In a recent TV interview, Professor Christine Fair, Georgetown University, made the following unfair (I can’t resist the pun here) statement in response to another expert’s views, contrary to hers, on the question of US drone attacks in Pakistan and their linkage to the accentuation of radical responses to the United States by the Taliban [...]
Interview contributed by Maggie Ronkin, Georgetown University
Q1. Could you share a brief history of the kind of work you did before joining the Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center?
In 1968, I joined the struggle for social change in Pakistan as a campus activist at Punjab University, Lahore. I hailed from an extremely conservative religious family in [...]
This is just to share the news that my book has finally been published. It might still be listed as “not yet released” on Amazon.com but that is because they are waiting for the stocks to arrive.
Book Description
Constructing Pakistan addresses the previously neglected aspect of postcolonial and [...]
It has been reported that Mullah Omar, the leader of a cave-dwelling Muslim sect, recently reminded his enemies of the warlike history of Afghanistan. His message: “We have always defeated outsiders!”
But what I fail to understand about these cave-dwellers is just one thing: How is there interpretation of Islam the right one if they have [...]
In the US media the recent long march and its consequent success is being covered under the following two-pronged narrative:
1) Hillary Clinton’s efforts resolved the issue including a threat to withold aid.
2) US and Europe wanted Pakistan to be stable to fight the real war against Taliban and the fundamnetalists.
It is sad that even at [...]
Something is rotten in the world; the stench is unbearable. In the late evenings, sometimes, I want to stand atop the roof of my house and shout: I want to breathe clean, crisp, aromatic air. Yes, pure air, free of bigotry, hatred, self-righteousness, fanaticism, imperialism, greed, power.
For the past few weeks I have been constantly grappling with the issue of the recent truce between Taliban and the Pakistani government in Swat valley. Mainly, I have been trying to visualize as to what kind of a system will this truce create. My conclusion: it will create a space within Pakistani territory [...]
