By Sajjad Shaukat In the agreement signed between the US and Taliban on February 29, this year, in Doha-the capital of Qatar, it is committed that within the first 135 days of the deal, the US will reduce its forces in Afghanistan to 8,600 from the current 13,000, working with its other NATO allies to proportionally reduce the number of coalition forces over that period. Under the agreement, if the Taliban ...

By Sajjad Shaukat In his book, ‘The Prince’, Machiavelli advises the rulers to have a lion-like image outwardly, and act upon the traits of goat inwardly. He also suggests them, the use of terror to obtain their goals and foreign adventures to divert the attention of public from internal crises. In his sense, a good ruler should be a good opportunist and hypocrite. It is regrettable that since Narendar Modi ...

By Sajjad Shaukat In the past, the US-led Western countries which spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan held a series of international conferences in order to bring stability and peace in that war-torn country with the aim of starting withdrawal of NATO forces in 2013, which had to be completed in 2014. They had agreed that without Islamabad’s help, stability cannot be achieved there. Hence, these countr ...

REVIEW BY PROF. DR. MAQSOOD JAFRI A Lone Long walk is a collection of the tales told by a creative and fertile mind Tahir Mehmood. He is the Chief Editor monthly Hilal. He has kindly presented this rare literary gift to me. I feel honoured and humbled. These twenty eight tales are the saga of life, love, and patriotism. The book is so interesting, inspiring, and insightful that I intuitively felt to extensi ...

By Sajjad Shaukat Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has almost enveloped the entire world. Up to April 13, 2020, globally, it killed more than 113,849 persons and infected 1.8 million people. As regards Pakistan, up to the same date, the number of coronavirus-deaths has reached the figure of 95, whereas the number of persons, affected by the virus is 5,478. Unlike Asia and Africa, this novel virus has badly a ...

From the Self-Quarantined ‘Solitude’ A Soldier’s ‘Lone Long Walk’ [caption id="attachment_17934" align="alignright" width="275"] Soldier - Siachen Sector[/caption] By F Z Khan Outside my self-imposed solitude, the fear of coronavirus has gripped, around the globe, as the demon has started wreaking havoc across continents. Messages on social media and talk shows on TV have added dread and scare to further sp ...

Shared by Ram Puniyani Posted by Zaheerul Hassan The carnage or to put it more precisely the anti Muslim violence in Delhi (February-March 2020) has shaken us all. Analysts are burning midnight oil yet again to understand the deeper causative factors of the same. One of the neglected aspects of analysis of communal violence has been the one related to prevalent factor of Caste in Indian society. Caste is in ...

By Sajjad Shaukat Coronavirus pandemic also named as COVID-19 which is, rapidly, spreading across the world has killed more than 22,000 people and infected over 510,000 people despite lockdowns in many countries, especially Western states, putting over 1.3 billion in self-isolation. After affecting 200 countries, the disease is enveloping new territories. In Spain and Italy, more persons have died due to CO ...