August 2015
-
Pakistan and India. The Long View
After the cancelled National Security Adviser talks, the author steps back to set out the long view of the India-Pakistan conflict, starting from Kashmir, to look at the frightening big…
-
Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas Shaheed and Flt Lt Mati ur Rahman Shaheed. Heroes.
The author tells the story of the 20 August 1971 T-33 crash that killed Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas and Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman, both later awarded their country’s highest gallantry…
-
Society
Poetic Perversion
The author takes up right-wing Pakistani pundit Orya Maqbool Jan’s response to the Kasur child abuse scandal, a reported ring that filmed abuse to blackmail families, and the wave of…
-
Quaid e Azam and Iqbal. A meeting of minds..
An imaginary meeting between Jinnah and Iqbal, a short story by Pakistani-American writer Asif Ismael, in which Jinnah questions the idea of a separate Muslim homeland.
-
Culture
The Helper Boy
The author reposts Asif Ismael’s short story The Helper Boy, about a truck-driver’s helper, after the day’s child abuse scandal in Punjab, noting that officials dispute the extent of the…
-
History
The (British) Indian Army’s Legacy in India and Pakistan
Hamid Hussain argues in this older piece that the armies of India and Pakistan share a heritage built in the Raj, when Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Gurkha soldiers served together,…
-
Religion
Patricia Crone. Scholar of Islam
A collection of remembrances of the historian of early Islam Patricia Crone, who died in July 2015, with three of her Open Democracy essays, shared by Robin Khundkar as worth…
-
Geopolitics
Assassination attempts on senior Pakistani army officers
Hamid Hussain surveys assassination attempts on senior Pakistan army officers since 2002, arguing the army entered the war on terror unprepared, lost control of the tribal areas and Malakand, and…
