By Sajjad Shaukat After the Kirani Road incident which killed more than 100 persons of the Hazara Shias in Quetta on February 17, this year, a controversial debate continues in our country, while, some politicians and media anchors have been blaming security forces and intelligence agencies about the Hazara carnage, deteriorating law and order situation of Balochistan province including overall phenomena of ...

Asif Haroon Raja Creation of Pakistan on August 14, 1947 broke the century old shackles of bondage. Although a moth-eaten and truncated Pakistan, yet it was the largest Muslim nation in the world. Seventy million hearts of Pakistanis throbbed and pulsated with rapturous excitement and joy. The unfurling of the green and white banner raised their heads with pride and their jubilation knew no bounds. Their re ...

Brig( retd) Farooq Hameed Khan   The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) setup in Bangladesh in 2010 by Prime Minister Hasina Wajid’s Awami League government, sentenced Abdul Quader Mollah,  a senior Jamaat-e Islami (JI) leader to life imprisonment on February 05 for  alleged  ‘atrocities’, in a trial that reopened the wounds of 1971 East Pakistan tragedy. In January the tribunal awarded death penalty in ab ...

By Sajjad Shaukat Both open and clandestine techniques of state terrorism are being employed by India to suppress the struggle of Kashmiris who are fighting for their genuine right of self-determination as recognised by the UN resolutions. In this regard, after fabricating a false case of his role in attacking the Indian parliament in 2001, Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged on February 9, this year, while he h ...

By Bill Van Auken A US airstrike in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday killed 10 civilians, including five children. The deadly attack came just hours after the State of the Union speech in which President Barack Obama falsely claimed that the more than decade-long US war and occupation in Afghanistan “will be over” by the end of next year. Afghanistan’s Pajhwok Afghan News agency (PAN) reported that the civilia ...

By Usman Khalid, Director Rifah Institute of Foreign Affairs (RIFA) Not many people know that Hindus are a minority in India. The number of those within the fold of chaturvarna i.e. four castes (Brahmin, Kashatri, Vesh and Shudara) are no more than 15% of the population of India – the same as the Muslims. The original inhabitants of India are treated as ‘untouchables’ like the shudras but their number is 65 ...

Asif Haroon Raja Few thousands fighters under Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Hizb-e-Islami leader Gulbadin Hikmatyar have been fighting the occupation forces and ANSF for twelve years. The resistance forces consider ANSF and ruling regime led by Karzai as collaborators while the latter view the Taliban as extremists and anti-democratic. The US punished them for collaborating with Al-Qaeda. Failing to defeat ...

By Zaheerul Hassan Last year Asian giant has made significant increase of 17.6 percent over the previous amount of defence budget for 2011-12. Her defence budget for 2012-13, was US $40.3 billion for the Defence Services that include the three armed forces (Army, Navy and Air Force), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Ordnance Factories. The major portion of the Civil Estimate is h ...