A Truth Spring exclusive

By Pervaiz Alam*

The other day I was driving on one of Islamabad’s roads when I saw a black Mercedes slightly bumping into a car moving ahead. Four young men alighted from that car, rushed to the Mercedes, dragged out the young driver and started beating him, calling him a drunkard. Suddenly, about 20 to 25 men converged out of nowhere, joined the attackers and started beating the hapless victim mercilessly. To his good luck a police mobile on routine patrol came on the scene and rescued the young man from this uncalled for violence. The victim’s crime: he caused a minor bump in the car ahead, (or may be) he was alone, weak, and driving a shiny Mercedes. The mob that started beating him had no means to instantly ascertain whether he was drunk or not. And even if he was, the mob had no right to do what it did. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

Chilcot Inquiry was set up by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to inquire into Iraq war covering a period from 2001–2009. The hearings are being held in public unless there are “compelling reasons” for witnesses to be heard in private. The inquiry started at the end of July 2009, after the return of most British troops from Iraq.

On Friday, the 29^th of January 2010 the great deceiver, the past master at selling honey drenched lies, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of England took the podium. Those inside the tiny inquiry room reported that at first his hands shook while trying to uncap a water bottle with his lips parted in an expression of uncertain caution. But soon thereafter, he got into his old self of being a seller of student essays dressed up as ‘intelligence’, spewing out lies couched in half truths at the inquiry commission one after another.

He denied making a covert deal with George Bush to invade Iraq. He denied that he ever said that he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. He said he believed the invasion was authorized by Resolution 1441. Shamefacedly, he also said that not a day goes by when he doesn’t reflect on what happened, but he believed that the world was, note please, a safer place as a result of the invasion. Continue Reading »

By Anwar Hussain

This is a fascinating story so behold.

Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu, also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. His full name was Sultan Fateh Ali Khan Shahab or Tipu Saheb Tipu Sultan. He was not just a ruler but also a scholar, a soldier, and a poet. He was a devout Muslim but the majority of his subjects were Hindus. At the request of the French, he built a church, the first in Mysore. The French also trained his army. He helped his father Haider Ali defeat the British in the Second Mysore War. However, he was defeated in the Third and the Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars by the combined forces of the British East India Company and the Nizam of Hyderabad, another Muslim ruler. Tipu Sultan died fighting in the defense of his capital Srirangapattana, on 4 May 1799.

In Tipu Sultan’s lineage, a child by the name of Inayat Khan was born in the year 1882 in a noble Indian family. Inayat Khan’s mother was a descendent from the immediate family of Tipu Sultan. He was introduced to the Suhrawardiyya, Qadiriyya and Naqshbandi orders of Sufism but his primary initiation was into the Nizamiyya sub-branch of the Chishti Order. He was also indebted to the philosophical Vedanta/Shankara spirituality of Hinduism. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

Having observed international politics in general, and Pakistani politics in particular, over a long period of time, the scribe feels constrained to surmise that the phenomenon, weird as it may seem, works according to certain laws. Let us call these as the general Laws of Politics (Pakistani Politics in Particular) or LOP(PPP) in abbreviated form.

Following is a concise list of LOP(PPP);

First law of Politicianary Motion

The orbit of every politician is an ellipse with the power centre i.e. the king, the ruler or the president at its focus.

Law of Conservation of Political Corruption

It states that the total amount of corruption in a political system remains constant over time. A consequence of this law is that corruption can neither be created nor destroyed. It is always present in exploitable forms in any political system. The only thing that can happen to corruption in a political system is that it can change form, for instance power hunger can become nepotism that can in turn change into a buying and selling activity, a la the stock exchange, over a period of time.

Law of Buoyancy

Any politician, wholly or partially immersed in four letter gooey substances, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the four letter gooey substance displaced by the politician. In other words, the more voluminous an immersed politician is, the larger will be the mass of  four letter gooey substance displaced by him. Continue Reading »

by Farhat Taj

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them. The purpose of today’s column is, one, to challenge the Pakistani and US media reports about the civilian casualties in the drone attacks and, two, to express the view of the people of Waziristan, who are equally terrified by the Taliban and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. I personally met these people in the Pakhtunkhwa province, where they live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

President Obama’s decision to surge the troops’ level in Afghanistan is understandable. That is the only thing America can do in fact. They cannot just pack their bags and go home. They are losing the war with the present troop strength. All other conventional tactics have been tried out. The troop surge in Iraq has supposedly yielded positive results. Increasing troop level in Afghanistan, therefore, is the only logical next step.

That said, another fact too must be understood with complete clarity. 30,000 or 300,000 more troops, President Obama can surge all that he wants, in fact till America itself goes bust a la the Soviet Union of the yore, the United States will not succeed in Afghanistan. That is not because Americans are poor fighters, or are short of manpower or material. But more because they do not know who they are fighting and, consequently, do not know how to fight them.

Let us see why. Continue Reading »

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 a sharp eye.

As the success of the hunting techniques depends greatly on the species hunted, species’ behavior, species’ temperament and the habitat type where the animal is hunted, it is time to understand the nature of the beast.

The Hyena is from a mammalian family of order Carnivora. The Hyena family, native to both African and Asian continents, consists of four living species i.e. the Striped Hyena, the Brown Hyena, the Spotted Hyena, and the Aardwolf. Continue Reading »