COMMENT 192 – Contextualising Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Eulogy of Osama Bin Laden
On June 25, 2020, Pakistan’s military-backed Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan made a statement in the National Assembly in which he glorified Osama Bin Laden (OBL) as a ‘martyr’, using the term shaheed. This is without doubt a landmark event which needs a closer assessment. This SADF Comment aims...
COMMENT 191 – The Challenge of Terrorism: An Impediment in US-Pakistan Relations
The recently released 2019 United States State Department’s annual country report on terrorism has once again sparked tensions between America and Pakistan. Despite the recent appreciation and acknowledgment of Islamabad’s facilitation of the United States-Taliban peace talks, the State Department in its 2019 report slammed Pakistan for its continued...
COMMENT 190 – Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Peace Agreement or...
Background
The United States and the Taliban have recently signed a peace agreement aimed at bringing the nineteen-year-long war in Afghanistan to an end. Negotiations between the two parties were broadly based on the exchange of a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces stationed in Afghanistan against an...
COMMENT 189 – The Perils of Being a Migrant During the Pandemic – Caveats...
The unfortunate scenes of daily wagers walking for around 100 kms a day along with their belongings often questions ‘the privileged concept of social status’. Before the lockdown in March 2020 by the Government of India, these migrants were suspended in mid-air - with no jobs and no means...
COMMENT 188 – The Bridges We Have Already Built: European Connections with South Asia
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) is, as per its official description, an ‘intergovernmental process established in 1996 to foster dialogue and cooperation between Asia and Europe’. Besides its political meetings – the biennial ASEM Summit, the ASEM Foreign Minister’s Meeting and the Senior Official’s meeting –, ASEM promotes a Cultural...
COMMENT 187 – Social media in Pakistan and GSP+ compliance under stress
In the shadow of the corona virus pandemic and hardly noticed by international observers, the government of Pakistan is attempting to establish a sweeping state-oversight over the social media sector (CPJ, 2020, February 13). In order to do so, Islamabad envisaged a set of new regulations called the ‘Citizens...
COMMENT 186 – China’s capture of Pakistan’s media sector and the complicity of the...
Pakistan’s media sector faces multiple threats from numerous actors - from the military and intelligence agencies, higher judiciary, religious fanatics and militants, as well as from the government. However, it is important to stress that the freedom of press and the quality of journalistic practice are not only challenged...
COMMENT 185 – The Global conditions for the economic recovery
Prime-minister Modi set the international tone on the post-pandemic recovery path announcing a substantial stimulus and economic reform package on May the 12th. Still, for the recovery to be global and sustainable, trust must be restored, and for this, it will be necessary to overcome the psychological impact of...
COMMENT 184 – The Rohingya question: From a Burmese puzzle to a looming regional...
Even when the whole world is grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of Rohingya refugees looms large. On May 3 2020, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister, Dr A. K. Abdul Momen, confirmed to UNB that a few days before, a small group of Rohingyas who had entered Bangladesh in small...
COMMENT 183 – Are Pakistani dissidents safe in Europe?
On March 2, Sajid Hussain Baloch, a journalist openly critical of Pakistan (Tanner, 2020, May 2), went missing in Sweden (Khan, 2020, April 4). His body was found on April 23 in the Fyris River, outside the university city of Uppsala (Mukhopadhyay, 2020, May 2). Sajid, who escaped from...