By Anwaar Hussain Robert Michael Gates, the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense, spoke at a press conference recently in Kabul.  “There is still much fighting ahead, and there will assuredly be more dark days….but there is reason to be hopeful that Afghan and coalition forces can rout the hardest elements of the Taliban and [...]

By Ayaz Amir Times may be hard but why add to the sum of national misery? Some of our afflictions, like the economic downturn and the war raging along the Afghan frontier, may be beyond anyone’s control. But some are entirely self-created. We are not a police state in the political sense of the term. [...]

By Anwaar Hussain The text books that are taught to Pakistani children recount exploits of numerous past Muslim heroes in them. Standing tall amongst these heroes is one Arab by the name of Muhammad bin Qasim, born on 31 December 695 in the city of Taif in modern day Saudi Arabia. Following are just some [...]

By Anwaar Hussain With Pakistan’s Supreme Court striking down the amnesty granted to the hyenas, the hunt for this carnivore in the Indus valley begins. Tracking skills and techniques have suddenly become very important to locate the animal, identify his spoor and follow his filth trail to his hiding place. This requires skill, knowledge and [...]

By Anwaar Hussain Some have romanticized them, others have idolized them, and yet others have abhorred them. All have feared them, however. Over the years, the Taliban have acquired an image of mysterious allure and danger, until the truth about them now hardly matters. Here is the situation. A leading religious politician, who is also [...]

By Anwaar Hussain Now that the state of Pakistan has effectively rolled over, paws up, at the feet of the beheaders, it is time to get a glimpse into the abyss the state has brought us onto. But before that glimpse, the lessons first. The lesson that other militants draw from the state’s capitulation to [...]

by Milton Bearden As the United States settles into its eighth year of military operations in Afghanistan, and as plans for ramping up U.S. troop strength are under way, we might reflect on an observation made by the Chinese military sage, Sun Tzu, about twenty-five hundred years ago: In military campaigns I have heard of [...]