Good news from Pakistan (besides the Oscar award): LUMS to create Abdus Salam Chair

Exciting news from Adil Najam, Vice Chancellor of LUMS – for those who don’t know him, Dr. Adil Najam was the Frederick S. Pardee Professor of Global Public Policy at Boston University and served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along [...]

Zarteef Khan Afridi: The tribesman who showed the way

A tribute to the human rights activist Zarteef Khan Afridi who was shot dead recently – my article in The News on Sunday. Latitude News earlier published a shorter, different version titled In Pakistan, an unlikely hero dies for his cause. Also see my earlier article: Pakistan’s ‘enlightenment’ martyrs The tribesman who showed the way There was the letter [...]

Pakistan curriculum urgently needs change

The findings of the report “Connecting the Dots:  Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistan” are dire, but not new (Summary at press release below, forwarded to me by The Mirror, a publication of the Pakistan National Commission for Justice and Peace). Pakistani academics have long been pressing for a reform of the curriculum, for example through reports [...]

General observations about Pakistan floods

Some general observations from the floods of 2010, which are sadly relevant again: People affected by the floods (last year as well as now) were already among the poorest begin with although they do include some well-off farmers and trades-people too, in areas where there was already little access to education and healthcare. The relief [...]

Women rock the boat

A women’s day rally and a feminist cartoonist’s perspective

Remembering Saneeya Hussain on her birthday

Here’s to Saneeya – we’ll always miss her. It is wonderful that the Saneeya Hussain Trust is up and running. Please do check it out at http://www.saneeyahussaintrust.com/ – The Trust has already done a lot of valuable work in terms of helping young girls obtain an education.

Peace please, musically

Shahvar Ali Khan: “No Saazish, No Jung” In January I posted out information to my  yahoogroup about a joint signature campaign between Indians and Pakistanis, and also a note from a Lahori who loves Mumbai, Shahvar Ali Khan (A Lahori’s love for Mumbai; Pk-India joint signature campaign – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beena-issues/message/1028)com/ Recently, Shahvar wrote, composed and sang [...]

‘This wonderful Doc…’

Diagnosed with cancer in August 2007 (‘stage four’, pancreas, metastasis to the lungs), he remained characteristically calm and good humoured. “Look,” he reasoned, “everyone has to die. If this is how I have to go, so be it.” … He defied doctors’ predictions of ‘maybe six months…’. “To look into the eyes of a killer disease, and yet not roll over is something that the bravest could envy,” wrote Zawwar in October last year.

`Pakistan: Chaos unto Order?’ and ‘syllabus of hate’

Cutting through the fog of confusion, Haris Gazdar comments in EPW on the Pakistan military having finally appeared to have embraced the war against jihadi militancy as its own – although past experience demands caution before coming to any hasty conclusions. And in The Hindu, Nirupama Subramaniam comments on the ‘syllabus of hate’ that Pakistan needs to deal with urgently if it is to win this fight

Doc’s blog; Madrassas vs Pvt schools; Hoodbhoy on Pk; Cost of war and more

New blog – www.drsarwar.wordpress.com – with photos and remembrances, including by I.A. Rehman, Salima Hashmi, Dr Badar Siddiqui, S.M. Naseem, Ali Jafari, Mohsin Tejani and others; ‘The Madrasa Myth’ – Foreign Policy op-ed co-authored by Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, C. Christine Fair, and Asim Ijaz Khwaja; Pervez Hoodbhoy’s Pakistan predictions; Swat women and ‘mullah Radio’ – a report; HRCP’s report on the internally displaced and more