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An increase in sectarian violence has killed hundreds of Pakistanis in recent years. Many attacks have been concentrated in the Northern Areas and Balochistan province. Shias and other minority communities say those behind the violence - such as the banned Sunni militant organisation Lashkar-e-Jhangvi - are rarely caught or punished. BBC [...]

After decades of waging the propaganda war against India for its highhanded treatment of Kashmiris, Pakistan is now the subject of a similar campaign by India who has highlighted the plight of Shias being murdered by sectarian terrorists in Gilgit-Baltistan. The Asian News International reported recently that “in Gilgit-Baltistan, [...]

From Riyadh to Ramallah to the Ivy League, Saudi Arabia’s “Wahhabi Lobby” is funding the goals of radical Islam and undermining America’s War On Terror. The press has reported the Department of Justice’s closures of Saudi “charitable” fronts like the Muslim World League, the Al-Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief [...]

انوکھا انصاف تحریر: امام بخش سابقہ ملازمت کے دوران میرے ایک سینئر محترم حسن صاحب ہوا کرتے تھے جو کہ انتہائی شریف النفس، محنتی اور ایمان دار آدمی تھے۔ وہ دفتر میں اپنا وقت بالکل ضائع نہیں کرتے [...]

I was sitting on the Internet on 5th April when suddenly I got a message that one of our university colleagues has been shot and wounded. Then I called my friends to confirm the news, they told me that he has just died. I was shocked, I just didn't know what to do now. After a few minutes my two friends came to my home at 3:00 AM and then we [...]

Faiz Ahmed Faiz might not be as terribly needed yesterday as today. A country where strongmen like Sulman Taseer can be assassinated for their unconventional religious views, can we expect from it to treat its “weakmen” fairly for similar views? Faiz was the voice of weak and poor. He was the poet determined to observe the world in an [...]

In the last 48 hours, at least twenty Shia Muslims have been killed in Pakistan by Jihadi-sectarian militants suspected to be supported by Pakistan army. According to reports, on Tuesday 3 April 2012, a group of militants belonging to banned Jihadi-Deobandi outfit Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ, previous name Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan) stopped [...]

Related article: Ali Ahmed Kurd’s description of the likes of Iftikhar Chaudhry & Khawaja Sharif چیف جسٹس بحالی تحریک کے ورثہ پر ججوں کی ناراضگی!! چونتیس سالہ ڈاکٹر تھیوڈیرا ڈیلس برطانیہ کی یونیورسٹی آف بیڈفرڈشائر میں نفسیات [...]

This documentary is inspired by true stories of persons, who were once radicalized to the extent that they took up arms. However, later they gave up the violent path and now are trying to live a normal life. This is not easy for them, as their pursuance of violence had a profound effect on the lives of their families. That's why they regret it [...]

The protests, rallies and demonstrations by the legal community from 2007 to 2009 took everyone in and outside Pakistan by surprise. People were impressed with the perseverance of the lawyer's from around the country in the face of a military dictator and in forcing a political government to ensure that the chief justice of the Supreme Court [...]

It took the screams of a young woman being beaten in Swat to galvanise the country and the army to take a stand against the gruesome cruelties inflicted by the Taliban on the local population. Till then a sense of ennui, national indifference, if you like, had trumped worldwide horror that Swat had fallen into in the clutches of the [...]

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz PML-N's president and the chief minister of Pakistan's most populous province Punjab Mian Shahbaz Sharif once proudly claimed that PML-N and Taliban share same ideological background. He publicly requested the Taliban to stop targeting the Punjab province and support anti-West provincial government. The PML-N is [...]

One has to appreciate Express Tribune for allowing a number of new writers with a platform on their Opinion pages. Other well established newspapers like Dawn, The News and The Nation have their Op-Ed pages dominated by a select type of writers who have literally “leased”  space in these newspapers, irrespective of their angling, bias or [...]

We at LUBP condemn yet another targeted incitement of vigilante justice Jang Group's Ahmed Noorani, a notorious journalist belonging to Ansar Abbasi gang and links close to banned organizations like Hizb ut Tahrir and Sipah Sahaba Pakistan against the Human Rights Watch Pakistan's Director, Ali Dayan Hasan. In its "report" published in The News [...]

A self-styled Pakistani-American who describes himself as “ultra wealthy man” with expensive lawyers in major cosmopolitans of the world seems to have several financial defaults, almost no personal assets, and a creditor attempting to collect a court ordered judgment against him since 2010 in New York. The attorney for Banca Sammarinese di [...]

THERE has already been adequate kerfuffle around the appearance of PTI senior vice-president Ejaz Chaudhry at the Difaa-i-Pakistan Council’s rally in Karachi. Source: DAWN This is the latest demonstration of PTI’s tendency to cavort with the religious right and extremist groups. Imran Khan himself delivered a message via his envoy [...]

I was surprised a fortnight ago to receive a note from Lahore’s General Post Office saying I had imported a banned book which the Post Office had duly confiscated. The book was Punjabi Taliban by Mujahid Hussain (Pentagon Press, India, 2011) which is available in Pakistan too and advertised by a Karachi bookseller on the internet. The [...]

Related posts: Pakistan army outsources the Defence of Pakistan to killers of Shias, Ahmadis and Christians JuD contradicts General Hamid Gul's statement Pakistan is a dangerous country where independent journalists are exposed to terrible dangers, including being killed not only by terrorists groups but also by security intelligence [...]

The prophesier of doom whose all predictions have proven wrong in the last four years By Adnan Rehmat Nobody calls him just “Sheikh”, or “Rasheed”, or even “Ahmed”. It has to be “Sheikh Rasheed”. But that’s just on TV programmes. In real life, and sometimes in newspapers, he is more often than not referred to as “Sheeda [...]

Farsi the language of love, the language of emotions, the language of expression, the language of diplomacy and beyond doubt the language of wisdom has in it’s 2 Thousand 5 Hundred year journey has achieved the status of being the most influencive and comprehensive language of the East. With its shadows overlapping English, French and Spanish [...]

The banned outfit By Rafia Zakaria IT has been a decade of bans and lists. As the world of terror revealed itself to be more and more amorphous, nation states have fought back collecting the names, identifying the leaders and eliminating the followers of terror groups. There are lists of banned organisations in Pakistan and lists of [...]

Due to Islama­bad’s hawkis­h approa­ch, demand of the Baloch shifte­d from greate­r autono­my, self-rule, to indepe­ndence. The US Congressional hearing on Balochistan in Washington DC on February 9 should be a wake-up call for the centre to correct its current policies towards the province. In the past, the country’s ethnically [...]

Chided by an anchor for ignoring the Bhutto promise of roti, kapra aur makan, Mr Zardari retorted by referring to the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). With election rallies beginning to catch the public mood, he followed it up with a public statement at the inauguration of a BISP initiative in Sindh by declaring that the PPP was [...]

With a hoot and then a lurch, the 15:30 to Karachi pulled out of Lahore's railway station bang on time and trailing tinsel. By Rob Crilly, on the Business Express, between Lahore and Karachi The luxury service – complete with flatscreen TVs, wifi and lavatories that would put some British trains to shame – was launched today in an [...]

On Thursday, we saw a new anti-PPP decision from the so-called independent judiciary. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has been summoned to appear before the Supreme Court on February 13 for the framing of the contempt of court charges. This could be another sad moment of Pakistan's fragile democratic history. The conspiracy behind the [...]

Pakistan is finding it harder to convince outsiders it is not helping the Afghan Taliban and giving safe haven to its leaders. In effect, the accusation is that Pakistan is betting on the insurgents being the strongest power in Afghanistan and most likely ally once Nato leaves - something Islamabad of course strenuously denies. The leak of [...]

Government has to Take on Military and Intelligence Services and end Impunity (New York) – The Pakistani government should redouble efforts to find the killers of the journalist Saleem Shahzad, following the failure of the judicial inquiry commission to identify those responsible, Human Rights Watch said today. The commission concluded in its [...]

KARACHI: Protesters blocked Sharah-e-Pakistan for more than six hours on Monday, causing a massive traffic jam during and after the funeral procession of the two Ahle Tasheeh activists murdered earlier o.n. One of them, Jaffar Mohsin Rizvi, was killed on Saturday while the other one, Syed Taseer Abbas Zaidi, was gunned down on Monday [...]

He was one and only, who won the noble prize for his country. But he also was the one whose country did not recognize him. He was the one on whose death, whole world of science mourned on this great loss. But he was also a man whose grave was defaced in the most barbaric and shameful way in his own country. He was the man for listening to whom, [...]

Around 100 tragic deaths of heart patients have occured due to fake medicines provided by the Punjab Governments' PIC (Punjab Institute of Cardiolology). This is yet another blunder by chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif. Since three weeks, he was waiting for more death toll just like a monster, not much different from his slow-motion [...]

(Reuters) - The death of a senior al Qaeda leader in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's tribal badlands, the first strike in almost two months, signaled that the U.S.-Pakistan intelligence partnership is still in operation despite political tensions. The Jan 10 strike -- and its follow-up two days later -- were joint operations, a Pakistani [...]

The 35-year-old legislator speaks about Pakistan’s Mexican standoff, and Parliament’s unsung feats. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was served a contempt of court notice by the Supreme Court on Jan. 16. And, rejecting the government’s position, the Army considers Memogate to be a real issue. Do you believe Pakistani democracy is in [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan under his Lordship Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, has taken upon itself the mantle of purging the country of all its ills and all its impurities. It has and rightly so, in a plethora of its judgments pledged to uphold the Constitution at all times to come. In one of its recent judgments, Supreme Court wrote: “Good or [...]

The year 2012 has begun with a rift between Pakistan's fragile civilian government led by Pakistan Peoples Party and the all powerful military & inteligence establishment over a probe into the government's role in a scandal centered on a unsigned memo that purportedly sought U.S. help in helping the fragile democratic government against the [...]

This is about the illusions we create about our shaky existence in a world that demands conformity to homogeneous institution we know as religion. With variation in human perceptions, to consider somebody's lie as an absolute truth and legislate non-compliance as a punishable crime rapes freedom, individuality and soul of all those who refuse to [...]

Regarding NRO, ultimatum of biased CJ of Pakistan to democratic government is getting over. Judiciary of Pakistan has long history of approving and stamping one after the other all military rules valid under its famous theory of "doctrine of necessity" to suspend the whole constitution or part of constitution. Unfortunately current cheif [...]

Islamabad’s generals are out to destroy Pakistani democracy. Obama should try to stop them. Pakistan's civilian government, led by the Pakistan People's Party, has long been an irritant to the country's generals. President Asif Ali Zardari runs a corrupt and inept administration and has been far too willing to cozy up to Washington. [...]

Playing in the hands of intelligence agencies; this puppet role was played by most of the Pakistani political figureheads and finally had regretted their actions. Nawaz Sharif was instrumental through IJI and now we all know that it was formed and funded by Pakistan ’s notorious agencies. While signing the “charter of democracy” Mian [...]