Pakistan's deep social divisions are on display yet again in the case of two women, Mukhtar Mai and Dr Shazia Khalid, who have been raped but are finding it difficult to secure justice. The feudal system demands that they commit suicide so that the crimes can be hushed up and the criminals let off the hook.
Despite his rhetorical claim that he is “not scared of anyone”, general Pervez Musharraf is a worried man. The “not scared” boast flies in the face of the facts: he is in effect a prisoner in the presidential compound. Meetings and conferences are organized inside the compound so that he does not have to go out, for fear of being assassinated.
To gauge the true depth of moral and intellectual decline of the ruling elites in the Ummah, one has only to see their reactions to the plight of the Muslims in Iraq and Palestine under their occupiers. With the exception of the Rahbar of Islamic Iran, Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei, not one Muslim ruler has uttered a word against the brutalities being inflicted on these hapless peoples, much less done anything to help them.
What fate awaits a government that wages war on its own people as the regime of general Pervez Musharraf is doing in Pakistan? Having experienced the tragedy of East Pakistan, most Pakistanis know the answer, but appear not to have grasped the gravity of the current crisis...
Throughout its tortuous history, Pakistan has staggered from one crisis to another; but general Pervez Musharraf has brought it to the brink of unprecedented disaster...
Last March US secretary of state Colin Powell designated Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally", while refraining from publicly criticizing general Pervez Musharraf’s handling of the controversy over nuclear physicist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan...
Production of this issue of Crescent International has been considerably hampered by the fact that it has coincided with the series of one-day cricket matches between Pakistan and India at the beginning of the Indian team’s first tour of Pakistan since 1989...
The dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a legacy bequeathed by the British before their departure from the subcontinent, has bedevilled relations between India and Pakistan since August 1947...
The public humiliation of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, had a far deeper purpose than was apparent at first sight: it was meant not only to deflect attention from the military’s role in nuclear proliferation...
As this issue of Crescent International goes to press, general Pervez Musharraf remains president of Pakistan, despite two attempts on his life within a few days...
There have been two inter-related constants in Pakistan’s foreign policy: appeasement of the US, and warding off predatory India. The latter has been the bane of Pakistani policy-makers since the country came into existence in 1947; the core issue that has soured relations with India is the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.
That the unanimous approval of the Shari’ah Bill by the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) assembly on June 2 should send the secular elites into a frenzy is a telling sign of the true state of affairs in the "Islamic Republic" of Pakistan.
The telephone conversation between Pakistani prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, on April 28, is believed to have renewed hopes for restored diplomatic relations between the two nuclear neighbours.
Pakistan has been afflicted by two curses since the beginning of its existence: one a quirk of geography and the other of choice. At its birth Pakistan was saddled with an enemy, India, many times its size; and its ruling elites’ desire to pursue "friendship" with America is the second, warping its policies in the process.
Given president George Bush’s limited grasp of international affairs, it would be unrealistic to expect him to understand why America is hated so much worldwide, but his advisors should be better equipped to deal with the reality of global politics.
While attention is focused on the US-engineered Iraq crisis, the world’s real axis of evil, comprised of the US, Israel and India, is getting more involved in Afghanistan. Although the Americans have in effect occupied Afghanistan, they have failed to subdue the Afghans...
Muslims are so short of success stories these days that they are willing to clutch at any straw to beguile themselves. Take, for instance, the elections in Pakistan on October 10, in which an alliance of six “Islamic” parties surpassed even their own highest expectations.
On October 3, the International Awakening Centre (IAC) recommended the names of the Indian prime minister, AB Vajpayee, the US president, George W Bush, and the British prime minister, Tony Blair, to the Norwegian Nobel Institute for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
General Pervez Musharraf is not the first Pakistani ruler to believe that he has a divine right, not only to rule, but also to rearrange the political system because he alone knows what is best for the country.
The US-imposed Afghan government has begun to unravel. Public works minister Haji Abdul-Qadir, who was also one of three vice presidents, was gunned down in broad daylight in Kabul on July 6.
