Malik Ishaq meets his maker. Finally.

One of India and Pakistan’s most wanted terrorists, Malik Ishaq was killed in a police ‘encounter’.

Have to hand it to the police – they accomplished what a decade of military rule couldn’t do under Musharraf, or even when Nawaz essentially gave the Army carte blanch to take on terrorists. For someone who regularly boasted of killing Pakistani’s left right and center, it’s amazing how much support Malik Ishaq kept getting from the Sharif brothers.

Malik Ishaq was going to meet a foul end sooner or later, it’s tragic that despite having him in and out of custody for so many years the Pakistan govt. never thought to hand him over to India. Now that would have been a diplomatic ice breaker extraordinaire.

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Hashwani’s book “Truth Always Prevails: A Memoir”

There is a severe shortage of books by the movers and shakers of Pakistan. Yes, there are some books out there now, but many are fiction, or hagiographies like Musharraf’s masterpiece of ego stroking or Fatima Bhutto’s rosy retelling of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (both men which feature in Hashwani’s life). Hashwani’s book is a breath … Read moreHashwani’s book “Truth Always Prevails: A Memoir”

On Urdu, from Pakistan: A Hard Country, by Anatol Lieven

Pakistan, A Hard Country:

The official language of Pakistan is native to neither of its old halves. Urdu – related to ‘Horde’, from the Turkic-Persian word for a military camp – started as the military dialect of the Muslim armies of the Indian subcontinent in the Middle Ages, a mixture of local Hindustani with Persian and Turkic words. It was never spoken by Muslims in Bengal – but then it has never been spoken by most of the people of what is now Pakistan either. It was the language of Muslims in the heartland of the old Mughal empire, centred on the cities of Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Bhopal and Hyderabad, deep in what is now India. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan, the language of the state education system, of the national newspapers, and of the film industry; but the only people who speak it at home are the Mohajirs, people who migrated from India after partition in 1947, and who make up only 7 per cent of Pakistan’s population.

Five years of Zardari

A milestone came and went past this year, bigger than most – an elected government in Pakistan completed its full term. The PPP government wasn’t thrown out by the army mid way, though it sure looks like the Army had a few half hearted attempts along the way. Even the Supreme Court got into the game of chucking the government out but only managed to get rid of the Prime Minister, who as everyone knows is just a little toady to the main man, Asif Zardari.

The puzzling thing about five years of the PPP government is how little of a main man Zardari was. That he survived five years is testament to his cunning, scheming, politicking and the many little duplicitous tricks he used to stay in power, but there is nothing else there. No signs of courage, of trying to do right by anyone not related to him, of honour, of attempts to change – nothing.

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Imran Khan wrote a book in 2011: Pakistan: A Personal History

Imran Khan is a figure writ large into Pakistan, and now with fifteen years of being out in the political wilderness behind him, Imran Khan is once again the talk of the country. I’d never imagined I’d ever be reading a book by Imran Khan, and that too a personal history of Pakistan, but here it is.

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A list of things Australian

I wished to find out more about Australia and hence this list.

Books

The VICE guide to Karachi

Added without comment, to be watched later. A scene report from the VICE dudes on the ground. It’s in five parts, all up on youtube and embedded below:

VICE Guide to Karachi: Pakistan’s Most Violent City (Part 1/5)

Vice, true to their name, sticks to all the vices of wherever they go, forgoing everything else, but that said, Karachi is changing from a city with a seamy underbelly to a seamy underbelly with huge slums and a urban jungle of a city hanging on for dear life.

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