Omar Ali
Omar Ali is a Pakistani-American physician with an interest in history and especially the history of Pakistan and the ideology of Pakistan. He used to be more active on BP, but now writes occasionally when he finds the time. He is also active on X as @omarali50.
Most popular · Most recent
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Hazaras, and Divide and Rule in the British Empire
Major Amin argues the Hazaras were victims of British divide-and-rule, citing a family account that Hazara soldiers’ defection in Iran ended their recruitment to the British Indian Army, and says…
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The Ram Mandir Verdict in India. From Dr Hamid Hussain
Hamid Hussain gives his personal reading of the Supreme Court’s November 2019 Ayodhya judgment, which awarded the site to Hindus after a decades-long dispute, against the background of the 1992…
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Does Trump Have a Strategy in Afghanistan? What is it?
A 2017 Eurasia Review analysis by Shanthie Mariet D’Souza of Trump’s Afghanistan strategy, reposted with Major Agha H Amin’s bolded rebuttals, which argue that the strategy is precise and finally…
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Ordered to Die; A History of the Ottoman Army in WWI
A quick review by Major Amin of Edward Erickson’s Ordered to Die, which he calls a must-read. He accepts its view that the Ottomans lacked the logistics for the war…
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Race Stereotypes in Medieval Islam (and some lines on cousin marriage)
Irfan Muzammil, via Omar Ali, describes medieval Muslim courts’ debates on the superiority of Arabs, Persians, Greeks and Indians, including the Shuʿūbiyya movement in al-Tawhidi’s Baghdad account, and ends with…
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Will the US Continue to Attract International Science Talent?
Asks whether the US will keep attracting international science talent, pointing to visa obstruction and a falling reputation under Trump and a perceived left-liberal drift in universities, while noting that…
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Blasphemy and blasphemy laws in Pakistan
Reposting a 2015 piece revised in 2021, the author argues that blasphemy cases in Pakistan have reached a new level, with police now killing accused men in custody, and questions…
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Major Amin’s Summing up of the 3 Major Indo-Pak Wars
Major Amin, in an extract from his history of the Pakistan army, sums up the three Indo-Pak wars, arguing that Gilgit was won in 1947 by British and Gilgit Scouts…
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Afghan Conundrum II
Hamid Hussain surveys Pakistan’s long involvement in Afghanistan after Donald Trump’s tweet that US troops would be home by Christmas, noting Imran Khan’s government has handed the Afghan file to…
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Causes of the Revolt of 1857
In a long piece by Major Amin, presented unedited, the causes of the 1857 rebellion are traced from India’s geography of repeated invasions through the socio-political conditions of the period,…
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Nicknames in the British Indian Army
Reposting an older essay by Hamid Hussain on officers’ nicknames, a British army tradition carried into the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi armies, with examples such as ‘Sam’ Manekshaw, ‘Timmy’ Thimayya…
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Book Review: Descent into Chaos
Major A. H. Amin’s 2008 review of Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos argues the book is acceptable to the West because it fits western perceptions, and lists what he sees…
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1857: The Central Indian Campaign
A chapter from Major Amin’s history of the Sepoy Rebellion on the Central India campaign of 1857 to 1859. He argues that it covered the widest area and took the…
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Jewish Muslim Relations
In a series on Jewish-Muslim relations, Hamid Hussain compares prayer and pilgrimage in the two faiths, noting mutual acceptance of monotheism alongside rival claims about the authenticity of each other’s…
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Guest Post: Ali Minai Looks at the Last Days of Imran Khan
Guest author Ali Minai argues that the opposition’s no-confidence move against Imran Khan made little political sense, and that Khan missed at least three chances to win the larger game,…
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Is There a Method to Erdogan’s Madness?
Pakistani economist DMKM asks why Erdoğan keeps interest rates low while the lira has roughly halved against the dollar in a year. After a BBC article failed to answer, his…
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Afghan Chaos. Dr Hamid Hussain’s view..
In correspondence posted by Omar Ali, Hamid Hussain discusses the regional risks of chaos in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. Omar notes he hopes for peace somewhat more than Major…
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Major Amin’s Review: 1965, A Western Sunrise. by Shiv Kunal Varma
Reviewing Shiv Kunal Verma’s 1965: A Western Sunrise, retired Major Agha H Amin finds it a good effort with interesting background but lists several errors on brigade structure, the SSG’s…
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Ancient and Modern Medicine
Introducing a 1981 paper by his neighbour, the oncologist Suresh Joishy, Omar Ali presents its case that ancient medical systems such as Ayurveda and Unani and modern evidence-based medicine can…
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Baba Nanak Within Reach, by Muzaffar Ghaffar
Nadir Ali introduces Muzaffar Ghaffar’s Baba Naanak Within Reach, part of the series Masterworks of Punjabi Sufi Poetry, praising the translator’s long commitment to classical Punjabi verse and setting it…
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Brownpundits- Episode 8. The Glass Bead Game (and the decline of Western Civ)
Omar talks to the poet Charles Cameron and Professor Ali Minai, who works on complex systems and AI and also writes Urdu poetry, about Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, poetry,…
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Review: General Shahid Aziz’s Memoir Yeh Khamoshi Kahan Tak
The reviewer reads the Urdu memoir of retired Lt Gen Shahid Aziz, once close to Musharraf, finding naive idealism and Islamism that make reports he joined the jihad plausible, and…
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Forbidden Fruit: Military and Politics in Pakistan (and beyond)
Omar Ali reposts Hamid Hussain’s 2003 essay, written as General Musharraf completed his political engineering, arguing that where political institutions are weak and there is no consensus on succession, soldiers…
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Ranking Mass Murder..
Omar Ali, prompted by an NYRB article asking who killed more, offers tentative criteria for ranking mass murderers, beginning with intent, and argues the question grows more complicated the more…
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The Mujahid Revolt in Arakan in 1952 (and a SOAS report on the Rohingyas)
Reproduces a 1952 British Foreign Office report on the Mujahid Revolt in Arakan around Burmese independence, followed by a 2005 SOAS researcher’s report, as background to the Rohingya issue.
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Review: Jaya by Devdutt Pattanaik
Reviews Devdutt Pattanaik’s Jaya, a highly condensed modern retelling of the Mahabharata, introducing the epic’s composite authorship and length and the author’s path from medicine and pharmaceuticals to writing on…
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Obituary: Major Agha Humayun Amin
An obituary of Major (retd) Agha Humayun Amin, who died in Lahore aged about 64. It remembers him as Pakistan’s premier military historian, a stickler for accuracy with salty opinions,…
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Pakistan; Myths and Consequences
In a 2013 essay reposted as written, Omar Ali argues that Pakistan was insufficiently imagined before birth, that its establishment’s founding mythology proved self-destructive, and that it must be corrected…
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Bangladesh’s War of Liberation-Historicising a Personal Narrative
A talk given by retired Pakistan Army Colonel Nadir Ali at BRAC University in Dhaka in 2007, recounting his experience of 1971 in East Pakistan, his links to Bengali officers…
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The Qualitative Destruction of Pakistan Army between 1955 and 1971
An essay by retired Major A. H. Amin, written in 1999 and reposted from his Military History Centre site, arguing the Pakistan Army’s quality was eroded between 1955 and 1971…
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Afghanistan. Exit to Chaos?
The author argues that Trump is right to want out of Afghanistan but will probably waste what gains remain, and that the blame for failure will wrongly fall on corrupt…
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(Machine) Learning Biases
Cross-posted from Ali Minai’s blog, this argues that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wrong to say facial recognition errors show human bias being automated. Minai holds that machine-learning systems misclassify gender because…
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Book Review: Pakistan Adrift by Asad Durrani
Hamid Hussain reviews Asad Durrani’s memoir Pakistan Adrift, finding the former ISI chief candid about his own mistakes, including distributing money to politicians, and a revealing guide to power at…
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Review: Enlightenment Now. Steven Pinker.
Omar Ali reviews Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, accepting its data that science and reason have greatly improved human life but arguing it neglects meaning and status, and advising readers to…
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Two Videos in Urdu (both having problems with the language)
Omar Ali compares two Urdu videos, one from a Pakistani elite journalist and one from a woman from Kasur, to argue that neither speaker’s Urdu is their mother tongue and…
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Review: The Holocaust, A New History
Reviews Laurence Rees’s The Holocaust: A New History, a readable and horrifying account from post-First World War Germany onward, and finds reasonable Rees’s case that aspects of this genocide justify…
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New low in civil-military relations in Pakistan
Hamid Hussain outlines, for non-Pakistani readers, the background to the strain in Pakistan’s civil-military relations in 2017, setting the friction against its history and the military’s long role in the…
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US Elections 2024
A week before the US vote, Omar Ali asks who to vote for and who will win, setting out personal pros and cons: Kamala Harris as the establishment choice, and…
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Blasphemy Laws and Blasphemy Killings in Pakistan
Omar Ali reposts his 2015 essay, revised in 2021, on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws after two recent cases in which police killed accused blasphemers in custody, and argues that the state…
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Obituary: Brigadier Malik Mohammed Aslam, 1938-2023
An obituary of Brigadier Malik Mohammed Aslam (1938-2023), the author’s father’s closest friend, recording his unrecorded part as a young artillery captain in the defence of Lahore in 1965, and…
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The Surveying of India by the British
Hamid Hussain traces how the East India Company’s mapping of India and its frontiers grew from local military surveys into the Survey of India, driven by British and native explorers…
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Review: Hell! No Saints in Paradise
Omar Ali reviews A. K. Asif’s debut novel, a dystopian satire of Pakistan in 2050 under a Khalifa. He calls it smart and literate, not serious literature, aimed at aspects…
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An Adda with Abhinav Prakash
The author says he was the interviewee for once, in a casual chat with Abhinav Prakash of Urban Chatterati about India, Pakistan, Hindutva and related topics.
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Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan; the dark side chronicles
Reposting an old piece, Asif Javed argues that the legend of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has outrun the record, and sets out his ‘dark side’, including intolerance of rival power centres…
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Run up to the Kashmir War of 1947-48, Pakistani POV
Major Amin argues Pakistan showed duplicity over Mountbatten’s formula on princely states, making the Maharaja of Kashmir’s accession to India legitimate, calls Nehru’s agreement to a plebiscite a blunder, and…
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Capsule Review: The Birth of Classical Europe
A capsule review recommending The Birth of Classical Europe as a fact-rich survey of Mediterranean civilisation from Crete and Greece to Rome’s fall, written by historians the reviewer calls free…
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The Shias of Kashmir
Hamid Hussain traces how Shia migrants and missionaries from Iran and Iraq came to Kashmir in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and sets out where Shia communities live today, as…
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Collaboration and Loyalty in British India
Introduces a short podcast by Major Amin on who collaborated with the British in India, noting the East India Company’s army was recruited mainly from eastern UP and Bihar and…
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Book Review: Limited War in South Asia
Major Agha Humayun Amin reviews Kaushik Roy and Scott Gates’s Limited War in South Asia, faulting its inaccurate maps of Pakistani corps, its exaggeration of the Indian Army’s role in…
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Book Review: The Stan
Reviewing the graphic anthology The ‘Stan by Kevin Knodell and David Axe, the reviewer finds an anti-war book that humanises American soldiers and Afghans alike, but with little strategic big…
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VS Naipaul (and Prime Minister Imran Khan)..
Back from a move, the author offers quick notes on V. S. Naipaul’s death, defending him against the charge of white supremacy as a writer who tried to see things…
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Indian History Wars..
Contrasting China, where population genetics is not politically explosive, with India, the author points readers to articles on Indian genetic debates and argues that Indian population genetics is contentious because…
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Calm Down and Carry on.
Omar Ali asks for calm after harsh comments and posts, and urges inactive authors to write more.
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Dr Manzur Ejaz. 1949-2025
An obituary of Dr Manzur Ejaz (1949-2025), Punjabi writer and Marxist activist who died in Virginia. It records his belief that defending the Punjabi language is central to working-class politics,…
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Major Amin: How the British Ruled India (and the USA failed in Afg)
Major Amin argues that the East India Company conquered India with a mostly native army, similar weapons and superior strategy, diplomacy and naval power, and says the US could learn…
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Major Amin on the Current Crisis in Pakistan
A BrownCast in which Major Amin, at listeners’ request, gives a short summary of Pakistan’s political history, the current crisis, and especially the army’s role and the damage its mishandling…
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Imran Khan Phenomenon; My Prediction in 2011
Omar Ali reposts his 2011 profile of Imran Khan, written for 3 Quarks Daily, and says it was not far wrong. It describes Khan’s early struggle to turn cricketing fame…
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Afghan Snake Pit
Replying to a senior Pakistani officer, Hamid Hussain argues that US-Pakistan ties over the next year turn on Afghanistan: Washington wants Pakistan to restrain a Taliban takeover, while Pakistan insists…
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Review: Advent of the Algorithm
A 2002 review, first published in the Herald, of David Berlinski’s The Advent of the Algorithm.
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Book Review: Friendly Fire by Ami Ayalon
Hamid Hussain reviews Ami Ayalon’s Friendly Fire, part autobiography and part account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the former Israeli naval and security chief argues that a two-state solution…
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Why Did the Indian and Pakistani Armies fail in 1965?
A very long chapter from Major Agha Humayun Amin’s history of the Pakistan Army analysing why both armies failed in the 1965 war, posted whole by Omar Ali as a…
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Book Review: The Boats of Cherbourg
Hamid Hussain reviews Abraham Rabinovich’s The Boats of Cherbourg, on how Israel’s neglected navy developed sea-to-sea missiles and spirited missile boats out of France under an arms embargo, calling it…
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The Role of the Ahmediyya Movement in Kashmir
Hamid Hussain’s essay on the little-known role of the Ahmadiyya movement in Kashmir and Pakistan history, offered as an outcome of background research done while writing a piece on recent…
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Nasim Zehra’s Book on Kargil. Review by Maj Amin
Major Agha H Amin’s review attacks Nasim Zehra’s book on Kargil as published twenty years too late, disputes her praise of Lieutenant General Javed Hassan, and lists what he calls…
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Witches Brew. Saudis, Iran, Pakistan
Hamid Hussain responds to questions on the Warsaw conference, where Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of Arab states and Israel standing together against Iran, noting the walked-back wording, and weighs the positions…
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Kabuki Dance – Pakistan’s Balancing Act
Hamid Hussain argues Pakistan’s regional environment has turned harder under Imran Khan, who faces fast US-Taliban talks, Iran’s isolation and Gulf rivalries amid domestic instability and economic decline. He notes…
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Review: Directorate S
Major Amin reviews Steve Coll’s Directorate S and finds it deeply flawed, citing errors of geography and fact. He argues that US analysts overrated Al Qaeda while the real players…
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Indians as Officers in the British Indian Army
Hamid Hussain offers notes on the first Indians to become officers in the British Indian Army, arguing that the common Pakistani view that the British favoured non-Muslims in the army…
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Drinking (alcohol) During Ramadan
Omar Ali, citing Shahab Ahmed, notes that alcohol is prohibited in Islam yet part of Islamicate culture, then surveys how access ranges from strict bans in Saudi Arabia and Iran…
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Eclipse of the Turkish Armed Forces
Hamid Hussain, posted by Omar Ali, traces how the Turkish armed forces lost their role as guardian of Kemalist secularism, following the failed July 2016 coup and fifteen years of…
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Atheists and Religion
Omar Ali shares a Twitter thread by Mark Changizi on how he became respectful of religion, calling it interesting.
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Review: The Hajj, by FE Peters
Reviews F. E. Peters’s history of the Hajj from its pre-Islamic origins to 1926, finding the discussion of how pre-Islamic pilgrimage rituals were modified and combined with the Umrah the…
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Right Hand Path Orientalism vs Left Hand Path Orientalism
Replying to a post on Nicholas Dirks’s Castes of Mind, the author argues readers take from it a tendency to blame British colonialism for caste, which he calls ‘Right Hand…
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Tariq Ali on the Resistance..
Omar Ali reposts a mock press release he says he wrote over twenty years ago, forecasting an Islamic-socialist revolution in Pakistan, as a comment on a recent tweet by Tariq…
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Book Review: Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan. Ikbal Shah and Idries Shah (of Sufis fame)
Omar Ali reviews Nile Green’s biography of Ikbal and Idries Shah, which presents the father and son as fantasists who invented aristocratic Sufi credentials. He accepts the case but notes…
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Trump Goes Big in the Middle East
Steel-mans Trump’s proposal, announced with Netanyahu, for the US to take over and rebuild Gaza while Palestinians move elsewhere, then lists what could go wrong. These include Palestinian refusal to…
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Capsule Review: A History of the Muslim World
A capsule review of Michael Cook’s A History of the Muslim World, praised as an outstanding survey from the Prophet to the early twentieth century. The reviewer, interested in Indian…
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Justice Sajjad Ahmed Sipra; 1936-2025
An obituary by his nephew for Justice Sajjad Sipra (1936-2025), who died in Lahore aged 88. It traces his Burma childhood, flight in 1941, post-Partition rise, student politics at Punjab…
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Sacred Texts and Jewish-Muslim Relations
In a series on Jewish-Muslim relations, Hamid Hussain compares the Tanakh and the Quran, which each faith holds as revelation, noting shared themes and narratives alongside real differences that interfaith…
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Capsule Review: How to Love in Sanskrit
Omar Ali recommends a Kindle collection of short Sanskrit poems and prose about love and longing, with contemporary translations and originals in the footnotes, calling it fun and worth a…
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An Electoral Earthquake in Pakistan
Omar Ali reads Pakistan’s February 2024 election as a shock to the army, which he says engineered Imran Khan’s rise in 2018 and removal in 2021, and credits Khan with…
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Iran and Hezbollah; Likely Options (from Dr Hamid Hussain)
Hamid Hussain assesses whether the Gaza conflict will widen, arguing that Hezbollah, Iran, Israel and the US have no short-term interest in expanding it, citing Israel’s depleted interceptor stocks, the…
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The Israeli Defense Forces (by Dr Hamid Hussain)
Hamid Hussain traces the transformations of the Israeli Defense Forces over seventy-five years, from the deterrence, early warning and quick-victory doctrine of Ben Gurion, with 7 October added as a…
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Review: Anarchy -A Highly skilled jester playing to the gallery- Dalrymple’s Jaundiced Revisionism about British East India Company
Major Agha Humayun Amin reviews William Dalrymple’s Anarchy and dismisses it as playing to the gallery, citing omissions such as Saadat Ali Khan’s role in the sack of Delhi, while…
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Review: The Map and the Scissors by Amit Majmudar
Omar Ali praises Amit Majmudar’s novel The Map and the Scissors as a riveting, carefully researched account of Partition through the parallel lives of Jinnah and Gandhi, and credits it…
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The Survey of India
Hamid Hussain traces how the East India Company’s mapping of India and its frontiers grew from local military surveys into the Survey of India, driven by British and native explorers…
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British Officers of the EIC army. A force multiplier.
Omar Ali posts excerpts from Agha H. Amin’s work on the 1857 rebellion, whose summary holds that British officers were a crucial force multiplier in the East India Company army…
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Asad Durrani Views on Imran Khan
Omar Ali reposts former ISI chief Asad Durrani’s commentary on the Imran Khan phenomenon, in which Durrani argues that army attempts at political engineering have always failed. Omar offers it…
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General Bajwa Talks to University Students
Omar Ali shares a friend’s account of a four-hour candid talk by General Qamar Javed Bajwa to Lahore students and faculty on Pakistan’s history, politics and personal matters, with details…
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Pankaj Mishra and His Discontents
Omar Ali reposts his 2014 reply to a Pankaj Mishra New York Times op-ed, calling the ‘Pankajist worldview’ superficial while conceding that Indian hypernationalism is as real, and potentially as…
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Spoils of War; The Aircraft of the Afghan Air Force
Posted by Omar Ali, Hamid Hussain argues that fears over the Taliban gaining Afghan Air Force aircraft are exaggerated: they fought a small-scale, hit-and-run insurgency, while the US built the…
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Capsule Review: The Ultimate Goal by Vikram Sood
A capsule review of The Ultimate Goal by Vikram Sood, a former R&AW chief, on how great powers build national narratives and why India should do likewise. The reviewer finds…
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The Koran; a very short introduction
An old review, first written for the Pakistani magazine Herald in 2002, of Michael Cook’s The Koran: A Very Short Introduction. The poster judges it witty and informative even for…
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Book Review: Flashman and the Cobra
Omar Ali reviews George Brightwell’s Flashman and the Cobra, set in the Second Anglo-Maratha War, as fun and good on the battles of Assaye and Argaon but, unlike Fraser’s originals,…
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Capsule Review: Napoleon, a Life; by Andrew Roberts
Omar Ali gives a five-star capsule review of Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon: A Life, finding the hero-worship irritating but the research thorough and readable, and the best new fact being how…
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Obituary: Brigadier Nisar Ahmed SJ
Hamid Hussain’s obituary of Brigadier Nisar Ahmad Khan (1920 to 2019), a Patiala-born officer who opted for Pakistan in 1947 and was central to an armoured holding action in the…
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Direct Participants Remember the 1977 Zia Coup
Major Agha H Amin’s collected recollections from retired officers who took part in or observed General Zia’s July 1977 coup, including Brigadier Warraich’s account of being taken into confidence only…
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Podcasts by Major Amin. India, Pakistan, Proxy Wars
Introduces Major Agha Humayun Amin’s podcasts, one covering his background in Afghanistan and his views that no actor there is truly non-state, that the Taliban are Pakistan’s proxy, and that…
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In memoriam: Brigadier (retd) Asad Munir.
Hamid Hussain remembers Brigadier (retd) Asad Munir, who took his own life on 15 March 2019 and in a note blamed harassment by the National Accountability Bureau. He recalls their…
