May Have Passed in Pakistan, as Rage Over a Shooting Ebbs

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan : The smartly dressed Internet entrepreneur basked in the sun outside a McDonald’s, down the road from Pakistan’s military headquarters, considering the furor over Malala Yousafzai, the schoolgirl who had taken on the Taliban only to be shot in the head. “We have mixed feelings ...

Why Afridi continues to play

The memes, the posters and the profile display pictures are no more. No longer does he inspire remixes nor are his exploits celebrated in his mother tongue. Barely eighteen months on from being celebrated as the reincarnation of Jinnah, Shahid Afridi is being dragged down from the pedestal he was pu...

The conflict between Pakistan’s lived and imagined culture

One wonders what goes through the minds and conscience of millions of people in Pakistan who take bribes, cheat their customers, exploit servants, put the life and safety of others at risk, adulterate food and medicines, grab land and appropriate others’ properties?Most Pakistanis would say that the...

Threatened by thought

I went on a date once with a man who was 51, divorced with 6 children. What a catch! Most of my friends would never have agreed to it, too much baggage. But I like to think of myself as open minded and non-judgmental, so I turned up.He was short, bald and one of the first things he said to me was, “...

He left Pakistan, Pakistan never left him

He left Pakistan. Pakistan never left him. It stayed with him right here in Northern Virginia. Pakistan went out on walks with him, holding his hand as he held his sister’s who died while he was in America.Ghani Baba was in his 80s when I met him. When the doctors asked him not to swing, he would si...

Not by religion alone

Secularism is deemed to be a dirty word in Pakistan. But it is an idea whose time has come. In fact, it may already be too late. We now stand effectively disconnected from the freedom movement that was led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his associates. This assertion would appear to be paradoxical at a ...

From apology to perversity

It took them by surprise. Comfortable in the belief that the nation has well and truly been converted to a narrative that explains the violence of Islamic militants in Pakistan as an expression of defiance against everything from ‘US imperialism’ to the ‘invasion of Hindu and Western culture’. The a...

Signs of frustration

SIGNS of panic are evident in Pakistani Taliban ranks following the attack on Malala Yousufzai. They are clearly trying to recover from their biggest defeat on the propaganda front after the attack on the 14-year-old in Swat.The damage was done by the initial claiming and justifying of the attack on...

Predatory politics and Malala

THE attack on Malala Yousufzai’s life was shocking for people around the world, but I see no reason to be surprised.For the past three years I had had a premonition that this young, promising girl was unnecessarily being exposed to dreadful consequences. Yet I understood that the problem did not lie...

Our crumbling state

At what point does loss of control over territory rise to a level that it becomes unacceptable for the state? Let us consider a few random events. A while back the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) slaughtered 11 soldiers of Pakistan Army, taped the massacre and released the gruesome video for public...

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