توسیع کی سیاست

سیاسی طاقت کے ریاستی ایوانوں میں کیا سازشیں ہوتی ہیں۔ ہم بےچارے عام شہریوں کو کیا پتا۔ اخبار، ریڈیو اور ٹی وی چینل جو خبر دیتے ہیں، اس سے معلوم ہوتا ہے کیا ہو رہا ہے، کیا ہونے جا رہا ہے۔

ایک بات صاف ہے کہ ریاست، حکومت جس بات کا انکار کرتی ہیں، وہ ہو کر رہتی ہے۔ جس نے سی او اے ایس کو توسیع دی، اور جس نے توسیع لی، ان سمیت متعدد لوگوں نے انکار کیا تھا کہ توسیع نہیں دی جائے گی، توسیع نہیں لی جائے گی۔ مگر توسیع دے دی گئی ہے، توسیع لے لی گئی ہے۔

یہی سبب ہے کہ ریاست اور حکومت کی کسی بات پر اعتبار کرنا خود کو دھوکہ دینے کے مترادف ہے۔

ساری سیاست ایک طرف اور یہ حقیقت ایک طرف کہ ریاست، حکومت اور عام شہریوں کے درمیان ایک بڑا خلا حائل ہو چکا ہے۔

یعنی ریاست اور …

Military courts: a moral perspective

A person who is murdered, has he any rights? That question may seem strange. Let me add another dimension to it: What’s the spirit of law? Does it exist for the rights of the murderers to be protected? Or, it exists for the alive so that they enjoy their life safe and sound? Last year, in a seminar on the citizens’ fundamental rights when I made a comment that most of the NGOs are always ahead in safeguarding the rights of those who are accused of capital crimes but why they never turn up to defend the rights of those who are murdered, one activist really turned up to throw an angry question upon me: “What do you mean? The accused has no rights? And we defend murderers?” I said: “What I mean is that the one who was murdered he too

Why Pakistan is not a viable state?

Better to start with two clarifications: First, this piece does not raise the question of Pakistani state’s viability in the sense Pakistan’s Leftists and liberals are wont to discuss it. They say something like that: It’s unviable because it was created by the British in line with their policy of Divide and Rule; It’s unviable because it was created by the narrow-mindedness of Hindus or the Congress, or the stubbornness of Muslims or the League. They also hold that: It’s unviable because religion is never the basis of any state. The writer prospectively believes that states are not rational entities; they may come into existence, and disintegrate and disperse into more entities with or without any rational justifications. It’s like individuals or groups of human beings who want to live separately for any concrete or imagined grievances or none at all that

Media wars

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used. [Sun Tzu]
Before March 9, 2007, it was all dark on the horizon of Pakistan. A military dictator was ruling while dressed in khaki uniform; he was intent upon continuing his rule for the next 5 years; and the criminal politicians were all ready to help him rule for more than a hundred years. Such was the hopelessness that no rational being could dream of a silver lining. One could only fear what happened to Iraq after it grabbed Kuwait, may not happen to Pakistan.
All of a sudden, and it was just like a bolt from the blue, a hope started taking shape. First time in Pakistan, the point was made that